Watch Sisters of the Gion For Free

Sorry, this movie sucks

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Master Mizogushi placed on screen two different kind of look of the gueishas's world,although they are sisters,the older is more wise and understanding about his position,the younger is more cold having in the men just a way to get an easy money,handling according his will,actually she hates them,along the movie the viewers will see two side of the street in two human being whose the life hurt too hard,nice piece of art of study of human nature!!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25

Sisters of the Gion is a story about two geisha sisters making a living in the Gion district of Tokyo. It's inspired by Aleksandr Kuprin's novel The Pit (Yama) and is directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, who became famous for the films of this kind, windows into the lives of people of lower social classes, specifically women, often prostitutes. This is among his more well-known films dealing with the topic. It was remade in 1956 by Hiromasa Nomura.This movie sort of reminds me of Ozu's films, in the sense that the camera is often positioned low, there's no action and the film appears to be a character study or a slice-of-life movie. Later it even becomes a mild revenge tale, which is admittedly a bit more passionate than Ozu's stories. The two sisters' conflicting opinions reflect the Japanese identity crisis between tradition and Western influences. That's why Umekichi is a submissive, traditionally raised geisha while Omocha is considerably more modern, wears Western clothing in her free time, and is more practical. Although she's shown to be a manipulative intrigant, she isn't seen in a negative light, but instead Mizoguchi places the blame on society itself.The image quality is foggy as is to be expected from a film this old, but despite that you can easily sense Mizoguchi's talent for framing shots and painting an interesting picture of the Gion district. The soundtrack, which is played only during the credits, is unusually lively and playful for a serious film like this.I honestly don't think this is one of Mizoguchi's better films. In fact, even though the runtime is just about over an hour, I found it to be a bit of a bore. However, you can't take away that it was a bold film in its day and age, and that the theme of conflict between Japanese traditions and Western influences seemed to be ahead of their time. This movie is from 1936, while movies by Ozu and Kurosawa, who often dealt with the same topic, are from the '50s and '60s.

This film is about geishas on Kyoto, Japan, in how they live and ply their trade. Since it was made by Mr. Mizoguchi, who seemed to have a fascination with prostitutes, it is right up his alley. While good, the story did not completely grab me like some of his others, especially "Street Of Shame" and "Ugetsu". The film's success is in the message it portrays as to these ladies, that they are somewhat trapped in their existence with no way out, broke and looking for a patron to take them out of that life. However, I did not find the characters to be as developed as I would have liked, so the film loses steam, even though it is a fairly short film, much less than ninety minutes. Still worth watching, it just doesn't have the depth of some of his other films.

A bust. As disinterested as I often am in Mizoguchi's films, Sisters of the Gion effectively knocked me unconscious. Some of the acting seemed decent, as did some of the direction. The opening shots were great. But then it slows down to a crawl that I just couldn't withstand. This is the first of his films that I was just not able to take. The couple of Mizoguchi films that I really like are Life of Oharu and Sansho the Bailiff (and Ugetsu's pretty good, as well), so if you haven't seen those ones, do so. 5/10.