I was in ninth grade when I first saw this film. It was late Spring, the second week in a row that my father, brother, and I all drove down to Movies Unlimited together. The fruits of the previous trip yielded Bill & Coo and an assortment of other cult classics, but this trip was all about Japan. This is when I first became familiar with New Yorker Video with whom I would have dealings with some nine years later working for my friend Amber at CIP. New Yorker Video put out this series, Japanese Masters, that collected major works by Ozu, Oshima, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ichikawa all in beautifully letterboxed editions. These were gorgeous VHS, I couldn’t believe I was getting so many amazing films so cheaply. I remember sitting in the back of my dad’s van (a huge van that my brother and I often compared to the shuttles in Star Trek: The Next Generation) gazing over the titles I had purchased; Equinox Flower, Cruel Story Of Youth, Enjo, and of course Princess Yang Kwei Fei.
Strangely, I only watched Princess Yang Kwei Fei once early on a Sunday morning. I never watched that VHS again. But those images, those dreamlike pastel colored images remained etched into my mind’s eye for years. There really was no reason to rewatch it when I was reliving it again at the most spontaneous of times daily. So I gave it to my friend Josh.
Yet, once I was working for CIP, I began to desire to see Princess Yang Kwei Fei again. I thought it would be a great if somewhat unexpected representation of Mizoguchi for a program I was developing. Nothing ever came of that. The spectre of what Princess Yang Kwei Fei had become obsessed me. I had to see it again.
Finally, I ordered the Masters Of Cinema release a month or more back. It was spectacular. Mizoguchi weaves such a delicate fantasy out of such concise compositions and designs that the film transcends folklore and opera, achieving a symbiotic fusion of the two as flawless as a Mazarin stone. Anyone invested in the lyricism of artifice, Kenneth Anger fans, fans of The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T., and appreciators of technicolor will find this film indispensable.
Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, cast: Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Sô Yamamura
