the last shot: seeing this movie as a teenager and being immeasurably moved, i tried to lock the final shot of this movie into a clear and defined meaning. i thought "mizoguchi pans his camera because he wants to infer that the pain of zushio and his mother is the pain of the world, or the universe, or something beyond humanity." seeing it again over the years, i had that thought locked in my brain, and every time i got to the final shot again, i suddenly didn't understand it. i felt lost all of a sudden. seeing this again last night, i blocked that thought out of my mind, and its really one of the most incredible things in…

Drawing on a popular traditional tale and a 1915 novella by Mori Ogai, Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff/Sanshô dayû (1954) is a jidai-geki historical film concerning the cruel misfortune befalling the wife and children of a humane exiled provincial governor in ancient feudal Japan. I don’t want to give away too much, but some comments below should inevitably carry spoilers

Few if any films can match the feeling for the beauty of nature, the mix of painterly eye, captivating silvery luminosity (even accompanied by a sense of sinister foreboding). The great cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo does a magnificent job. Mizo trusted his cinematographers and presumably his own sense of shot set-up, and what he wanted, without recourse to the viewfinder. He usually…

All you have is your mercy. Sansho the Bailiff is a humanist film of humble scope. It is Mizoguchi operating beyond modernity. It is less a socio-political drama and more a grand historical tale that transcends a critique of any particular moment in time. Sansho the Bailiff is begging only for kindness. Equality is radical, and treating people with love despite their class is something as controversial now as it was in the last century or indeed in any century.

One of Mizoguchi's most powerful sequences is the kidnapping of children that occurs in the first act of Sansho the Bailiff. It is a fight among the waves, tears lost in wind and struggle. Sansho the Bailiff contains some of…

***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

Kenji Mizoguchi, frequently hailed as the true Japanese film-making master, has adapted one of the greatest and most heartbreaking folk tales ever conceived by Eastern culture for cinema. Not only that, but Sanshô Dayû is the best film he ever directed, as well as one of the most extraordinary achievements in cinema history. Mizoguchi, being a true Buddhist, a strong defender of the fragility of the human soul and a poetic supporter of societal ethics, propagated the story of Sanshô Dayû to worldwide audiences, a tale that achieves its purpose: to become an effective and deeply honest wake up call for the spirit within mankind.

The film is set during…

It's often known that Japan is the home to some of the most humanistic of world cinema. With the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu coming into thought, it is no surprise but often cited as the greatest of the masters of Japanese cinema is Kenji Mizoguchi. Often cited as the first major feminist filmmaker, Mizoguchi's films are often known for how they depict women and their struggles within Japanese society. Though of all the films that I've seen from such a wonderful filmmaker, the one that always stood out to me as the very best of the bunch is none other than the heartbreaking Sansho the Bailiff. This particularly is a rather difficult film to revisit on my…