Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954): Japan

Reviewed by Byron Potau.  Viewed on DVD.

Director Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff is arguably his second greatest film, and among the cruelest films you are ever likely to see.  It is not so much the suffering of its characters, but the callous inhumanity of their persecutors that make this a difficult film to watch. But make no mistake, this film is a masterpiece.

The film begins as Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), her servant, and her young children, Kushio and Anju, are headed to meet up with her husband, a former Governor, who they have not seen in three years because he opposed his superior to protect the peasants from further suffering.  A few flashback scenes are included in which the father tells young Kushio to always be merciful and gives him a small statue of the god of mercy, which Kushio wears around his neck for the remainder of the film.

On their journey they are given lodging by an elderly priestess who arranges for them to be sold into slavery.  The servant drowns trying to escape and the children are separated from their mother and sold to Sansho the bailiff.  Their mother is sold in another town as a courtesan.  The children are put to work right away and shown no mercy, nor is anyone at Sansho’s house shown mercy.  When the slaves try to escape and are caught, they are branded on the forehead with a hot iron.  When they are too sick or too old to work anymore they are left on the mountain to die and for the birds to eat.  Kushio and Anju suffer ten years at Sansho’s house before they finally try to make their escape and so they can reunite with their mother and father.

Kyoko Kagawa gives a strong performance as the older Anju and Kinuyo Tanaka is solid as the mother, Tamaki, but Yoshiaki Hanayagi is only just passable as the older Kushio.  However, this film does not draw its power from the performances.  Mizoguchi gives us scene after scene of inhumanity, suffering, cruelty, and tragedy while continuing to preach the father’s message of mercy.  The film is one of cinema’s most powerful testaments to man’s inhumanity to man and the heart-wrenching scenes are admittedly tough to take.  Mizoguchi’s direction keeps things simple as camera setups are usually stationary and there is little camera movement.  He relies more on composition, recognizing that the scenes are powerful enough in themselves and doesn’t do anything that would detract from that power.  What we are left with is a film that is cruel, but beautiful in its simplicity and sorrow, with the father’s message of mercifulness lingering underneath the sadness.

DVD Extras:  Commentary by Japanese literature professor Jeffrey Angles; video interviews with critic Tadao Sato, Assistant Director Tokuzo Tanaka, and actress Kyoko Kagawa; and a booklet containing an essay by scholar Mark Le Fanu, and two versions of the story on which the film is based (Ogai Mori’s 1915 Sansho Dayu, and a written form of an earlier oral variation).