Synopsis
In medieval Japan, a woman and his children journey to find the family's patriarch, who was exiled years before.
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Cast
- Kinuyo TanakaTamaki
- Yoshiaki HanayagiZushiô
- Kyōko KagawaAnju
- Eitarō ShindōSanshô dayû
- Akitake KônoTaro
- Masahiko TsugawaYoung Zushiō
- Keiko EnamiYoung Anju
- Masao ShimizuMasauji Taira
- Ken MitsudaPrime Minister Fujiwara
- Kazukimi OkuniNorimura
Recommendations
- 100
The A.V. Club
Told with the stark simplicity of a fairy tale, Sansho The Bailiff demonstrates how compassion can overcome the forces of hatred and oppression, and shows how trying it is to remain decent and humane in an inhospitable world. - 100
Chicago Sun-Times
At some point during the watching, "Sansho the Bailiff" stops being a fable or a narrative and starts being a lament, and by that time it is happening to us as few films do. - 100
Chicago Reader
This is one of the greats, and I’m too much in awe of it to say much more than: See it—as often as you can. - 100
Empire
Moving and atmospheric, this quest tale is among the best of its kind. - 100
TV Guide Magazine
Perhaps Kenji Mizoguchi's greatest achievement, SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a visually mesmerizing picture that pays great and careful attention to the smallest details of nature and environment, highlighted by Mizoguchi's use of the long take and deep-focus shots. - 90
The New York Times
Its impulses, which are profound but not transcendental, follow an esthetic program that is also a moral progression, and that emerges, with superb lucidity, only from the greatest art. - 90
Time Out
The twin perspectives yield a film that is both impassioned and elegiac, dynamic in its sense of the social struggle and the moral options, and yet also achingly remote in its fragile beauty. The result is even more remarkable than it sounds. - 88
ReelViews
It employs the power of tragedy to enrich.
