In feudal Japan, Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka), the daughter of royal samurai Shinzaemon (Ichiro Sugai), secretly has a passionate romance with Katsunosuke (Toshirô Mifune), a man of meager social standing. When the couple is found out, the law comes down hard on this breach of class: Katsunosuke is put to death and Oharu and her family are banished from the kingdom. Destitute and disgraced, Shinzaemon sells Oharu into prostitution, and she spends years searching for love.

A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the astounding Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained the director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.