#75 (tie): Sansho the Bailiff: The Reveal discusses all 100 of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time

Kenji Mizoguchi's heartbreaking masterpiece about a family torn apart in feudal Japan appeals to our humanity in the face of tyranny and evil.

On December 1st, 2022, Sight & Sound magazine published “The Greatest Films of All Time,” a poll that’s been updated every 10 years since Bicycle Thieves topped the list in 1952. It is the closest thing movies have to a canon, with each edition reflecting the evolving taste of critics and changes in the culture at large. It’s also a nice checklist of essential cinema. Over the course of many weeks, months, and (likely) years, we’re running through the ranked list in reverse order and digging into the films as deep as we can. We hope you will take this journey with us.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
Ranking: #75 (tie)
Previous rankings: #76 (1992), #58 (2002), #59 (2012)

Premise: In feudal Japan, a regional governor is reassigned to the far provinces as punishment for his merciful treatment of the peasants, but not before giving his son Zushiō (played as an adult in later scenes by Yoshiaki Hanayagi) a piece of moral instruction that will stick with him the rest of his life, even if he doesn’t always follow it: “Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others." When the governor’s wife, Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), attempts to rejoin her husband with Zushiō and his sister Anju (Kyōko Kagawa) in tow, mother and children are separated. Tamaki is pressed into sexual servitude while Zushiō and Anju become slave laborers for Sanshō (Eitarō Shindō), the cruel overseer of a government-protected estate. After growing to adulthood, Zushiō at first becomes part of Sanshō’s system. But, inspired by Anju’s virtue and not wanting to follow an order to leave Namiji (Kimiki Tachibana) a sick, older woman to die in the woods, he follows Anju’s encouragement to escape, a move that changes the direction of his life and the lives of those around him.

Keith: Co-written by Fuji Yahiro and frequent Mizoguchi collaborator Yoshikata Yoda, Sansho the Bailiff adapts a 1915 short story by Mori Ōgai that draws on a folk tale of indeterminate origin. That partly explains why it plays like such a timeless work. Built around Zushiō’s father’s admonition to be merciful, it’s tempting to call the film a morality tale, and in a sense it is. But it’s not a simple one. Mizoguchi’s film is as much about the cost of living a virtuous life as its rewards. It takes place in a world where it’s clear what’s right and what’s wrong and is unambiguous in its insistence that the path of mercy should be followed. But, on Earth at least, the scales often don’t balance, as evidenced by everything from the fate of Zushiō’s father and sister to the unforgettable final scene, an emotional reunion that’s not what Zushiō spent years imagining.

I love this movie, but I know it has a particularly special place in your heart, so let me just set the table with a couple of questions to get us going. First is the title, which it shares with the short story it adapts. Sansho is, of course, a looming figure in this film, but he seems as much an embodiment of a world run by oppression and cruelty than a fully fleshed-out character. Why does the film bear his name? My thoughts: it’s an apt title for just that reason, made even more apt by the fact Zushiō is able to bring down Sansho while the injustice and abuse he committed has not been banished from the world. 

The second is about the opening text, which describes the medieval setting as a period “when Japan had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages and mankind had yet to awaken as human beings.” Do you read that as ironic? The movie itself is incredibly sincere, but it also never suggests it’s portraying problems long in humanity’s past. World War II, and its many forms of dehumanization (including many committed by Japan), was a fresh memory. What does that introduction mean to you?

Scott: I think you answered the first question as thoroughly and eloquently as I might. Calling the film Sansho the Bailiff when the title character has so little screen time is significant for the reasons you mention, though I’d add that he (and what he represents) is always present, even when he’s not on screen. He also stays with us after we’ve seen the movie, and the viciousness, arrogance, and lack of humanity displayed by men like him has been with us since time immemorial. It is something we have to recognize and fight both as an external phenomenon and as a potential outcome for ourselves, should we lose touch with our values and our basic sense of decency. Sansho isn’t wholly responsible for the destruction brought on Zushiō. Anju, and Tamaki’s lives, but we can see, in literal and metaphorical terms, the “branding” that his evil impresses on the people in his sphere. And perhaps we can get some relief from the reality that he’s ultimately revealed to be a small, weak, petulant man who can be defeated if good people have the courage and discipline to turn their righteous beliefs into action. 

