I won't hide this was a huge surprise for me because it is the first pre-WWII Japanese movie I ever lay eyes on. And it confirmed the fact that there is something as a Japanese school of movie-making with roots in the past. First of all Gion no shimai treats a bundle of themes in a very skilled manner and with a limited amount of time. The main theme is the conflict between two ways of seeing the world which were deep rooted in the Japan of that period, a country subject to many transformations: the fight between loyalty to traditional values and personal interests. This fight is instantiated in the conflict between two sisters, which for what I know about geisha are not actually sisters but the older one helped the younger to become herself a geisha. The older sister is loyal to a man who supported her in her youth, a shopkeeper who is now broke and helps him on account of loyalty not because there was something in it for her. The younger sister is appalled both by the man who resorts to geisha for help and by her sister's behavior, very unsound in the insecure environment of the age when geisha with no patron had a hard time. What is even more interesting than the main theme is that Mizoguchi chooses women, geisha as representative women of Japan, as main characters. He was for this matter ahead of his time, more ahead even of Kurosawa years later, the latter always unable to present a compelling woman other than with over the top acting. <br /><br />The two actresses here are exceptional at conveying the drama of being trapped in a man's world where geisha are toys for men's pleasure. They are unable to change their situation not because of personal fault but because the tension between old and new, between the traditional Jpan and the emerging industrial Jpana is not something they can control. The younger sisters opposition and departure from her sister is in the end pointless because she tries to fight the war of a whole culture trying to adapt in a new world. <br /><br />Many things can be seen in this little gem, from the beginning tracking shot filled with suspense to the outside takes, especially those with the city by night.