SANSHO THE BAILIFF

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 traders.

From this terrible predicament, Mizoguchi creates one of cinema’s most transporting experiences. His images have a beauty you can almost take shelter in, until you realize how much pain they hold. An entire social order bears down on these lives, yet the film stays close enough to make a single act of kindness feel immense. One of the greatest films ever made, SANSHO THE BAILIFF leaves you wondering how something projected on a screen could carry the weight of an entire human life.

"There’s a reason SANSHO THE BAILIFF is often greeted by critics and audiences with something akin to rapture: It’s a work that divorces the existential riddles of faith from regimented dogma, favoring instead the practical challenges, contradictions, and ambiguities of life as it’s often lived." - Chuck Bowen, Slant

“I am in awe of one of the greatest filmmakers our world has known. Blending the exquisite precision of his indigenous culture with a universal Weltanschauung, this is one of Mizoguchi’s masterpieces; poetry and melancholy are one with him. The viewer who is not deeply moved by the final scene, the rigorous outcome of the preceding political and personal events, has a heart of stone.” - Eithne O’Neill, BFI