832 The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum

[Gregory]

He has this reputation, but frankly I find it unearned (in the films I have seen) especially when compared to his peers.

Such as?

I find fallen women to be a perfectly okay descriptor to those films since he does often detail women who are initially presented with some social credibility who due to circumstance forces them to go down the social ladder to be redeemed through some sacrifice often death.

It would be more understandable in the sense of "fallen" as "one who has been laid low" but in the context of sex workers "fallen women" is generally understood (like "soiled doves" etc.) in a moral sense to judgmentally describe those who have forever lost their purity and innocence due to their own lack of virtue. "Fallen" in this sense is generally considered an anachronism today as it hasn't been applied equally (not even close) to men such as the johns, who make prostitution such a common option for survival in the first place. Prostitution has been long thought of as a sin that, although it involves men and women, implicates women as the ones who are "fallen," much as the original "fall of man" has been chiefly blamed on woman's temptation of man. (And who does she have to blame for her temptation? A serpent, obviously the trickster in the setting of the story. Eve should have know better but didn't and then corrupted Adam.)

Also frankly I feel that occasionally Mizoguchi can fall into misogyny due to a need for the classical and parochially pure woman and the need for Mizoguchi, not just society, to punish those who fail this purity test.

I don't follow. One of the most interesting things about films like Sisters of the Gion and Osaka Elegy, for example, is that they're interested in the choices and struggles of women as fully formed characters, not in casually judging them according to a simple moral dualism pigeonholing them as pure (idealized) or fallen (irredeemable).

[knives]

Could you clarify your such as? If you mean directors I've given two and I could give more if you want. If you mean his films I've seen about ten of his films scattered from the early '30s to the end of his career. Ignoring the history lesson of your second point I'll admit not all of the films see them turning into prostitutes, but enough do (or at least Geishas) to warrant the title for the set especially when the other films run with the definition I described, but it sounds like you agree on that so I won't belabor the point. As to your last point I suspect we won't find common ground on this because I feel like often, especially in Women of the Night but Sisters of the Gion as well, he does fall into a simple dualism. I don't think that is the case in all of his films. Certainly not here nor in Street of Shame just to give two examples, but it is prominent enough to me that I'm willing to paint Mizoguchi with that brush. If I remember correctly I have talked about this some in the thread for the eclipse set though simultaneously I'm sure I would be embarrassed by how I argued me points.

[Gregory]

Yes, by "[his peers]...Such as?" I meant who are the peers you had in mind. So you mainly meant Naruse and Ozu? If you had others in mind, or specific 1930s Japanese films, that may help to fill out the picture. I love the 1930s Ozu films but I wouldn't describe any of his films as being especially concerned with the social roles or autonomy of his female characters (as Mizoguchi's work clearly was in the '30s) until a later era, after the war. I'd say Naruse was probably equally concerned in the 1930s with the struggles of women to survive outside of prescribed roles but see no reason to consider the reputation of Mizoguchi's 1930s films "unearned" compared to Naruse's.

Ignoring the history lesson of your second point I'll admit not all of the films see them turning into prostitutes, but enough do (or at least Geishas) to warrant the title for the set

My entire point was that whether the characters resort to prostitution hardly gets to the heart of the matter in imbuing the moral judgment of them as "fallen women," which seems to miss many of the ideas and questions the films raised in the first place. I'll pass on discussing Sisters of the Gion further here, this not being the thread for it. And there was no "history lesson," just discussing briefly the baggage of the term I was critiquing.

[knives]

I agree that they're not overly concerned. I wouldn't describe them as actively feminist. In the same breath though I wouldn't describe them as punishingly misogynistic as I find some of Mizoguchi's films because of that more neutral approach. So, basically, I think we agree on the films outside of Mizoguchi with him being the point of disagreement. I didn't mean history lesson derogatorily if that is how you take it. Just that many of the points you made in explaining the term weren't going to be relevant to my response.

[whaleallright]

The idea that this was a "fascist propaganda" film strikes me as ridiculous because Mizoguichi was known to have been a committed anti-Fascist during the 1930s.

