Lane points o, Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2017. I don't know why Sansho The Bailiff was given that title as the titular Sansho is just a man who shouts an awful lot and doesn't actually appear in the film very much. Few filmmakers can claim to have had such impact. Yes, lavish praise can sometimes be dangerous, but now that we've got your attention, Sansho will make its own eloquent case. Most valuable are the new interviews with three people who knew Mizoguchi: a critic, an assistant director, and actress Kyoko Kagawa; all emphasize Mizoguchi as a director obsessed with the acting (and a taskmaster in the William Wyler-Stanley Kubrick mode), and suggest that his soaring use of long takes was designed to serve the performances.
Kinuyo Tanaka brings a tremulous eloquence to the role of the mother—she’s the movie’s heart as much as the father is its conscience.
Japanese film historian Donald Richie called Gion “one of the best Japanese films ever made.” Over the next decade, Mizoguchi made such wildly different tours de force as The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), The 47 Ronin (1941–42), and Women of the Night (1948), but not until 1952 did he break through internationally, with The Life of Oharu, a poignant tale of a woman’s downward spiral in an unforgiving society. The last film Mizoguchi made before his death at age fifty-eight was Street of Shame (1956), a shattering exposé set in a bordello that directly led to the outlawing of prostitution in Japan. It’s as if Mizoguchi is saying, with melancholy, that this is how the world works. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. It may seem odd for Mizoguchi to name the movie for its villain—the ruthless taskmaster of a sprawling compound—instead of for the late-blooming Zushio. Under Kenji Mizoguchi’s dazzling direction, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil.
There are no surprises and no memorable characters. The film is about virtue tortured and altered, emerging only partially triumphant. It is worth your money; it comes packaged with a nice cover box, many extras (Interviews, Critical opinions, etc.) As for the final sequence, it achieves a rare power, a mix of emotional tones reminiscent of the end of The Searchers.
Every shot speaks of beauty and contradiction. Get info about new releases, essays and interviews on the Current, Top 10 lists, and sales.
Multiple Formats, Black & White, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyôko Kagawa, Eitarô Shindô, Akitake Kôno, read Anthony Lane's New Yorker piece when NY Film Society featured a few of the 92 movies of this great filmmaker. I am a great fan of Japanese films...usually. Under Kenji Mizoguchi’s dazzling direction, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil. To all myy dearest fellowmates and cinema 'aficionados', do not hesitate in buying this wonderful Criterion Collection edition of one of Japan's film jewels. When the children, Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) and Anju (Kyoko Kagawa), are grown, their bondage to the pitiless slaveowner Sansho will end, but in different ways. He tells her that Anju and his father are dead, then begs her forgiveness for arriving without the wealth or power to help her; in order to follow his father’s precepts, he had to relinquish the office of governor.
Tokuzo Tanaka on SANSHO THE BAILIFF Tokuzo Tanaka was first assistant director on SANSHO THE BAILIFF, and in this 2007 interview, he offers a complex portrait of Kenji Mizoguchi, outlines the methods employed by the filmmaking team, and remembers the director’s surprising feelings about the film.
The Criterion Collection has a beautiful print of Sansho the Bailiff and a few illuminating extras. Sansho the Bailiff, Mizoguchi’s eighty-first film, belongs with a group of four or five outstanding masterpieces on historical themes, including Ugetsu, that he directed late in his career for the Daiei production company. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. There’s never been a more rending and transcendent vision of reunion than the tearful clasping of Zushio to his hobbled, half-mad mother. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The first half hour, which depicts the downfall of Zushio’s father and the dispersal of his family, is a cascade of flashbacks and present-tense action. This month we asked critic Robin Wood—whose books include Hitchcock’s Films and Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan and who recently wrote essays for the Criterion releases The Furies and Le plaisir—to pick his ten favorite films in the collection. Sansho the Bailiff (The Criterion Collection). The commentary by Japanese-literature professor Jeffrey Angles puts its emphasis on cultural background rather than film criticism. In Sansho’s inferno, Zushio becomes a barbarian—ike the worst concentration-camp Kapo, he willingly follows Sansho’s command to brand attempted escapees on the forehead—even if the victim is a 70-year-old man who has labored for half a century and yearns only to die free. When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually wrenched apart by vicious slave traders.
These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers.
