Mega Mizoguchi

Cinema lovers in New York will have their calendars full for the coming month. Museum of the Moving Image is hosting the most comprehensive United States retrospective of Kenji Mizoguchi films in decades. Usually named right below Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu as one of the most important Japanese filmmakers of all time, Mizoguchi stands alone for the grand narrative sweep and profound empathy he brought to his stories of intimate tragedy. The museum is showing thirty films, all of the director’s extant works, many of them in rare archival prints imported from Japan. Naturally, the Museum kicks things off, on Friday, May 2, with Ugetsu, an aching supernatural love story that is probably his best-known film. The series, a copresentation of the museum and the Japan Foundation, will then travel to other theaters in North America, starting with Cambridge’s Harvard Film Archive.

Watch the museum’s new trailer for the series for glimpses of some of the other amazing films in the lineup.