I don't know about this particular film, but the idea isn't "ridiculous." Directors and screenwriters who had been all over the map politically in the 1920s and 1930s ended up making films more or less in line with nationalist/imperial policy—mostly because they had to in order to keep working, especially if they wanted to make expensive prestige pictures. Darrell Davis argues that 47 Ronin was absolutely in this vein.

Some of Mizoguchi’s shinpa films of the 1930s strike me as feminist in a broad sense (even if Mizoguchi wouldn't have embraced the term); the ending of Sisters of Gion makes the critique of women's limited options pretty plain.

Several of Mizoguchi’s postwar films, especially Victory of Women, were feminist in a more explicitly political sense -- which accorded with the values the US occupation wished to inculcate. Mizoguchi was, like many artists, pretty adaptable, even if you can trace his concern for the fortunes of women through his entire body of work.

[Gregory]

I don't know about this particular film, but the idea isn't "ridiculous."

But that idea is about this particular film, so you'd have to know it to say whether this was even arguably the moment when a filmmaker known to be a militant leftist during this decade (even if some may not know or acknowledge that) knuckled under and made a pro-Fascist propaganda piece, either willingly or by force. I'm unclear about the claim in the first place, which is why I was asking lubitsch to provide more insight into the notion that while political film criticism isn't compelling, (contradiction) this film should be seen as Fascist propaganda, and all views to the contrary are fucking "b***s***." If it's not a ridiculous idea, then I'd like to hear more about the historical claim that this was a Fascist propaganda film. If there's information about the production, the government's role, etc. then I'd be interested to learn about it!

[hearthesilence]

My point was that he argues the contradiction poorly and twists himself to not allow himself to say that the film is sexist, but it is nonetheless great. Being empathetic (your word, not his) just shows that he is a good storyteller, but doesn't mean that the film's treatment is a feminist one....it is just as easy to argue and seems more accurate to the text of the film that the empathy is there to show how important and good the sacrifice is which encourages the viewer to endorse what happens. It may personally hurt to fulfill your social roles, but that just shows how great you can be if you still fulfill them. This would be why it is not a feminist work.

First off, Kenny's exact words were "But Mr. Mizoguchi’s artistry and empathy are such that he makes Otoku’s ostensibly ennobling pain palpable." Adjectivalisation does not in any way make it 'my' word and not his.

One thing I do remember from the film is my reaction at the end, and there was nothing about her sacrifice that felt like it was a fair thing placed upon her. It was the culmination of an inequity that ran though the film, and the film did feel very conscious about that. So along those lines, I don't see how Kenny is playing with any twisted logic because you're really not seeing the film he's seeing.

I've seen maybe a half dozen of Mizoguchi's films, and the dynamic that typically plays out for me is that he's accurately depicting the inherent sexism of that time while countering with a more modern sensibility. However, he's doing so without creating something or reshaping the plot in a way that would seem anachronistic - the inequality of their time is usually accepted and insurmountable. It's an incredibly difficult and delicate achievement to pull off.

(Note, there is a big exception in Sansho the Bailiff, which is based on a folktale that's about emancipation, and naturally the idea of it can only be an unprecedented and culture-changing idea.)

[lubitsch]