All of which ties into your second question about the opening text. I don’t think there’s any point in making a movie like Sansho the Bailiff, which is more folk tale than history, if you do not intend the “Dark Ages” of the past to speak implicitly to the present. The film was made in 1954 and surely there was some intent on Mizoguchi’s part to ruminate over the lessons of World War II without addressing it directly, particularly the connection between Sansho’s slave compound and the brutality of concentration camps. In fact, the scene where Zushiō liberates the slaves strikes me as a certain influence on the end of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, when Liam Neeson speaks before newly liberated survivors who respond in a quiet chorus of emotion. The same exhaustion, disbelief, and gratitude sweeps over the scene, and there’s almost a feeling like the slaves cannot yet turn their minds to what happens next. 

Anyway, yes, Sansho the Bailiff is one of my favorite movies ever, and I’m a bit miffed with myself, retroactively, for leaving it off my ballot. It just has a profound impact on me emotionally, because the baseline values it professes—told from a soon-to-be-exiled father to his children before they’re separated forever—are so simple and true yet meet resistance from the scoundrels that will always haunt us like Sansho himself. Our heroes have their resolve tested and withstand incredible sacrifice and loss in order to resist oppression. Perhaps there was some time in history when humanity was particularly lost, the “Dark Ages” of the titles, but you can look at the news every day and be shocked at the awful things people are capable of doing. And perhaps you have some people in your own life, family members or neighbors who you once considered fondly, heading down a path you’d have never imagined them capable of treading. 

There’s so much to talk about here, but the one theme you have to address with any Mizoguchi film is his interest in the plight of women. He dedicated much of his career to films about women, right up to his final masterwork, 1956’s Street of Shame, about five prostitutes who work in a brothel in Tokyo’s red-light district. In Sansho the Bailiff, Zushiō is the character we follow most closely, but he’s also the weakest of the four people in his family—or, at the very least, the one most vulnerable to pressure he faces under Sansho’s thumb. He takes his father’s words to heart, certainly, and listens, too, to Sansho’s humane son Taro, who advises him and his sister to endure the situation until they get older and stronger and can escape. But over time, the road to survival for Zushiō is to take the easier route of submitting to his oppressors’ cruelty. That’s not true of Anju, his sister, whose kindness persists into young adulthood. She’s the stronger of the two. 

Anju also makes the ultimate sacrifice to save him, which in practical terms means killing herself in order to avoid having information about his escape tortured out of her, but in thematic terms poses women as the bulwark against the tyranny of men. It’s Anju’s sacrifice that opens up the world of possibility for Zushiō—his escape, obviously, followed by the arduous journey he takes to put himself in a political position to end slavery in the province and reunite with the one family member who’s still alive. I’m moved by so many moments in this film, but the shot of Anju walking into the lakes and the ripples spread out from the point where she’s submerged is so haunting. She’s left the earth peacefully and on her own terms, perhaps serene in her conviction that her death would lead to something greater. In a way, perhaps restoring her brother’s humanity is enough. 

Plenty more to get into here, but I’m curious if you have any thoughts about the relationship between politics and religion here. And what about Mizoguchi’s style? We’ve already talked about it a little with Ugetsu last year, because it’s #90 on the S&S list, but is there anything about his approach to this material that stands out for you. Mizoguchi made more than 75 films across the silent and sound era, but he was on quite a roll before he died, with this, The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, Princess Yang Kwei Fei, and Street of Shame all coming within the last four years of his life. Where in this film do you see particularly evidence of his greatness?

Keith: Volume alone makes Mizoguchi’s filmography intimidating, doesn’t it? I feel like I’ve seen a lot of his movies and yet, when I add them up, I’ve only seen a fraction of his total output. (And this is a good reminder that I need to watch Princess Yang Kwei Fei at some point.) But Mizoguchi’s films are anything but intimidating. They’re thematically rich but rarely narratively complex and he’s a master stylist. Mizoguchi’s long takes can create the illusion that we’re simply observing life as it happens, then a camera movement or a composition will offer a reminder that, right, we’re in the hands of a master. 

Take, for instance, the sequence in which Anju and Zushiō take Namiji out of the compound, ostensibly to abandon her and let her die. The camera pans from left to right as they make their way along the path, then becomes a tracking shot, following them from left to right, then pans again when they reach the incline that will lead them through the gate and into the woods. It’s an unbroken take but never feels ostentatious. Every part of it contributes to the mood of the scene. And that’s just a moment that caught my eye scanning through the film, and not a particularly “big” moment at that.

What Mizoguchi does here makes an interesting contrast with Ugetsu, doesn’t it? There are no dreamy fantasy scenes. In fact, they’d feel inappropriate in a film that’s so grounded in the ugly realities of history. That Mizoguchi shoots so much on location, making amazing use of the misty hills and seas in particular, contributes to that grounded quality. And yet you’re right to suggest this is a religious film. Bringing my own Western background to it, I’m tempted to say Zushiō undergoes a conversion experience. He’s fallen into the wickedness and exploitation of Sansho’s estate, then sees the errors of his ways and can partake no more. But what really happens is probably more akin to a reawakening, one made possible by Anju and her willingness to sacrifice herself for their father’s principles (which she was too young to learn firsthand). 

Zushiō’s miniature of Kwannon, a Buddhist deity of mercy, is treated as a precious treasure, but this seems as much for what it symbolizes as any kind of intrinsic value. He becomes devout and I think part of what makes the film so powerful is that he receives no supernatural confirmation that he’s made the right choice, no sign from the divine or earthly rewards. In fact, he experiences quite the opposite. He loses his father and sister and, in that final scene, reunites with his mother after she’s been reduced by a life of servitude and sacrifice. But I don’t get the sense he regrets anything. He’s rediscovered faith and knows he’s effected change, even if it’s not lasting. It’s a spiritual film in a world in which spirits keep their silence.

It’s also an expression of humanist values, a not-uncommon quality in the years after World War II. Zushiō is a liberator driven by the importance of equality and the value of all human lives. But Mark Le Fanu makes an interesting observation in his essay for the Criterion Collection edition of the film.:

For though the message of compassion taught by Buddha is compatible with liberalism, in another way it cannot help seeming to trump it. It is impossible not to sense, in other words, that the message of the film is renunciation, and that in that renunciation, democratic activist politics are finally renounced too.

Zushiō becomes powerful enough to bring Sansho and his system down, then gives that power up. He’s had a real effect on one part of the world, but takes it no further. There also seems to be no guarantee that another Sansho won’t take the place of the original. Yet I don’t leave the film with a sense of hopelessness. Instead, it feels like an imperative to live a moral and compassionate life with the recognition that the struggle never ends.

What’s your sense of the way religion and politics relate to one another in this film, Scott? And what, since I brought it up, do you make of Zushiō’s sudden and seemingly irreversible change of heart? I’m particularly taken with the scene in which Zushiō apologizes to the man he branded earlier in the film. Mizoguchi offers no grand suggestion of forgiveness or the sense that Zushiō’s subsequent heroism has undone the actions of his past.

Scott: The fact that Zushiō abandons his post as Governor of Tango, the province that oversees Sansho’s private manor, immediately after making his anti-slavery decree, arresting his former tormentor, and setting the slaves free is significant, I think, when talking about the relationship between religion and politics in the film. I would not say Sansho the Bailiff doesn’t appreciate the value of public service: After all, Zushiō’s father was a leader who showed real political courage and paid the price for his convictions. (What is “A man is not a human being without mercy. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others. Men are created equal. Everyone is entitled to their own happiness.” if not the feudal Japan equivalent of one of those “In This House, We Believe…” yard signs? Don’t answer that.) 

