Ugetsu

Set in sixteenth-century Japan during a period of civil war, Ugetsu follows two peasants whose ambitions pull them away from their families. Genjuro, a potter, and his brother-in-law Tobei sell their wares to soldiers despite a local sage's warning against profiting from warfare. Genjuro's success brings him wealth and an encounter with the mysterious Lady Wakasa, while Tobei pursues his dream of becoming a samurai. Their wives, Miyagi and Ohama, are left behind as the two men become increasingly consumed by their desires, and the choices they make threaten both themselves and the women who depend on them.

Kenji Mizoguchi directed the film, which Yoshikata Yoda wrote and Masaichi Nagata produced for Daiei Film. It came after The Life of Oharu and before Sansho the Bailiff among Mizoguchi's features, and it belongs to a run of historical dramas he made in the early 1950s. Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyō play Genjuro and Lady Wakasa, with Kinuyo Tanaka as Miyagi, Mitsuko Mito as Ohama, Eitarō Ozawa as Tobei, and Sugisaku Aoyama as the old priest. The credited cast runs to 45 performers.

The film received a critics' rating of 9.8 out of 10 from 34 reviews, while on IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from around 28,000 votes and on TMDB 8 out of 10 from 667 votes. Those figures point to a strong critical standing alongside consistently high audience ratings, though the audience scores were recorded by far larger numbers of viewers than the review total.