Apologies for ranting and then leaving, so here's a belated response.
I'm currently writing and researching a multi volume history of Third Reich films and it's rather tiresome to read leftist ideological criticism, presented either bluntly in older books or veiled in newer ones. However as tiresome as this kind of approach is I find the lack of any recognition about the political compromises all major players in dictatorships and here specifically in Japanese cinema did even more troublesome. That Japan suffers from collective amnesia, ok, we know that, but why film fans from all over the world close their eyes when it comes to Mizoguchi, Ozu or Kurosawa, I don't get at all.
Gregory's point about Mizoguchi being leftist or progressive is most likely correct to a certain degree but is completely irrelevant to the discussion of a film production under a more or less totalitarian rule. Whaleallright correctly points out that leftists converted massively and ended up doing the most hysteric nationalistic pics, e.g. Tadashi Imai. Though "converted" is maybe the wrong term, it's a mixture of pressure and incentives. Which is why basically every major dramatic German film director crumbled in the years 1940/41 and gave in to propaganda demands to a certain degree and the same happened to every major Japanese director, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Shimizu, Shimazu, Imai and so on. Constructing an auteuristic battle of the rugged leftist hero fighting against a fascist film system is the completely wrong approach.
Mizoguchi first crumbled in 1938 when he made the now lost Song of the Camp and in 1945 when he made Victory Song and you can read in Peter High's essential book The Imperial Screen about his problematic persona and his shifting behaviour. However I'd argue that 47 Ronin and Chrysanthemum show the pressure beginning in 1937 and transforming Japanese cinema even clearer.
Chrysanthemum clearly focuses on the man. His development into a great actor is the main story, contrary to Mizoguchi's former films which were about the women. His 1936 films made you angry at the way women were treated in them and he even let the characters express this anger or at least their frustration. In Chrysanthemum nothing is left of this. Yes, we feel that the woman is treated unfairly however contrary to his earlier films Mizoguchi doesn't insist on it, but instead plays the Camille melodrama to the hilt with a noble sacrifice which in the end is the right thing because it produces a great actor. The woman's suffering is now rather decorative and a plot mechanism instead of being the core of the story. The shift of the story towards the man's affairs creates at least a tension between both viewpoints which is representative of the confused films made under censorship pressure, Peter High writes up Naruse's The whole family works as a fine example of these confused films.
But for me the effect is clearly one of validating the sacrifice of the young woman for her beloved one which is reactionary and in tune with the rollback against women's liberation perpetrated in Japanese cinema. I think Mizoguchi's aesthetic style makes things even worse because his detached long takes actually minimize suffering and create instead a kind of visual tapestry which makes human experience remote and distant while emphasizing order and society rules. High places the two films as comparable to the Italian calligraphers like Castellani and there are paralleles in German cinema of the time, but I think this is much more in tune with female sacrifice stories which support the war effort a la the German mega success The Great Love with Zarah Leander.
To return to a broader picture, you can clearly see the major directors tumbling into the net of Japanese propaganda. The youngsters like Kurosawa, Kinoshita and Imai willingly and eagerly, but more interesting is the oppressive conservativism in the films of Mizoguchi, Ozu or Shimizu in their post 1937 films (obviously there are exceptions here and there).
Because it would be impossible to praise films made in the Third Reich so easily in Germany, I find it disturbing to which degree there's a lack of reflection on the roles of the Japanese or Italian directors played. The analysis of Japanese classic film by Western critics still seems partly to be an admiration for cherry blossoms, the portrayal of chaste and gentle emotions plus some pictorialism. And mindlessly praising a film with an at least questionable attitude simply goes too far.
I expect from a label like Criterion a little bit of historical perspective and some sensitive handling when dealing with the films of one of the most murderous regimes in human history.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think the fact that Zangiku is clearly indebted to Verdi's La traviata complicates the "nationalistic/militaristic" aspect -- perhaps his use of such a story WAS opportunistic -- but one he could justify on purely artistic grounds?

I agree there is no real indication that Otoko's sacrifice was a bad thing, for all the suffering it imposed on her.

[knives]

Well, of course I would think. I don't see any reason for a film not to be considered artistically justifiable and even good even with an opportunistic fascism as the core reality. Zhang YIMOU's recent decade or so of filmmaking seems reasonably comparable where the politics are grotesque proppings of totalitarian nationalism. Though I think this film is a fair amount better then Yimou's worst offenders.

[matrixschmatrix]

I suspect there may be two confused points here. One is that, in essence, a filmmaker need not be feminist for the resulting film to be honestly readable as a feminist one- I think by analogy of the Merchant of Venice, which is a starkly anti Semitic play but also one which, for reasons of artistry or of humanity, perhaps incidental creates a Shylock who is more fully human and given better speeches than anyone else in the play, and certainly more than the kind of gludgy figures who tend to populate liberal pleas for tolerance. That a viewer with modern eyes more or less cannot help but to be more sympathetic to Shylock than to his enemies does not lessen the inherent anti Semitism of the work, it simply argues that the specific racist assumptions built into it are now unlikely to be axioms to most viewers. Likewise, if mizoguchi makes a film in which a woman who is obviously the most admirable character in it suffers for what may seem to the viewer to be obviously insupportable reasons, that does not inherently make the work a feminist one- particularly if the sacrifice to the system is portrayed as having a beneficial outcome.

