Ugetsu (Criterion Collection) DVD

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary by filmmaker, critic, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
• Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (1975), a two-and-a-half-hour documentary by Kaneto Shindo
• Two Worlds Intertwined, an appreciation of Ugetsu by director Masahiro Shinoda (Double Suicide, Samurai Spy)
• Process and Production, a new video interview with Tokuzo Tanaka, first assistant director on Ugetsu, about the making of the film
• Video interview with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa
• Theatrical trailers
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• Booklet featuring the original short stories on which the film is based—Akinari Ueda’s “The House in the Thicket” and “Lust of the Serpent” and Guy de Maupassant’s “How He Got the Legion of Honor”—and a new essay by critic Phillip Lopate

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Kinuyo Tanaka, Sakae Ozawa, Mitsuko Mito

The great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi draws on sources from both East and West for this, his crowning achievement. Focusing on an ambitious potter haunted by a beautiful ghost and a farmer who dreams of becoming a samurai, Ugetsu offers a commentary on the delusions of lust and power and the folly of war. Renowned cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa helps Mizoguchi seamlessly interweave the supernatural with reality, creating one of the most beautiful films of all time.