Mizoguchi’s limpid heartbreaker is also a fierce denunciation of the subjugation of women, the power of wealth, and Japan’s unjust though splendid traditions.

The New Yorker

The Holy Grail of Japanese Cinema. This portrait of a 17th-century woman’s repeated humiliation by her patriarchal society is devastating from beginning to end, but its genius is not so much Mizoguchi’s caustic criticism of a money-obsessed society’s refusal to acknowledge its accountability for her degradation, but that Mizoguchi uses Oharu’s life to peel back the layers of the physical self and reveal the soul that lies bruised beneath.

Slant Magazine