Without mercy, man is like a beast, that’s inscribe on the back cover of this most heartbreaking movie. Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff brings to mind the first line of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” The film has a penetrating mournfulness. This item: Sansho The Bailiff (1954) [CRITERION COLLECTION] UK Only [Blu-ray] [2019] by Kinuyo Tanaka Blu-ray $27.49 Only 13 left in stock (more on the way). Once Zushio and Anju arrive at Sansho’s camp, this volatile lyricism gives way to a steady, cumulative power. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Under the dazzling direction of Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu), this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil. Ships from and sold by …
I had heard about "Sansho the Bailiff" for years and I must say that I was not prepared for what I saw when I watched it today.
Terrifying and cathartic, Sansho the Bailiff is a morality play without easy moralism. The whole environment—physical, emotional, and moral—is close to that of Schindler’s List. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Mizoguchi develops his medieval fable about moral freedom and slavery with intuition, cunning, and an overarching sense of tragedy; as it uncoils, this masterwork spirals and expands to encompass all the tricks of history and fate, all the failures of ethics and character that can defeat the best intentions of idealists.
By the midthirties, he had developed his craft by directing dozens of movies in a variety of genres, but he would later say that he didn’t consider his career to have truly begun until 1936, with the release of the companion films Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, about women both professionally and romantically trapped.
That film paved the road to half a decade of major artistic and financial successes for Mizoguchi, including the masterful ghost story Ugetsu (1953) and the gut-wrenching drama Sansho the Bailiff (1954), both flaunting extraordinarily sophisticated compositions and camera movement. We work hard to protect your security and privacy.
Please try again. The setting is an eleventh-century regime that rewards automatic obedience and efficiency, punishes individualism and altruism, and condones private slave camps that grind men and women to death.
On certain days, and in certain moods, it would be easy enough to declare that Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff is the greatest movie ever made.
Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.
Despite the antiquity of Mizoguchi’s epic folk tale, it speaks to a world scarred by fascism—indeed, the movie may register with American audiences more strongly now than when it premiered four decades ago.
When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually separated by vicious slave traders.
Often named as one of Japan’s three most important filmmakers (alongside Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu), Kenji Mizoguchi created a cinema rich in technical mastery and social commentary, specifically regarding the place of women in Japanese society. He is the author of Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, cowinner of the National Award for Arts Writing in 2008, and edited two volumes of James Agee’s prose for the Library of America in 2005. and a very useful supplement: the literary sources that inspired Mizogouchi on doing this fine film (you are going to get a pleasent surprise when you see the nice Booklet inside). Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2008. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. One of Kenji Mizoguchi’s greatest films screens at the New York Film Festival this weekend in a gorgeous new restoration. A must see for anyone that considers themselves a film fan.
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition, Audio commentary featuring Japanese-literature scholar Jeffrey Angles, Interviews with critic Tadao Sato, assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and actress Kyoko Kagawa on the making of the film and its lasting importance, PLUS: An essay by scholar Mark Le Fanu; plus two versions of the story on which the film is based: Ogai Mori’s 1915 “Sansho the Steward” and an earlier oral variation in written form (Blu-ray only). The director of Hereditary writes on the filmmakers who get him excited about making movies. A slave becoming a governor!” But in this fairy tale no one lives happily ever after. Mizoguchi’s packed compositions express the harrowing pull of the narrative line—and the residual humanity that tugs against it. This item: Sansho the Bailiff (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] by Kinuyo Tanaka Blu-ray $27.94 Only 6 left in stock - order soon. --Robert Horton, On the DVD The Criterion Collection has a beautiful print of Sansho the Bailiff and a few illuminating extras.
Say, who else gives you that kind of wonders (wonders for true Cinemagoers)? Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2007. The most beautiful and ominous image is of the family walking through a field of long grass and reeds, the flora floating above their heads like an army’s plumes; the most devastating sequence shows the mother and nurse being thrown into a boat while the children are seized onshore. RANKS NO. Get info about new releases, essays and interviews on the Current, Top 10 lists, and sales.
Unable to add item to List.
Sold by westcoastmedia and ships from Amazon Fulfillment. It’s again wonderful drama, but life in those old times must ... Sansho is such a despicable character that I don’t understand why he gets top billing. More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori. The movie explores the strengths and the tenuousness of family ties in scenes that are freshets of feeling. But the choice reflects the director’s tragic vision. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. A booklet gives two versions of the original story source, plus a thoughtful essay by Mark Le Fanu. It’s again wonderful drama, but life in those old times must have been so hopeless to so many.
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2018. His stories unfold in a tediously monotonous fashion.