Second, I think the different ways in which Japanese fascism is received from Europe are fairly explicable- the specific character of that fascism doesn't emphasize the things we see as exclusive to fascism. There is obviously a lot of racism in it, but that is almost never made central, at least in the movies by name directors we wind up seeing. The emphasis on the virtues of home and hearth, of idealized bodies and angry men held back by the scheming of the weak, and of most other particularly euro fascist hobby horses are likewise far less present. The themes we see are mostly the kind of thing oshima made so much sport of- the nobility of self sacrifice, the emphasis of duty over personal feeling, the importance of knowing one's place. These are all rife the light the 37-45 period, but they're also somewhat harder to ascribe particularly to fascism than the aforementioned euro ones, because they're pretty common to a LOT of societies. One need know the particulars of the historical context particularly to problematics it.

[Gregory]

Likewise, if mizoguchi makes a film in which a woman who is obviously the most admirable character in it suffers for what may seem to the viewer to be obviously insupportable reasons, that does not inherently make the work a feminist one...

No, probably not, but neither does anything "inherently" make it a misogynistic or sexist film, either, in the way you point out that anti-Semitism is "built into" The Merchant of Venice. Whether or not the film is that depends largely on whether one sees it as I do or, on the contrary aren't particularly moved by Haruko's treatment or see it as a worthy "sacrifice," or both. I'd argue that this film, just the way I see it, fits into Mizoguchi's phase up to and including this film of portraying women as fully aware and human actors whose choices and behavior are confined within a connected grouping of social/ideological structures that many viewers of the time would not have questioned but are nevertheless laid bare by the stories the films tell. Whether or not that's "feminist," may depend upon how "feminism" is understood and not upon anything to do with this specific film. And in case it may seem otherwise, I have no intention of trying to rescue Mizoguchi's reputation as an auteur or anything like that, nor to discount political/cultural forces that were beyond his control. And it's not about "closing our eyes" as lubitsch uncharitably puts is, when it comes to Mizo, Ozu, or Naruse.

...particularly if the sacrifice to the system is portrayed as having a beneficial outcome.

I think it's portrayed as having a beneficial outcome for the egocentric and entitled Kikunosuke and not so much for anyone else. I don't find it convincing at all that he's become a far better person or a better actor, and I find this a "happy ending" of the kind that invite a counter-reading. Mizoguchi, I think, consciously downplays Kikunosuki's supposed triumphs in ways that marginalize him and make him downright unsympathetic.

[Michael Kerpan]

Gregory -- You are, of course, free to read the film any way you prefer. But I think it is safe to say that both Mizoguchi and his intended audience viewed the ending as "good" even if not, strictly speaking, "happy". Is the ending of Traviata "happy" -- of course not. But it is as positive an ending as the poor heroine could have expected. Female self sacrifice for problematic males is an operatic staple (viz. both Puccini and Wagner, in particular). And both Mizoguchi and his screenwriter were quite aware of these operatic precedents.

Mizoguchi's MOST genuinely feminist-ish films are probably Osaka Elegy, Uwasa no onna and Aien kyo (Straits of Love and Hate) --where male authority is ultimately rather thoroughly blown off. It is too bad Aien kyo is unavailable in any decent version (even unsubbed).

[knives]

I can definitely agree that Osaka Elegy is genuinely the sort of film that everyone views as Mizoguchi's norm.

[Gregory]

Gregory -- You are, of course, free to read the film any way you prefer. But I think it is safe to say that both Mizoguchi and his intended audience viewed the ending as "good" even if not, strictly speaking, "happy".

I see no reason to suppose that it's "safe to say" that at all, as I've been trying argue. Based on your post, it seems like you're unwilling to discuss (or even acknowledge) any of the specific points I've made—which I'll try to briefly explain a little further here—about whether there are grounds for another reading that goes beneath the surface of the formulaic story of sad but still worthwhile female sacrifice for a problematic male character who is the focal point of the story and whose triumph is the true purpose into which all actions in the story flow. I don't find that The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums fits that template at all, for reasons I've already said a lot to explain, that have everything to do with why the outcome is neither good nor happy.

