Chikamatsu Monogatari

Set in seventeenth-century Kyoto, Chikamatsu Monogatari centres on Osan, the wife of Ishun, a prosperous scrollmaker who supplies the imperial court. Burdened by family debts, Osan turns for help to Mohei, her husband's trusted assistant, who is secretly in love with her. When an accusation of adultery is levelled against the pair, they flee the city together. What begins as a desperate escape becomes something else, and the two find themselves genuinely drawn to each other. Ishun, determined to avoid scandal, sends men after them. Under the era's harsh laws, adultery was punishable by crucifixion, and the couple's fate closes in on them.

The film is a 1954 Daiei production directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, from a screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda and Matsutarō Kawaguchi, adapted from a kabuki play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. It followed Sansho the Bailiff the same year and stands between that film and Princess Yang Kwei-fei in Mizoguchi's filmography, in the middle of a run that also included The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu. Kazuo Hasegawa plays Mohei and Kyōko Kagawa plays Osan, with Eitarō Shindō as Ishun, Eitarō Ozawa as Sukeemon and Yôko Minamida as Otama. Masaichi Nagata produced. On IMDb it holds 8 out of 10 from around 5,400 votes; on TMDB it has 7.8 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes.