Empress Yang Kwei Fei (1955)

At first glance, Mizoguchi's Empress Yang Kwei Fei is Asian cinema’s answer to Lola Montes – the Max Ophuls extravaganza made that same year. An overpoweringly lush colour fantasia (half history, half Cinderella) about a young woman who rises from murky origins to snare the heart of a reigning monarch. A historical fairytale without, of course, a “happy ever after” ending. In both films, the rapid rise of our heroine throws society into chaos and open revolt. Poor Lola ends her days in a circus freak-show; a hapless Yang Kwei Fei pays for her triumph with her life.



Original title: Yôkihi

At first glance, Empress Yang Kwei Fei is Asian cinema’s answer to Lola Montes – the Max Ophuls extravaganza made that same year. An overpoweringly lush colour fantasia (half history, half Cinderella) about a young woman who rises from murky origins to snare the heart of a reigning monarch. A historical fairytale without, of course, a “happy ever after” ending. In both films, the rapid rise of our heroine throws society into chaos and open revolt. Poor Lola ends her days in a circus freak-show; a hapless Yang Kwei Fei pays for her triumph with her life. (…)
More a sacrificial victim than a hard-boiled femme fatale, Kyo as Yang Kwei Fei is in the tradition of other Mizoguchi heroines: the aristocrat fallen into disgrace in The Life of Oharu (1952) or the prostitutes in his last film, Street of Shame (1956). Women of strong principles but stronger emotions. Imprisoned, tragically, in a world where principle and emotion are luxuries that no woman can afford. Born into a poor family, Mizoguchi saw his sister, Suzu, sold as a geisha while she was still a child. Fleeing the family home after his mother’s death, the teenage Mizoguchi took refuge with his sister and her rich protector. Learning, as he did so, that love was a luxury while shame was the price of survival.
Only once in his career, in Empress Yang Kwei Fei, did Mizoguchi transplant this world-view to a non-Japanese setting. The notion of “exoticism” – a traditional barrier between most Western audiences and most Asian films – is doubly problematic in Empress Yang Kwei Fei. Presumably, the world of Ancient China seemed as “exotic” to Mizoguchi as it does to us. Is it this alien and unfamiliar dimension that makes the film stand apart, stylistically, from Mizoguchi’s other work? Western critics, Penelope Houston among them, rhapsodised about his “ability to assume a continuity between past and present not experienced with our own more self-conscious excursions into history”. True enough, until you watch Empress Yang Kwei Fei. Here – suddenly and without prior warning – “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. (…)
For all its stylistic contrasts to the rest of Mizoguchi’s work, Empress Yang Kwei Fei may offer the purest, most powerful distillation of his world – described, most eloquently, by V. F. Perkins as “a place of brief pleasures and enduring sadness”. It is also, as befits its Orphic connections, a film that throbs with eroticism and death. As Yang Kwei Fei rises out of her bath, Mizoguchi cuts from a near-glimpse of her nude body to a (far more sensuous) shot of ripples on water. As she walks to her execution at the hands of the rebels, Mizoguchi cuts once again – from the hanging itself to a close-up of her jewels dropping, one by one, around her feet. Such visual pleasures, brief but enduring, have sadness at their very core.

A primera vista, La emperatriz Yang Kwei Fei es la respuesta asiática a Lola Montes, la extravaganza que Max Ophüls rodara ese mismo año. Un fantasía poderosamente coloreada (mitad relato histórico, mitad "Cenicienta") sobre una joven que asciende de sus humildes orígenes al conquistar el corazón de un monarca. Un cuento de hadas histórico que, por supuesto, carece del proverbial "y vivieron felices". En ambos films, el rápido ascenso de nuestra heroína empuja a la sociedad al caos y a la rebelión abierta. La pobre Lola termina sus días como parte del desfile de fenómenos de circo; la desdichada Yang Kwei Fei pagará su triunfo con su vida. (…)
Más víctima sacrificial que encallecida mujer fatal, Machiko Kyo (Rashomon) en el papel de Yang Kwei Fei está en la tradición de otras heroínas mizoguchianas: la aristócrata caída en desgracia de Oharu, o las prostitutas de su último film, La calle de la vergüenza (1956). Mujeres de fuertes principios, pero emociones aún más fuertes. Heroínas aprisionadas trágicamente en un mundo en el que principios y emociones son lujos que ninguna mujer puede permitirse. (…)
Más allá de todos sus contrastes estilísticos con el resto de la obra de Mizoguchi, La Emperatriz… ofrece quizás el más puro, el más poderoso destilado de su mundo, un mundo descripto muy elocuentemente por V.F. Perkins como "un lugar de breves placeres y tristeza perdurable". También es, de manera acorde con sus conexiones órficas, un film que ebulle de erotismo y muerte. Cuando Yang Kwei Fei sale de su baño, Mizoguchi corta un plano cercano de su cuerpo desnudo para pasar a otro (aún más sensual) de las ondas en la superficie del agua. Cuando avanza hacia su ejecución a manos de los rebeldes, Mizoguchi corta una vez más del plano del ahorcamiento a un plano detalle de sus joyas cayendo, una por una, junto a sus pies. Son placeres visuales, breves y a la vez perdurables, que tienen a la tristeza en su mismo centro.

David Melville, Senses of Cinema

No English subs, sorry.

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