Is the ending of Traviata "happy" -- of course not. But it is as positive an ending as the poor heroine could have expected. Female self sacrifice for problematic males is an operatic staple (viz. both Puccini and Wagner, in particular). And both Mizoguchi and his screenwriter were quite aware of these operatic precedents.

Being aware of them and following them are two different things. To follow them, Mizoguchi would have done much more to invite the audience to be impressed by Kikunosuke's transformation, his talent, the importance of his career success, etc., and that would have been a fairly straight-forward thing to do, but Mizoguchi doesn't really do it. That suggests either that he was very inept at dramatic storytelling, at least in this instance; or that he was ambivalent toward Kikunosuke and his supposed triumph and/or that the film encourages viewers to be—especially those of us who in no way agree with the presupposed premise of the story that Kikunosuke's success will make anyone's death "worth it." I don't think the film requires us to go along with that premise in the least.

Mizoguchi's MOST genuinely feminist-ish films are probably Osaka Elegy, Uwasa no onna and Aien kyo (Straits of Love and Hate) --where male authority is ultimately rather thoroughly blown off. It is too bad Aien kyo is unavailable in any decent version (even unsubbed).

As I was suggesting in my previous post, I guess this may come down to differing notions of what "feminism" is or something. Right now I can't even begin to understand the omission of films such as Josei no shôri/Victory of Women and Waga koi wa moenu/Flame of My Love that wear their feminist politics very much on their sleeve, and a few earlier examples as well.

[Michael Kerpan]

I find Victory of Women and Flame of My Love problematic. In any event, neither strikes me as as more satisfactorily feminist (in the sense of "women don't need men to establish their own identity and self worth) than the films I mentioned.

You aren't convinced that Zangiku shows Otoko's sacrifice was "worthwhile" and assert Mizoguchi's attempt to show it as worthwhile (if that was what he was doing) must be considered inept. However, I find nothing even remotely inept in his storytelling on this point. More importantly, this film was apparently (very loosely) biographical and (prior to the making of the film) was very popular on the stage (as a shinpa play, starring the very same male lead). Apparently contemporary audiences had no trouble buying the notion that Otoko's sacrifice was worthwhile. Your inability to accept this is, I think, simply reflective of the fact that you are looking at the film totally outside its actual historical (and artistic) context. Which you are perfectly free to do.

[Gregory]

I find Victory of Women and Flame of My Love problematic. In any event, neither strikes me as as more satisfactorily feminist (in the sense of "women don't need men to establish their own identity and self worth) than the films I mentioned.

You're giving me very little to reply to or to attempt to take the conversation anywhere from here. "Problematic" says virtually nothing, and based on what you are saying I still can't begin to understand how any of the films "strike you" (maybe you've commented on them already in past forum discussions that I'm not recalling) and so I can only conclude again that we have very differing understandings of what feminism is—it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with women being empowered in a sphere independent of men, or anything like that—and likely other major differences besides. But those two films are some of the most explicit in their "feminist" themes as conventionally understood, made as they were in a climate of occupation and concomitant "democratization," arguably as explicitly concerned with these issues as any being made anywhere in the world at that time, so color me totally baffled right now. It seems as odd to me as someone denying that films such as Salt of the Earth and Norma Rae are unabashedly pro-labor and are concerned with the role of women in labor organizing and as workers.
Seems to me that Osaka Elegy is a somewhat conflicted and tentative predecessor to the much more committed works that followed, not always consistently, but culminating in the late 1940s works I mentioned before. Then in the final phase of his career he changed yet again, arguably with major shifts in the whole personal philosophy underlying his work, and his films returned to familiar themes of women as sufferers, victims, and sacrifices, but without questioning or analyzing the nature that victimhood in the way that earlier works such as Sisters of the Gion had done

You aren't convinced that Zangiku shows Otoko's sacrifice was "worthwhile" and assert Mizoguchi's attempt to show it as worthwhile (if that was what he was doing) must be considered inept.

No, no, no. I was posing that as part of a reductio, narrowing it down to what I see as two things that would explain why Kikunosuke's supposed greatness is so muted and downplayed and his victory seeming to me (and others) as false and in no way justifying Otoko's treatment, and among these I was endorsing the interpretation that I've been developing here all along, and not that Mizoguchi was simply inept in dramatizing those things in a way that could be easily been far more convincingly supportive of the superficially "obvious" understanding of Kikunosuke and of Otoko's role that I've been arguing against. I guess I should've made my rhetorical point more clear because I'm evidently not being given much credit or the benefit of any doubt here.

