Miss Oyu(Oyu-sama)

In love with the widow Oyu but constrained by etiquette, Shinnosuke marries instead her sister Shizu in order to be close to her. Perversely, Shizu accepts the arrangement out of sisterly devotion and in deference to their love. An adaptation of Tanizaki’s novella The Reed Cutter, Miss Oyu marked the beginning of Mizoguchi’s collaboration with cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo, with exquisitely choreographed long takes employing complex staging and camera movement for an unfurling ‘picture scroll’ aesthetic. Tanaka Kinuyo exerts a mysterious fascination as the film’s central object of desire, but Otowa Nobuko equally rivets our attention embodying Shizu’s masochistic suffering.