REVIEWS

**** “The Loyal 47 Ronin, Parts 1 and 2.”

Sony. $59.95 each.

This two-part period drama, made in 1941-2 by the great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi (“Ugestu,” “Oharu”), looks almost supernally strange today. It’s another version of the most popular of all Japanese samurai legends: the tale of 47 ronin who defy the Shogunate, avenge their master and commit mass hara-kiri. More than 100 other movie versions of this legend exist, the best and most famous probably being Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1962 “Chushingura.” Here, Mizoguchi somehow constructs an action epic without showing any action--beyond the violent insult that starts the feud. His constantly moving camera tracks through staggeringly beautiful sets, painstaking decorated, where elaborately costumed actors, moving with trance-like grace and pristine misery, enact an eerie chamber drama (during the height of World War II) on the beauty of honor unto death.

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