Sansho the Bailiff [VHS]

Sansho the Bailiff [VHS]
by Kenji Mizoguchi

Sansho the Bailiff [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Akitake K?no, Eitar? Shind?, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ky?ko Kagawa, Yoshiaki Hanayagi
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Cinematographer: Kazuo Miyagawa
Editor: Mitsuz? Miyata
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Writer: Fuji Yahiro
Writer: Ogai Mori
Writer: Yoshikata Yoda
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 124 minutes
Release Date: 1996-09-03
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Homevision
Studio: Homevision

VHS Movie Reviews of Sansho the Bailiff [VHS]

Movie Review: When everybody is brought to the point of tears, but nobody cries
Summary: 5 Stars

A member of the film crew said something like this: while we were filming it, on the set, everybody cried, but when we saw it on the screen nobody cried.

The film is almost unbearably sad. One of the saddest films ever made. But photographically one of the most beautiful. At the moments of greatest anguish the camera, the observer, withdraws and sees the action in a larger setting of exquisite natural beauty. Mizoguchi involves us in the action, brings us to unbearable empathy, then moves us away, to distance, estrangement, detachment, contemplation ... Mizoguchi the sensual, passionate aesthete, lover of actresses, the theatre and social causes, and also the Buddhist seeing the suffering caused by illusion, attachment and passion ...

Sometimes we enter the world of cinema as if entering Plato's cave to be shown by the illusions on the wall how to live, how to be, become, better, in that beautiful and painful world outside ... Mizoguchi's film begins by a small stream and ends on a wide beach previously struck by a tidal wave, and in-between this journey of water and fire is a practice, art, lesson on balancing, harmonizing empathy and detachment, passion and transcendence ... toward perhaps the realization of what in Japanese aesthetics and religious experience is sometimes called yugen ... a word to google.

Movie Review: in the face of evil, patience and duty
Summary: 5 Stars

Just to echo what everyone else is saying here, if you have an interest in feudal Japan, the role of women under such systems or an interest in Japanese filmmaking, this version of Sansho is for you. Be sure to get this version from the Criterion Collection as it has a VERY insightful and informative commentary about the nature of the film by Jeffrey Angles, along with an interview of critic Tadan Sato, assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and legendary actress Kyoko Kagawa. The subtitles (English only) are not lacking int eh least. Enjoy!

Movie Review: Good though flawed
Summary: 4 Stars

As some have pointed out, this is a slow film. I'm a fan of foreign films, which are generally slower paced than American cinema, but slow pacing should serve a purpose - there is a limit beyond which the slow pacing takes away more than it adds. Also, the moral of the film is inherently unsatisfying - not because it doesn't offer some hackneyed happy ending, but because it attempts an inadequate compensatory ending - 'life was horrible and sad, but at least we have this'. It resolves as neither tragedy nor triumph, and though a viewer might feel it's realistic, it neither makes us feel good nor teaches us a deeper meaning. In the end, we have sympathy for characters, but would never wish to identify with them.
The B&W photgraphy is excellent, camera movement is superb, and the directing is precise. Also, the DVD extras are plentiful and of superb quality. In the end, it is a package easily deserving of four stars.

Movie Review: Beautiful, powerful, heartbreaking
Summary: 5 Stars

Mizoguchi's SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a film so beautiful to look at that it almost lulls you into a state of blissful wonder, but as it proceeds to it's wrenching conclusion, you are left in a state as near to utter despair and desolation as you will ever arrive at from watching a movie. That's how powerful this film is. This is as close to a perfect film experience as you will ever get. A blend of formal beauty, precision, and emotional acting, wrapped in a plea for human dignity and compassion that cries from the very depths of the soul. I can't praise it high enough and I don't think you can be human and not be moved by this film.

Movie Review: the best blk/wh movie
Summary: 4 Stars

if you want to see the best black and white photography you must see this movie ,for most western film watchers the pace would be too slow and the drama too subtle considering the date of the production you have to be amazed by the director artistic ability with such new medium

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Summary of Sansho the Bailiff [VHS]

Set in the 11th century, this critically acclaimed film tells a compelling story of injustice and suffering. When a kindly governor is exiled, his wife is forced into prostitution, and his son and daughter are sold into slavery to the tyrannical bailiff Sansho. With authentic sets and rich imagery, Mizoguchi chillingly re-creates the barbaric feudal society.

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. No disrespect intended to Citizen Kane or The Rules of the Game or North by Northwest, for on certain other days those movies might be Numero Uno. But Mizoguchi's magnificent 1954 film is in the running. The story is a kind of emotional epic, although it's quite simple in its outline: a family in medieval Japan is brutally broken up, the mother (Kinuyo Tanaka) carried off into prostitution and two children sold into slavery. 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.

The arc of this story is beautiful in itself, but Mizoguchi's telling of the tale is extraordinary. His moving camera seems weightless, and he effortlessly reminds us of how we've returned to certain key images that chart the progress of the characters: the breaking of a tree branch, the way water can swallow up a life, a song that ties together different lives and different places. As for the final sequence, it achieves a rare power, a mix of emotional tones reminiscent of the end of The Searchers. Mizoguchi made Sansho (Sansho Dayu in its original title) after having made The Life of Oharu and Ugetsu in the previous two years--surely one of the great creative bursts for any filmmaker. Yes, lavish praise can sometimes be dangerous, but now that we've got your attention, Sansho will make its own eloquent case. --Robert Horton

On the DVD
The Criterion Collection has a beautiful print of Sansho the Bailiff and a few illuminating extras. 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. A booklet gives two versions of the original story source, plus a thoughtful essay by Mark Le Fanu. The commentary by Japanese-literature professor Jeffrey Angles puts its emphasis on cultural background rather than film criticism. --Robert Horton

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