More importantly, this film was apparently (very loosely) biographical and (prior to the making of the film) was very popular on the stage (as a shinpa play, starring the very same male lead). Apparently contemporary audiences had no trouble buying the notion that Otoko's sacrifice was worthwhile.

That's off-topic as a response to anything I was saying because I was never trying to make a case about how the film (let alone the preceding play) was received by contemporary audiences, and I've been arguing all along that mine is a kind of "counter-reading" so of course not everyone then or now agrees with me. Pointing out what contemporary audiences "apparently" thought is either a non sequitur or an example of a common logical fallacy (that something is the "correct" way to understand a story because many or most people understand it that way) or both. (And it seems far from "apparent" anyway, so that's way of stating it is yet another problem, but again that's neither here nor there).

Your inability to accept this is, I think, simply reflective of the fact that you are looking at the film totally outside its actual historical (and artistic) context. Which you are perfectly free to do.

You seemingly can't understand anything about my position in the least and are uninterested in engaging with any of the particulars of it, yet you presume to say what I'm "unable" to accept and what my understanding of the context of the film is (or that I have none). I wish I could say I'm surprised to read something like this from you, but this is all pretty familiar by now, including familiar dismissive and vaguely patronizing shrugging of the "You're perfectly free to see things any way you want" and "You're free to read the film any way you prefer" type. It probably would have been more interesting if you'd tried to respectfully meet me halfway, for the sake of argument, rather than tossing out fallacies, terse declarations leaving no room for any reasonable disagreement with them, and pithy remarks about my supposed inabilities and failings to do this or that.
My "inability" to accept what you're asserting as "apparent" somehow shows "the fact that [I'm] looking at the film totally outside its actual historical (and artistic) context." Well, there is no such "fact" that I'm looking at it that way, and simply stating your opinions and attempted understandings of my views as facts doesn't make them so. That's still another basic fallacy that suggests that you're not inclined to disagree about things related to your domain of expertise in ways that are fair or reasonable and so instead simply respond in bad faith in very simplistic terms to suggest that I must have no idea what I'm talking about.

[Michael Kerpan]

You are correct. I cannot understand your position. I must be dense.

[matrixschmatrix]

I'm trying to follow the thread of the conversation without being too deeply immersed in Mizo myself, so apologies if say anything that doesn't make a lot of sense. Basically, it sounds like Gregory feels as though it's not at all absurd to find a feminist reading in this movie, specifically because while the overall arc may mirror a fairly fascistic narrative- a weak man finds his strength and true place in society by the virtuous sacrifice of a woman- the movie undercuts this by failing to commit to the 'true place in society' element and by committing much more strongly to the qualities of the woman's character, with the implication that the viewer will reject the overall narrative.

Is that fair? It doesn't seem like a particularly odd way to read a film, since we're all guessing in the dark when trying to reconstruct an artist's intentions anyway (especially when the artist is working within the constraints of an unusually censorious and heavy handed system, politically.) It's also the kind of thing that could only be subjective, since it's based on one's reception of how well the movie seems to want to succeed at some of its ostensible goals- thus, it's not hard for a debate around it to go endlessly in circles.

[whaleallright]

Gregory wrote:

But that idea is about this particular film

Your original assertion implied that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that a film made by someone who had been a committed leftist could be construed as a piece of fascist propaganda. I was pointing out that the history of Japanese cinema provides evidence to the contrary.

Apologies if this seems nitpicky, I just wanted to clarify the point of disagreement.

[Michael Kerpan]

I was pointing out that the history of Japanese cinema provides evidence to the contrary..

Have you seen Naruse's "Sincerity" - which is probably his most problematic (existing in complete form) propaganda film -- and yet is still fairly intriguing -- much moreso than Ozu's Toda Family or Mizoguchi's Great Sword Bijomaru. I have never seen any of the supposedly extremely propagandistic war-time films of Imai, but would really like to see at least one or two of them.

