Sansho the Bailiff (1954) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

****/****
Image A-
Sound B-
Extras B+

starring Kinuyo
Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Masao Shimizu

screenplay
by Fuji Yahiro, Yoshikata Yoda

directed
by Kenji Mizoguchi


Sansho2click any image to
enlarge

by
Walter Chaw
A little late to the
party, I know, but Kenji Mizoguchi's magisterial jidaigeki
Sansho the
Bailiff
is the source material for Hiyao Miyazaki's Spirited
Away
.
Both are initiated by the filmmakers as fairytales, mythologies; and
both are
initiated within the text by a specific fatal flaw in parental figures.
In Sansho,
it's hubris when the father, a principled public servant, stands up
under an
unjust edict and is exiled, leaving his family in peril. In Spirited
Away
,
the parents engage in an endless banquet, indulging their gluttony
until
they're transformed into literal swine despite the protests of their
child.
Both films are withering indictments of the cultures that produced
them, and
each is opened to a greater depth of interpretation by an appreciation
of the
other. Coming here from the Miyazaki, it's fruitful to consider why it is the Mizoguchi is named after the villain, the cruel
slave-owner who
tortures the film's heroes, while the Miyazaki is named for the
innocents (Sen
to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
) and the loaded act/word "Kamikakushi," which once referred to abduction by angry gods but has a
contemporary implication of sex trafficking. Arguably, Mizoguchi sets
up this
read of the later text in his own canon, with many of his films
addressing the
problem of sexual exploitation among the lower class in Japanese
history–a
problem that persisted through the war years and, some would say,
beyond. With its naming, it's possible to infer that the source for the ills in Sansho
the Bailiff
is too strong a hold on the traditions of an
antiquated past;
in Spirited Away, it's the frittering away of the
future by a generation
too solipsistic, too blinkered by its own sense of entitlement, to save
itself
from obsolescence. See the two films as bookends of a particularly
Japanese
introspection, equal parts humility and nihilism. (As one of the
characters in Sansho
the Bailiff
sings, "Isn't life a torture?") And in the
contemplation of the Mizoguchi, find also an undercurrent of warning,
and doom,
in the Miyazaki.

RUNNING TIME
124 minutes
MPAA
Not Rated
ASPECT
RATIO(S)

1.33:1 (1080p/MPEG-4)
LANGUAGES
Japanese 1.0 LPCM
SUBTITLES
English

REGION
A
DISC
TYPE

BD-50
STUDIO
Criterion

Sansho the Bailiff is a textbook, every
frame another carefully-arranged
dissertation on composition, movement, brevity, art. The bittersweet
reunion
that ends the film, punctuated by a spare, plaintive wail of a nohkan
on
the soundtrack, is among the most heart-rending in motion-picture
history.
Beyond its archetypal resonance, the movie deals with issues of
sacrifice, of
honour, of the greater good no matter the individual cost. It's one of
the
great humanist works in this way, though it's also a vital human document,
in that it represents the possibility of art–the creation of the
hand–to
speak eternal to the essential lament of existence. Sansho
works
wonderfully as a literal tragedy, but it works better as an
existentialist
parable–with little effort, it's possible to see it as a body with
Sartre and
Kierkegaard and as the most obvious antecedent, aside from any
stylistic
debtors to Mizoguchi, to similar movements in Terrence Malick and even
Werner
Herzog. The ferocity of its humanism is what elevates Mizoguchi's work.
He's
interested in centres of power only inasmuch as they are the epicentres
of
expanding ripples that devastate the helpless and the innocent.
Mizoguchi's
pictures represent a certain collective disappointment in traditional
modes of
leadership–more specifically, in leaders who, under the mantle of
Heaven, have
led the nation to ruin and despair. Often described as a feminist
filmmaker
(especially for his Ugetsu, Gion
Bayashi
, Red Light District,
and Life of Oharu), Mizoguchi is more generally a
champion for the weak.
Small wonder that his films found traction in the United States during
the Cold
War and the dawn of this modern epoch, in which greater numbers of
people came
to understand how small their lives were within the machinations of
impenetrable
machineries.

Scholar Jeffrey
Angles, in his commentary track for the Criterion release of Sansho
the
Bailiff
, notes too briefly the "lovely parallel structure," an
observation worthy of a deeper dive. It's so carefully constructed a
film, in
fact, that it recalls Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt
or Budd Boetticher's
Seven Men from Now, and we see that meticulous
design in everything from
the bearing and language used by the father in the opening sequence, echoed poignantly in the end by his lost son, to the
multiple
dissolves between different levels of powerlessness and
servility. Passages through long grain, recurrences of pairs of
fishermen,
images of trees looming in foregrounds like traditional Japanese
watercolours
and woodcuts–all contribute to the thematic and visual rhythm of the piece. The last shot
of Sansho,
with Mizoguchi allowing his camera to track slowly, aimlessly, back and
to the
left as though it can't bear to spend more time with itself, represents
an
object-less spectator that feels to me like a commentary on
helplessness, yes,
but on a godless universe as well. I wonder if it's too much to
speculate that
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation borrows
its own ending from
here.