I read that bit from Mark Le Fanu’s essay and was a bit perplexed by it, frankly. The values that these characters take from religion are applied to politics and I don’t see how “democratic activist politics” are renounced by the film at all. In my view, the political arena is where Zushiō and his father’s values are tested, because their convictions run dangerously counter to the cruelties of the day, which naturally creates an incentive to take the easier route. That’s part of the universality of Sansho the Bailiff: You can apply the darkness of this period in history to so many other times when people should take a stand for humankind and for their own core beliefs, but choose political expediency instead. It’s much easier for Zushiō to survive by forgetting his father’s words and adopting the brutality of his oppressor. That’s how countries such as Japan in Mizoguchi’s time—and, er, the United States and what’s looking like a nice swath of Europe in our time—can plunge into darkness. 

All that said, religion is the foundational basis of Zushiō’s transformation and politics is the means by which he can assert his will. (You’ve heard of the one-issue voter? Meet the one-issue provincial Governor.) The folk-tale nature of Sansho the Bailiff puts a premium on simplicity and clarity, and I loved the device of having Zushiō snap out of his spell through the same bit of play with Anju just before their lives were upended. As children, they joined forces to snap off a tree branch to help their mother and a servant build a shelter for a cold night. Though it’s a scary and uncertain moment for their family, they share a laugh about breaking it off and falling to the ground together. Later, when they’re gathering more branches and soft grass for Namiji, who Sansho wants deposited in the woods to die, it happens again and it’s like a spell is broken for Zushiō. I think it’s significant that Zushiō’s change of heart happens outside Sansho’s manor and in nature, and I think it’s also significant that Anju cares so much about giving this woman as humane a place to die as possible, laying her close to a statue of Buddha. 

There are so many haunting images and heartbreaking moments in this movie. I already mentioned Anju walking into the lake as one of those unforgettable sequences, but there are plenty more. Though Sansho doesn’t have the supernatural qualities of Ugetsu, there’s something sinister and just-short-of-real about the priestess who offers to help Tamaki, Zushiō, and Anju after they’ve been exiled into the countryside and not given shelter, due to the locals fearing reprisal for it. The way she stalks their makeshift shelter by candlelight is so chilling and predatory, more so even than her outright betrayal the next day, when she helps forcefully separate them. I also love the moment when a new slave from Sado, the island where Tamaki was sold into prostitution, starts singing a song of woe that she had unknowingly learned from Tamaki under a different name. (And it was something of a hit on the island. Medieval emo, I suppose.) Anju’s kindness to this sad young girl seems to unlock the song, which is a small reward to give her hope. 

And then there’s that ending, which is so bittersweet that the word “bittersweet” isn’t adequate in describing it.  We cannot begin to imagine what Tamaki has been through, to wind up blind and alone in this tsunami-flattened wreckage, still singing that song yet unable to believe Zushiō is who he says he is. Such a miracle and such a mercy, at this point, seems inconceivable to her. For this reunion to also include news that Tamaki’s husband and daughter have died is so crushing yet the two of them are no longer separated and can grieve together, which is no small comfort. The extraordinary pan to the sea that ends the film with such tranquility and light leaves you with a sense of optimism that must have resonated with Japanese audiences post-World War II. Even in this tragic setting, where buildings are razed and all is seemingly lost, decency has won out and there’s some hope for a better tomorrow.

Keith: If there’s anything puzzling about Sansho the Bailiff’s place on this list, it’s only that Ugetsu is the only other MizoguchiMizoghuchi to make the top 250. Ozu, his similarly prolific contemporary, only has three films on the list. Both feelfeels like a matter of directors creating a tremendous number of great films and there being difficulty building consensus building around which are the very best. While we’re crunching numbers, the director of our next film, Michelangelo Antonioni, also has three films in the top 250, but only one in the top 100. Next stop: L’Avventura.

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