Oyuki (Isuzu Yamada) and Okin (Komako Hara) are geishas in a small village being overrun by a civil war.  They flee the carnage, sharing a stagecoach with an aristocratic family, a shopkeeper and his wife.  The bourgeois don’t hesitate to express their prejudice, but the prostitutes show themselves to be of greater moral fiber.  The mother of the family tries to steal their food.  Okin catches her and, being proud, takes it back and refuses the attempted payment for it, but Oyuki later offers it to the others generously.  Later incidents again show the differing attitudes of the two, but in each case they prove that the “lower” classes can be made of finer stuff (both in terms of survival and basic human decency) than the elite… and always end up with the short end of the stick regardless.  Of course, being Mizoguchi, it’s hardly surprising to see a sympathetic portrayal of hookers, and he handles it with his usual sensitivity and a fair bit of nuance.  The film doesn’t flow that smoothly — in one part there’s such a leap that I wondered if footage was missing — but it’s an interesting tale with some nice touches.  The religious angle adds something different.  The film’s Japanese title is Maria no Oyuki, and she’s also directly compared to Jesus.  Not a whole lot is ultimately made of this, and it’s kind of a ham-fisted slant, but it is different.

Rip Specs (DVD Rip)

General           : Maria no Oyuki.mkv
Format            : Matroska at 2 456 Kbps
Length            : 1.30 GiB for 1h 15mn 46s 40ms

Video #0          : AVC at 1 999 Kbps
Aspect            : 720 x 576 (1.333) at 25.000 fps

Audio #0          : AC-3 at 448 Kbps
Infos             : 1 channel, 48.0 KHz
Language          : ja

Text #0           : VobSub
Language          : en

Text #1           : VobSub
Language          : fr
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026682/

Audio: Japanese
Subtitles: English, French

My rip.

Maria no Oyuki AKA Oyuki, the Virgin (Mizoguchi, 1935)