We're getting ahead
of ourselves. Sansho the Bailiff is about the
children of a just and
merciful magistrate, abducted and sold into slavery while their mother
is taken
to be a concubine or geisha. The kids are brought to a factory and
taught
menial labour–their names, kept secret to protect them from their evil
lord, are
replaced by words meant to be mnemonics for their origins, so that one
day they
might recover who they are and where they're from. Years pass; the
young woman,
Anju (Kyoko Kagawa), retains her strength and independence, while her
brother
Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) has risen to become their cruel owner
Sansho's
(Eitaro Shindo) right hand, matching him in sadism and ambition. Zushio
replaces Sansho's own son Taro (Akitake Kono) in this pursuit, Taro having
proven
himself too soft-hearted for the task of branding those of Sansho's
slaves who
try to escape. Taro represents the inability to disregard humanity in the name of following orders. The irony of the boy
Zushio
taking his place is that Zushio has been entrusted by his absent father
to be a
minister of mercy. Zushio undergoes an epiphany; Anju overhears a local
ditty
sung by some used-up crone in a neighbouring village; and the two plot
to
escape their captivity. Only one makes it. And Mizoguchi, in his
poetry,
expresses that the only thing that's immortal is an insensate
nature–that
there may not be a unifying intelligence in the world, but the quality
of mercy
is never strained.

Sansho the Bailiff is a film of
surpassing, transcendent wisdom and
beauty. It locates a place for the struggle of men among Nature and
does so
with a surplus of generosity for the smallness of its characters in all
their
doubts and temporary weaknesses. Tableaux of women sacrificing themselves
in
passages over, and aborted passages through, water further the themes
of
transformation, while the astounding reserve of its imagery serves as
powerful
counterpoint to the roiling violence and despair of the narrative. It
lands
with the force of Shakespeare and would fit well on a bill with
countryman
Akira Kurosawa's "Macbeth" adaptation Throne of Blood,
sharing
with it a sense of absolute structure and control married with
real
emotional depth. Look to the way that Mizoguchi
lights
the blacksmith's face in the dream sequence, to how Zushio stands in relation to his master
Sansho,
and to the rising steam and the screams just off-screen of an old man
made the
object lesson in Zushio's return to himself after a too-long divorce
from the
ideals of his father. There's eternity in Sansho the Bailiff,
which contains a multitude of truths.

Sansho3

THE
BLU-RAY DISC

Criterion follows their celebrated 2007 DVD release of Sansho the Bailiff, the Western world's home-video debut of this title, with a breathtaking Blu-ray upgrade that imports all the pre-existing supplementary material intact. Created from a 35mm fine-grain master positive, the 1.33:1, 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer features broad dynamic range without falling prey to Criterion's practice of contrast-tweaking. Grain is a little denser than it might've been had they gone back to the original negative, but the image is by no means noisy. Criterion's elves did a bang-up job of bringing the film up to code, with most of the lingering issues, such as dips in focus that coincide with scene breaks, likely beyond the parameters of restoration. The attendant 1.0 LPCM audio doesn't have a ton of depth but can hardly be called a disappointment, given the movie's origin and vintage.

Angles's full-length commentary is strong albeit focused on dissecting details of the plot and source material(s).
Though Angles offers good insights into character motivation, the real value of this
yakker
is his discussion of the minutiae of language and social mores that
Japanese
audiences would have understood implicitly. Lines referring to Japanese
mythologies, for instance, were lost on me the first time through: Had the
treacherous boatmen during the abduction scene said something about
the
River Styx rather than their culturally-specific river of death, I would've better understood the mother's sudden panic.

Also returning from
the DVD is a trio of interview featurettes, each one upconverted to
1080i. In the 10-minute "Performance," actress Kyoko "Anju" Kagawa remembers
Mizoguchi as the first director in her experience to ask her to
emotionally
inhabit a character and "try things out" on the journey to
discovering the core of her performance. It speaks to the humanist
cant with which Mizoguchi infuses all his pictures. Next, in a piece titled "Production" (15 mins.), First Assistant Director Tokuzo Tanaka recalls Mizoguchi's
perfectionism in regards to continuity and his gift for scouting
locations.
Finally, "Simplicity" (24 mins.) sees critic/historian Tadao Sato providing a
nice, if
superficial, overview of Mizoguchi's themes and techniques.

Criterion
outdoes
itself with its booklet insert this time, offering up, for starters, a 12-page
essay
on the film by Mark Le Fanu that places it in a cultural context in addition to analyzing its many themes. It's nigh
definitive. Likewise included are two
different versions of the tale retold in Sansho the Bailiff, presented in English translations for the completist to draw his or her own
comparisons. (For
the lazy, Angles's commentary does the heavy lifting for us.) It's a gratifyingly thick volume, bundled with the disc in a handsome, parchment slipcase that looks
awesome
from its privileged position on my shelf.

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