[whaleallright]

No, I haven't seen Sincerity. There's definitely a wide range, from very overtly propagandistic war films, to "colonial" films suggesting a kind of hierarchical pax japonica, to "home dramas" inflected with patriarchal and nationalist sentiment (Ozu made a few of the latter, not just Toda Family but There Was a Father too). Even comedies like Shimizu's Star Athlete reflect imperial priorities, even though to today's audiences Shimizu's anti-authority leanings seem more salient than the paeans to national duty.

[lubitsch]

The crucial point for a more or less totalitarian state is to eliminate dissent. It is very difficult and essentially impossible to create some kind of perfect propaganda program of films finetuned to the current demands, at least for Germany I can attest to the various and numerous failures, the obstacles are endless. But destroying things is much easier and narrowing the number of choices for artists through censorship is very easy.
For Japanese cinema this meant that progressive, modern or western trends in films were suppressed. Shinpa melodrama per se originally can be considered progressive simply by giving women a voice and a role at the center and then a lot depends on how things play out. Sacrificial elements can give the story a conservative turn and that was what the Japanese authorities were interested in.
So the basic idea is to nudge filmmakers into the right direction, it needn't be an all out propaganda film, it's sufficient if it is broadly supportive of the ideology. It jusn't shouldn't be subversive which is why a reading like Gregory's is ahistorical. I agree that the modern viewer automatically tends to read it that way, but Mizoguchi does all he can to bury the subversive elements of shinpa in Chrysanthemum.
This misreadings of not too blunt propaganda films are surprisingly often and even made by people who should know better. Donald Richie completely fails in the case of the early Japanese war films by Tasaka like Five Scouts which he even calls humanistic, totally not getting the point of these films which are about showing a military unit as a fascist body minimizing the individual as far as possible. Even Peter High is still too lenient with them when he merely points out that there's no questioning of Japan's imperial ambitions in them.
And as I said I suspect this is very much due to a wish to save auteurs or artists in general from being labeled as collaborators. Japan was quite successful in keeping most of the films under the blanket even though they were more aggressive and fanatical than Nazi Germany in their film policy turning out progressively more reprehensible films each year while in Germany film propaganda was more or less cancelled in early 1942.

[Michael Kerpan]

The really reprehensible films showed up only very late in the war, after it became clear that Japan was beginning to lose (and, later, was definitely losing). Setsuko Hara was a star in some of the most outrageous-sounding ones.

While shinpa may have been somewhat progressive when it was new, the more westernized "new theater" movement (which was depicted in Mizoguchi's Love of Sumako the Actress) supplanted it (in terms of progressiveness) by the beginning of the 20th century. By the 1930s, it was already a fairly (very?) conservative form of art.

Tasaka's Five Scouts is a pretty low-key piece of military propaganda, but it nonetheless clearly propaganda. Kamei's Fighting Soldiers is far more ambiguous. While it may have propagandistic aspects, the military authorities were pretty angry about the film. Kinoshita's Army, when seen unsubbed, appears a lot less propagandistic than it does when subbed. But it does have that ambiguous ending that was not pre-vetted by censors (because it featured no dialog during its considerable length of screen time). There is no doubt that Mizoguchi fully supported the war (and war propaganda) -- and did so much more overtly than any of his (eminent) peers -- the extent to which this shows up in his films is (of course) subject to debate.

[Gregory]

I've been mulling this over the past few days and have a bunch of follow-up points, which I'll make as concisely as I can.
To begin with the original claim of whether this is a "fascist propaganda film," I am far from convinced that even reading the story as lubitsch sums it up, a woman's noble sacrifice for a man's career, is a distinctly fascist narrative. It’s conservative and even reactionary but there is nothing whatsoever about it that's peculiar to fascism, and it can be found just as readily in countless later films remote from any context of fascism. It’s about a broader patriarchal culture, which is not to try to plead guilty to a lesser crime or anything, it’s just a different kind of charge which better explains why such stories involving traditional gender roles extend far beyond a fascist context.

