Blu-ray, DVD Release: A Story from Chikamatsu

By
Laurence
– November 13, 2018Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 13, 2018
Price: DVD $17.97, Blu-ray $22.97
Studio: Criterion

One of a string of late-career masterworks made by Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) in the early 1950s, A Story from Chikamatsu (a.k.a. The Crucified Lovers) is an exquisitely moving tale of forbidden love struggling to survive in the face of persecution.

Based on a classic of eighteenth-century Japanese drama, the 1954 film traces the injustices that befall a Kyoto scroll maker’s wife and his apprentice after each is unfairly accused of wrongdoing. Bound by fate in an illicit, star-crossed romance, they go on the run in search of refuge from the punishment prescribed them: death.

Shot in gorgeous, painterly style by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this subtly sensuous indictment of societal oppression was heralded by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) as a “great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.”

Presented in Japanese with English subtitles, Criterion’s new editions of movies include the following:

* New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New interview with actor Kyoko Kagawa
* Mizoguchi: The Auteur Behind the “Metteur-en-scène,” a new illustrated audio essay by film scholar Dudley Andrew
* New English subtitle translation
* An essay by film scholar Haden Guest

Buy or Rent A Story from Chikamatsu

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.