Sansho the Bailiff (The Criterion Collection)
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Actor: Akitake Kôno, Eitarô Shindô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyôko Kagawa, Yoshiaki HanayagiBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
DVD Reviews of Sansho the Bailiff (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the nostra about Japanese film director Kenji Mizoguchi is that
he is 'the most Japanese of all filmmakers.' Another is that, compared
to his two titanic contemporaries, Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa,
Mizoguchi was the hardest to pin down in a style or genre. Having just
watched his 1954 film Sansho The Bailiff (Sanshô Dayû) I can agree with
both of the above sentiments, for Mizoguchi excels at the jidai-geki
(historical drama) genre. Furthermore, I can do so after having seen
just one other Mizoguchi film, Ugetsu Monogatari. Whereas Ugetsu is
spiritual and poetic, Sansho is worldly and realistic. This despite the
fact that the source materials for the film (legends and short fiction)
are rife with supernatural overtones.
The screenplay was written by Fuji Yahiro, and adapted from the legend
and a 1915 short story, Sansho The Steward, by Ogai Mori. Reputedly,
Mizoguchi wanted the film to more closely follow the titular character,
rather than the brother and sister who dominate the film. And while
that would have been a more daring choice (the equivalent of focusing
on the Big Bad Wolf rather than Little Red Riding Hood) the Daiei
Studio's insistence on exploring the brother and sister tale of Zushio
(Masahiko Kato) and Anju (Keiko Enami) allowed Mizoguchi to add layers
of psychological depth and realism to what had always been little more
than a Japanese fairy tale. That said, the screenplay is outstanding,
even if it is a bit depressing. It reminded me, in its unending
emotional declension, of Theo Angelopolous's Trilogy: The Weeping
Meadow....The film truly evokes human growth potential at a root level.
Zushio feels, through much of the film, that it is Anju who is the
force he must rely on, yet, it is only after her death that he is
emboldened enough to do all the courageous things he does. And the
stellar cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa only adds to the film. Rarely
does a film so totally rely on a single element as this does. In
Sansho, it is the diagonal placement of spears, branches, and other
objects to bisect the screen, as well as the use of many shades of gray
to suggest color where there is none. In a sense, this film reminds me
of a black and white version of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Red
Desert, which used color in an emotive and narrative way the way
Miyagawa uses gray shadings in this film.
There is little wonder that this film won its year's Silver Lion at the
Venice Film Festival- the third straight Mizoguchi film to do so,
following Life Of Oharu and Ugetsu Monogatari. The DVD, by The
Criterion Collection, is shown in a 1.33:1 aspect ration, and the print
is nearly flawless, save for a few scratches at the opening and closing
credits. The disk also contains interviews with film critic Tadao Sato,
Mizoguchi's first assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and the actress who
played the grown Anju, Kyoko Kagawa. There is a film commentary track
by Japanese literature professor Jeffrey Angles, which is solid,
focusing more on the historical roots of the mythos and how Mizoguchi
parallaxed his film against that past. Angles is at his best in this
aspect, but falters and gets a bit fey and didactic when trying to
discuss the more cinematic aspects of the film. He also, at his worst,
is manifestly reading from a prepared text rather than reacting to the
images on screen. The package is rounded out by a booklet with an
essay, The Lessons Of Sansho, by film scholar Mark Le Fanu, and two
print versions of the legend- Ogai Mori's 1915 short story, and an
earlier mythic tale.
Mizoguchi shows himself, in just the two films I've seen thus far, to
be far more daring in both subject matter and style than either of his
two great rivals, Ozu and Kurosawa. This alone does not make nor imply
he is the greater filmmaker, but it does stake out a territory that is
his alone. There is, indeed, more than just one way to achieve
greatness, and Mizoguchi seems to have tried many, yet his success
seems hardly of the 'throw a thousand darts and get one bullseye' sort.
Sansho The Bailiff is a great film, due to its realism, to the point of
going to the opposite end of a typical Hollywood ending, and also
because almost every second of the film serves a purpose that is later
elaborated upon. It is a flower whose opening bud seems eternal, and
whose interior can only be sniffed. Thus, I'd have to rate it a bit
above Ugetsu Monogatari, as great as that film was. This is because
watching a film Sansho The Bailiff makes one not only a happier viewer,
but a better person. No, I do not mean that in the trite sense so many
PC commentaries imply; that its humanist message of kindness over
cruelty will 'ennoble you,' but in the sense that all great art makes
its audience better, for it does not merely tell you something the art
and/or artist feels the audience should know, but because it actively
stimulates a greater intellect by forcing the viewer to cogitate upon
it, not only as it unfolds but long afterwards. It is, in this way,
truly transcendental, beyond the hokey pseudo-Orientalist way the term
is usually defined. Sansho The Bailiff does this, and in spades, for it
moves at multiple levels of consciousness- the emotive, the
intellectual, and that indefinable other that exists betwixt, to move
its percipient. It is a political film, yet one made with great
subtlety, that shows how dilemmas great and small are resolved and not,
something that both old and modern shrill Hollywood PC schlock (think
Crash) are simply unable or unwilling to do. Japanese or not, Mizoguchi
left a masterful work of art for all the rest of us to grow on.
Description of Sansho the Bailiff (The Criterion Collection)
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 DRIVERS. 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.Bestsellers in DVD
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