A Geisha

A film set in the Gion district of Kyoto. Eiko is sixteen. Her mother is dead and her bankrupt father cannot keep her. She goes to the door of Miyoharu, her mother's former colleague, and says she wants to become a geisha. Miyoharu takes her in. The training begins: music, dance, ways of speaking, kimono. It has a price; the training is financed by debt and the debt will one day be paid. Eiko starts going to her first engagements. Then a businessman wants something from her and she refuses. The refusal breaks the whole order: the teahouses close their doors, the work stops and the debt becomes unpayable. What the film describes is not the visible side of the profession but the economy beneath it: who owes whom, who grants permission and what a refusal costs. Miyoharu's line comes out of that. She wants to protect the girl and has to pay a price herself to do it. Michiyo Kogure plays Miyoharu and Ayako Wakao plays Eiko. Kenji Mizoguchi directed; it belongs to his run of films about the economic structures women are caught inside. An important production for anyone who likes Japanese classics and social drama. For a viewer expecting pace, the film is calm and the scenes are held long.