The Life of Oharu (Blu-Ray)

A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the astounding Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained the director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.

Special features: 
– New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
– Introductory commentary by scholar Dudley Andrew
– Mizoguchi’s Art and the Demimonde, an illustrated audio essay featuring Andrew
– Kinuyo Tanaka’s New Departure, a 2009 film by Koko Kajiyama documenting the actor’s 1949 goodwill tour of the United States
– New English subtitle translation
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Gilberto Perez