SANSHO THE BAILIFF

SANSHO DAYU

1954, KENJI MIZOGUCHI, JAPAN, 125 MIN. WITH KINUYO TANAKA, YOSHIAKI HANAYAGI, KYOKO KAGAWA.

friday, may 25th at 2:00pm

sunday, may 27th at 3:00pm

monday, may 28th at 5:00pm

wednesday, may 30th at 6:00pm

Although UGETSU is Mizoguchi's most famous film, many consider SANSHO to be his greatest - a majestic, moving work whose soaring humanism is rinsed of sentimentality by its bracing sense of injustice and its undercurrent of tragic irony. In the eleventh century, a governor's enlightened policy toward the oppressed peon class causes him to be exiled to a distant province, leaving his wife, son, and daughter exposed to abduction by bandits. The wife is sold to a brothel; the boy and girl become slaves under the harsh regime of the estate-owner Sansho the Bailiff. As the years pass, the separated mother and her children cling to their memories of past happiness and their yearning to be reunited. Brutality and beauty exist side by side in Mizoguchi's all-encompassing vision; the visual and aural strategies that he employs to transcend barriers of time and space yield moments of hair-raising emotional power. In Japanese with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)