Since the heyday of Romanticism, gallant ghosts have haunted our imaginations. Sometimes troubling, sometimes amusing, they have crossed continents and eras, as well as film genres, as the films gathered here bear witness. Evanescent and elusive, these romantic ghosts are of course a source of fantasy, but they also inhabit cinema marvelously well, where they defy time, genre and mise-en-scène, between appearance and disappearance.
In 16th-century Japan, a modest potter dreaming of wealth is bewitched by an elegant lady who is in fact a ghost. In the gilded cage of his home, he forgets about his family who are suffering the ravages of war. A classic of post-war Japanese cinema, Mizoguchi's masterpiece is a poignant and poetic presentation of an undeniably cruel destiny.
Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese filmmaker who directed roughly one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953), and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), with the latter three all being awarded at the Venice International Film Festival. A recurring theme of his films was the oppression of women in historical and contemporary Japan.Together with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu, Mizoguchi is seen as a representative of the "golden age" of Japanese cinema.
