Machiko Kyō

"Quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers," said Jean-Luc Godard of Kenji Mizoguchi. And Ugetsu, a ghost story like no other, is surely the Japanese director’s supreme achievement. Derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, this haunting tale of love and loss--with its exquisite blending of the otherworldly and the real--is one of the most beautiful films ever made.

In 8th century China as the Emperor grieves the death of his wife, the Yang family provides him a consort to consolidate its influence over the court.

In medieval Japan, four people offer conflicting accounts of a rape and murder.

In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; after he discovers she is married, he becomes frenzied in his attempts to win her love.

When her lover visits the mother of his child, a jealous actress plots revenge.

A staggering work of existential science fiction, THE FACE OF ANOTHER dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Okuyama (YOJIMBO’s Tatsuya Nakadai), after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist’s radical experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations. With unforgettable imagery, Teshigahara’s film explores both the limits and freedom in acquiring a new persona, and questions the notion of individuality itself.