Tess of the Shogunate.
Mizoguchi compared his long takes, with the camera moving and pausing and moving again—poised to move even when pausing—to the traditional picture scrolls of Japanese art. If the easel paintings of the West are windows opening onto another world, picture scrolls are more like texts to be read.
— Gilberto Perez (Criterion)
The predilection of French critics for linking Mizoguchi with Murnau seems largely dictated by [a] sense of fatality, expressed equally by the striking high-angle shots, a fairly constant use of the diagonal line, and the movement between the “sympathy” and autonomy of several extended camera movements in relation to Oharu.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum (Monthly Film Bullitin, 1975)
Synopsis: In Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.