Ian Cameron, editor of the British film magazine, Movie, wrote in 1962:[1] “The parallel between the historical action and the personal story gives Shin Heike Monogatari its particular beauty. Mizoguchi is arguably the greatest of directors. This is arguably his best film, and the best of all films.”
Kevin B Lee in a 2009 review for Slant Magazine found it a rather tentative attempt at color filmmaking and a self-conscious "prestige" picture, with Mizoguchi's usual themes present but at odds with the desire for spectacle and action of a samurai movie.[2] After the American release of the film in 1964, Eugene Archer of The New York Times wrote that the plot was "subordinate to the decor".[3]
Various critics have suggested that the film's setting at the end of the Heian period, a politically unstable time, and its concern with the transition of power reflect the situation of Post-occupation Japan, when the film was made in the 1950s.[4]
^Yoshikawa's historical novel, The Heike Story: A Modern Translation of the Classic Tale of Love and War (Shin Heike Monogatari), was published as a serial by Asahi Shimbun from 1950 to 1957.
