Of the three big names in mid-20th century Japanese cinema, Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi, it is Mizoguchi with whom British audiences are possibly the least familiar. Although his output was large, I have still managed to catch up with only four of his works. Initially these have appeared less original than the works of the others; however, a recent further viewing of "Sansho Dayu" has set me on a re-appraisal. All the films of Mizoguchi I have seen have been set in medieval feudal Japan when power was in the hands of very few people who believed the peasant majority to be human rubbish fit only for exploitation. "Sansho Dayu" in particular deals with a dawn of enlightenment in a dark age, brought about by the conscience of a father to be followed years later by his son. The world in which it takes place is as troubled as any imaginable. When the father, a man of some position, is banished because of his sympathy for peasants, his wife and children - a brother and sister - set out to join him but are waylaid by bandits. The mother is shipped to an island community to serve as a prostitute while the children, remaining on the mainland, are sold as slaves to the evil Sansho the Bailiff. The title is misleading as this is essentially the children's story. Growing up in captivity the youth temporarily loses his sense of morality when he realises that he can exist more comfortably as his master's henchman. The rest of the film deals with his redemption, the consequence of which is to make the world just a slightly better place. Although the morality of the story is stated in the most simple of terms, the film wields considerable power. Like Kurosawa, Mizoguchi is an outstanding director of action sequences, so that the waylaying of the family and the attempted escapes from Sansho's compound have a real sense of immediacy - he is a master orchestrator of the tracking shot. He also evokes the most poignant performances from his actresses; in "Sansho" the mother and daughter are the characters we remember, particularly the mother, whose final scene of reconciliation with her son is the stuff of great tragedy. I read one piece of professional criticism that placed this film on the very highest level along with Angelopoulos's "Landscape in the Mist". Although I would not go along with this, the final scene of "Sansho" is only a rung or two below.
Review of Sansho the Bailiff
