After Yasujiro Ozu's acknowledgement of the fragmentation of the traditional group ethic in 1947's The Record of a Tenement Gentleman, unorthodox Japanese themes would make their way and there was now a change in concepts, some of which even bordered on the anarchic which led to the reconsideration of the woman's place in Japan's society.
Director Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956) another acknowledged master of Japanese cinema, famed for his sweeping long-takes, was long concerned with the plight of women and one of the few who had dared to make honest exposes of the Japanese woman's servile position. A new post-war freedom would catapult the fight for women's liberation. Mizoguchi in The Love of Sumako the Actress (1947) celebrated the heroic figure of Sumako Matsui, a legendary actress who had earlier struck a major blow for the emancipation of women by playing Ibsen heroines.
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| Kinoyo Tanaka channels the tragic Sumako Matsui |
Jacques Rivette a noted film critic who was also a director and proponent of France's nouvelle vague movement, hailed Mizoguchi in the illustrious Cahiers du Cinema magazine as a groundbreaking auteur and implied how Mizoguchi moved mountains in his artistic quest for the equality of woman through film's medium. And one could say that this cat from Japan was clearly one of the true denizens of Suffragette city.