Retrospective Film Review

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) — beautiful, haunting Japanese cinema

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.

The Golden Age of Japanese cinema is said to have occurred in the 1950s. During this period, screen legends would make arguably their greatest contributions to the filmmaking medium. Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) would cement him as being one of the most singular visionaries of all time, with the film hailed as the greatest ever made in a 2012 Sight and Sound poll of critics. Akira Kurosawa achieved worldwide acclaim for his film Rashomon (1950), which is unanimously considered the first of his many perfect cinematic efforts.

However, the final name that completes this trifecta of Japanese Golden Age auteurs is perhaps the least well-known of the three: Kenji Mizoguchi. From The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) to Ugetsu (1953), Mizoguchi demonstrated he was a director of…