So this is an adaptation of a Japanese folk tale/fable from the 1700s, and it really feels like it. It reminds me a lot of Shakespeare or Sophocles in the way that the characters are real people with their own particular concerns, but at the same time are kind of larger-than-life and representing big themes.

So the characters in question are two couples from a village in 16th century Japan. It is, as the intro text says, a period of civil war, and the men seek to profit from the war — one looks to sell his pottery for more money than he could get in peace-time; the other looks to become a samurai. Their wives are fearful of their ambition, particularly when soldiers come to raid their village.

Through the vicissitudes of life in wartime (including a scene on a fog-shrouded lake that is super-iconic and which every reviewer is required by law to mention), they end up getting split up and going off to their own fates — which involve variously being murdered, achieving a sly sort of military success, getting married to a ghost, and working in a brothel — before being reunited together in the old village again, wiser and sadder than before.

I’m glossing over a lot of the plot there — and really, the “married to a ghost” bit of it is probably the core of the movie, which has a kind of supernatural horror feel to it — but the kind of theme of the movie is probably about resisting greed and unrealistic ambition, and being content with the quiet satisfaction of hearth and home.

It’s well-made, and an unusually taut and story-driven film, compared to many on this list; there’s not a wasted second in the movie, and it’s full of happenings in its 90-ish minute runtime. Mizoguchi, the director, is a lot lower on this list than Ozu or Kurosawa, and that seems about right to me; but at the same time, this does feel like something that belongs here. Mizoguchi has another movie coming up soon on this list, and I’m looking forward to it.