New Tale of Genji / Shin Genji monogatari (1961)

In movies as in life, you have to be careful what you wish for. When I saw the 1951 Genji monogatari, I thought "If only this were in color, and the leading man were not forty plus!" Shin Genji monogatari gives us a Genji of the right age, Raizo Ichikawa, and color plus widescreen. Unfortunately, …

Tale of Genji / Genji monogatari (1951)

Murasaki's Genji Monogatari is of course unfilmable, if for nothing else due to its length, and so any attempt is always going to be a sampling at best. This particular sampling comes with the finest pedigree, with the basic adaptation made by Tanizaki, the screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, and direction by Yoshimura. The result is …