Legend, adventure and poetry fuse to make this engrossing, if overlong, film material.
Sansho the Bailiff(山椒大夫)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 1954
2h 4m
Director Kenji Mizoguchi
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyōko Kagawa, Eitarō Shindō
Genre Drama
Add to Watchlist
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
In medieval Japan a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
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.
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.
Moving and atmospheric, this quest tale is among the best of its kind.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
It employs the power of tragedy to enrich.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
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.
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.
Users who liked this film also liked
The Rules of the Game
(La Règle du jeu)
A weekend at a marquis’ country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut aristocratic acquaintances.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1939
- Director Jean Renoir
- Cast Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Odette Talazac, Claire Gérard
- Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Available on Criterion Channel, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Video, YouTube, Pantaflix, Kanopy
Grand Illusion
(La Grande Illusion)
During WWI, a group of French prisoners of war grapple with their class differences as they plot their escape.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1937
- Director Jean Renoir
- Cast Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Georges Péclet
- Genre Drama, History, War
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
(Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot)
Monsieur Hulot heads to a beach resort for summer vacation, wreaking havoc on the idyllic calmness present along the seaside.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1953
- Director Jacques Tati
- Cast Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Micheline Rolla, Louis Perrault, Valentine Camax, André Dubois
- Genre Comedy
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Max, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Kanopy
The Music Room
(জলসাঘর)
A wealthy landlord has a passion for music and devotes much of his fortune to it. But this same passion may prove his undoing…
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- India • 1958
- Director Satyajit Ray
- Cast Chhabi Biswas, Padmadevi, Kali Sarkar, Gangapada Basu, Pinaki Sengupta, Sardar Akhtar
- Genre Drama, Music
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Video, YouTube
Stromboli
(Stromboli (Terra di Dio))
A Lithuanian exile in Italy marries a local fisherman who takes her to an island far from paradise.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Italy, United States • 1950
- Director Roberto Rossellini
- Cast Ingrid Bergman, Mario Vitale, Renzo Cesana, Mario Sponzo, Gaetano Famularo, Angelo Molino
- Genre Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Max
Dersu Uzala
(Дерсу Узала)
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi hunter in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Soviet Union, Japan • 1975
- Director Akira Kurosawa
- Cast Yuriy Solomin, Maksim Munzuk, Mikhail Bychkov, B. Khorulev, Vladimir Kremena, Aleksandr Pyatkov
- Genre Action, Adventure, Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel, Amazon Video
Ugetsu
(雨月物語)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Japan • 1953
- Director Kenji Mizoguchi
- Cast Machiko Kyō, Mitsuko Mito, Kinuyo Tanaka, Masayuki Mori, Eitarō Ozawa, Sugisaku Aoyama
- Genre Fantasy, Drama, Mystery
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Max, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tubi TV, Kanopy, Plex, Plex Player
Woman in the Dunes
(砂の女)
An entomologist suffers extreme psychological and sexual torture after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Japan • 1964
- Director Hiroshi Teshigahara
- Cast Eiji Okada, Kyôko Kishida, Ginzô Sekiguchi, Kôji Mitsui, Sen Yano
- Genre Drama, Thriller
- Available on Criterion Channel, TCM, Apple TV, Amazon Video
The Life of Oharu
(西鶴一代女)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Japan • 1952
- Director Kenji Mizoguchi
- Cast Kinuyo Tanaka, Tsukie Matsuura, Ichirō Sugai, Toshirō Mifune, Toshiaki Konoe, Kiyoko Tsuji
- Genre Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel
One Way or Another
(Todo modo)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Italy • 1976
- Director Elio Petri
- Cast Gian Maria Volonté, Marcello Mastroianni, Mariangela Melato, Ciccio Ingrassia, Franco Citti, Cesare Gelli
- Genre Drama
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Ordet
A Legend for Today
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Denmark • 1955
- Director Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Cast Henrik Malberg, Birgitte Federspiel, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Cay Kristiansen, Ejner Federspiel
- Genre Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel
Tokyo Twilight
(東京暮色)
Two sisters discover the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Japan • 1957
- Director Yasujirō Ozu
- Cast Setsuko Hara, Ineko Arima, Chishū Ryū, Isuzu Yamada, Teiji Takahashi, Masami Taura
- Genre Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Max, Tubi TV
Bombshell
Three women make the difficult decision to speak out about experiencing sexual harassment at the hands of their boss, media mogul and Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Canada, United States • 2019
- Director Jay Roach
- Cast Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell
- Genre Drama
- Available on Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Video, Microsoft Store, YouTube, AMC on Demand
Cinema's greatest humanist with his most direct statement