Utamaro and His Five Women (1945)
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
94 minutes
In making a film from Kanji Kunieda’s fictionalized account of the life of Kitagawa Utamaro, a ukiyo-e woodblock portraitist and painter of the 18th century, Mizoguchi—an avid Sunday painter—by all accounts was taking on a subject dear to himself.…