Some innovative style in an early Mizoguchi film, although good luck making sense of the Kabuki scenes

 Okay it's not as great a film as his later-career masterpieces Sansho the Bailiff and Ugetsu but it's still worth taking a look at Kenji Mizoguchi's early (1939) piece, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums. Yes, even on the formidable Criterion release the print and sound quality are horrible and yes the plot feels familiar - young man who's an aspiring (Kabuki) actor (ca 1890) who at first has limited talent falls in love w/ a young servant woman (his baby sibling's wet nurse) who inspires him to continue striving toward excellence in acting; they fall in love, but the young man's (step)father, who's also the leader of the Kabuki troupe, forbids him to see the woman; they run off together to the provinces, live as man and wife as young man (Kiku) perfects his craft leading to a triumphal return to Tokyo and renown, but leaving the ever-faithful wife (Otoku) in the dust - but the film is significant for its sympathetic depiction of the sexist and class prejudice and for its depiction of the struggle Kiku undergoes as he's torn between family loyalty, career, and love. The style of the film is particularly notable and ahead of its time for its use of extremely long takes and careful attention to the topical details of life on the road, in the theater, and in Tokyo from the POV of a theater troupe. Some really imaginative and evocative nighttime scenes and a terrific final sequence showing Kiku at the head of a boat parade celebrating the success of the theater group and Otoku lies dying in a dingy nearby small apartment. The biggest stumbling block for, I assume, most non-Japanese viewers will be the 3 (I think) Kabuki sequences, almost entirely incomprehensible to those not familiar w/ this form of theater; there's much talk about Kiku's, at first, limited talent and, later, of his acting genius, but I'll be damned if I could tell the difference - in fact, only from reading some notes on the film did I learn that Kiku was playing female roles. (Only Ozu, to my knowledge, successfully integrated Kabuki into one of his films, can't recall which one, mainly because we were watching audience interaction rather than the unfolding Kabuki drama on stage.)