As for whether it’s propaganda, I think some distinctions and questions of degree and intent need to be made. Painting with the same brush every Japanese film made during the war that outwardly espouses conservative values as “fascist propaganda” obscures far more than it reveals. Likewise if both Triumph of the Will and Schlußakkord were both deemed nothing but “Nazi propaganda” and thus repugnant in equal measure, then that obscures not only the major differences between the two (textually and in terms of historical context, intention, and so on) but also the potentially interesting things in Schlußakkord that are not propagandistic, which is crucial to valuing a problematic film if we’re not ready to just dismiss it as corrupted trash. Is Schlußakkord tainted by its origins (UFA during the Third Reich), even if it was merely an escapist melodrama in that setting? Of course it is, but I'd argue that there's much more to consider in it, and it should not be treated as if it's akin to one of Riefenstahl's propaganda films.

And again to clarify, as I said before, for me this is not about “trying to rescue Mizoguchi's reputation as an auteur” or shield him from criticism in terms of his personal integrity. It’s certain films of his that I am interested in discussing how they are understood and, to the extent that they warrant it, defending them. There are some of his more militaristic films that I still have not seen. If I did see them and found them repugnant, that would not affect the way I view Story of the Last Chrysanthemums or his actual masterpieces.

Basically, it sounds like Gregory feels as though it's not at all absurd to find a feminist reading in this movie, specifically because while the overall arc may mirror a fairly fascistic narrative- a weak man finds his strength and true place in society by the virtuous sacrifice of a woman- the movie undercuts this by failing to commit to the 'true place in society' element and by committing much more strongly to the qualities of the woman's character, with the implication that the viewer will reject the overall narrative.
Is that fair? It doesn't seem like a particularly odd way to read a film, since we're all guessing in the dark when trying to reconstruct an artist's intentions anyway (especially when the artist is working within the constraints of an unusually censorious and heavy handed system, politically.) It's also the kind of thing that could only be subjective, since it's based on one's reception of how well the movie seems to want to succeed at some of its ostensible goals- thus, it's not hard for a debate around it to go endlessly in circles.

Yes, I think that's all fair, and no, it's in no way an uncommon way to read a film: to say that it may at first appear to fit a familiar template but actually has multilayered textures and meanings that may be contradictory. If one can recognize that even if a film is not openly critical of social customs and structures and may appear to affirm them, there still may be a space to explore ways that a film may be ambivalent or even contradictory with respect to that society—showing victimization or disempowerment (and perhaps seeming to tacitly approve of it) but in a way that can lead a viewer amenable to question such things to ask whether there's something rotten about it all. A complacent explanation for something like traditional gender roles that says "That's just the way things are" tends to raise the counter-question, for some, "Why?"

So that's how I would describe what Mizoguchi achieves in this film, albeit with a necessary kind of retreat politically, keeping his head down more, so to speak, which in context makes complete sense. I would not describe it as "the rugged leftist hero fighting against a fascist film system" as lubitsch summarized what he called the completely wrong approach. I didn’t mean to argue that vis-à-vis this film. His more open firebrand works were in periods before and after this film, by necessity, and these changes are hardly sufficient to demonstrate a conversion to fascism on his part. If he succumbed to pressures or benefitted from incentives, well see my comment above about how I’m not interesting in putting the director’s character on trial here.

Of course those who saw the film and didn't feel any real element of tragedy around the Otoku character, who felt that her sacrifice was worth it, will not be inclined to ask the above question, "Why," which is fine, it's up to the individual viewer how they feel about it. But I think a real misunderstanding is that Mizoguchi was indifferent to a character such as Otoku just because of the distance in his technique.

But for me the effect is clearly one of validating the sacrifice of the young woman for her beloved one which is reactionary and in tune with the rollback against women's liberation perpetrated in Japanese cinema. I think Mizoguchi's aesthetic style makes things even worse because his detached long takes actually minimize suffering and create instead a kind of visual tapestry which makes human experience remote and distant while emphasizing order and society rules.

For one thing, close-ups were not used in 1930s Japanese cinema in the way they were in Hollywood, and they didn’t need to be used that way to convey emotional concern for a character. And to investigate these assumptions about “distance,” the point of comparison that comes readily to mind is Sirk, whose technique often established distances (and his films were more "distant" than most other melodramas and "message" dramas) but that in no way meant that audiences should or would feel disconnected from the characters and their problems.