SOURCE : "The Ghost Princess and the Seaweed Gatherer: Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho Dayu," in Personal Views: Explorations in Film, Gordon Fraser Gallery Ltd., 1976, pp. 225-48.

In the following essay, Wood analyzes Mizoguchi's style of direction and camera work in Ugetsu and Sansho Dayu.

A colleague told me recently that he would not feel qualified to talk about Ozu and Mizoguchi; that he would not know how to approach them; that he could do so only in terms of mise-en-scène. In the context of the conversation it was clear that this was a covert reprimand rather than an expression of humility: my colleague meant that he did not know enough about the circumstances of production within which the films were made (the Japanese film industry, social-political-cultural conditions at the time) or about the conventions on which they draw and the cultural tradition within which those conventions developed; and...