Red Light District

Openings and closings.

There are very few moments in art where all fuse together into a complete whole. The emotional, the intellectual,the formal.

Such is the case with Mizoguchi's Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai, literally, Red Light District) and more especially, indeed more special, the last sequence and shot.

The look as the young prostitute invites us in, meets our gaze directly, and then withdraws, closing the door behind her.



Read Pedro Costa's lecture about all of this so eloquently in Rouge

I will be editing down the class discussions and posting them quite soon.