1975 Volume 1 Pages 28-37
Kenji Mizoguchi was very fond of using the crane in his shooting i.e. he was extremely fond of shooting by downward angle. On the other hand, he often filmed very effectively by making a ditch and a dug-out in his set, and tried to shoot the scenes by upward angle from the position lower then the surface of the ground.
In his works of the 1920s when the crane had not as yet been used, Mizoguchi liked very much to use downward and upward angle, and there was recognized the rule in his shooting.
The majority of Mizoguchi’s films portray the complications of love between a man and a woman. And in the scene in which a man has an awful feeling toward a woman, upward angle is used, in the mean time when a man gets a superiority over a woman, downward angle is effectivery used. This was because Mizoguchi caught the complications between a man and a woman as the subject of governing and being governed.