El intendente Sansho

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.

Others have pointed out that this film bears Mizoguchi's trademark interest in freedom, poverty and woman's place in society, and features beautiful images and long and complicated shots. If anything sums up Mizoguchi it is gynocentricity and long takes.

Notice that film critic Anthony Lane wrote, "I have seen Sansho only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal." How do you follow that up?

I'm so moved. This is not only one of the greatest film of Mizoguchi but also tell us a very important precept which is almost forgotten. That is "Without mercy, a man is not a human being. Be hard on yourself, but merciful to others." This is very important precept, but how many people still know or remember it? I'd like to use this film for children's educational program. Now I know why "Sansho the Bailiff" was voted for No.1 film of the year beating so many great films like "La Dolce Vita", "Psycho" and so on.

Man's inhumanity to man is presented here with no artifice. This has long been a favorite of mine, although it's difficult to sell many others on the premise -- an honest, benevolent Governor in medieval Japan is imprisoned by the military regime, forcing his wife, son, and daughter to fend for themselves. They are soon captured, separated, and sold into slavery, but remained determined to reunite.

There's something about the medieval Japanese setting that lends itself to explorations of grandiose themes painted with a broad brush. This will break your heart, and belongs on your shelf next to "Ran".

Luminous...painterly...haunting...devastating...in terms of both substance and style, a cinematic achievement of the very highest order. Like all great works of art, it is incomparable, although it would not be misleading to place it in the company of the very best of Renoir, Ford, and Kurosawa. It has the same kind of compassionate humanism, high-caliber storytelling, and effortless-seeming mastery of the medium...the same generosity.

I prefer this film even to the great (and much better-known) Ugetsu. And I know now why Welles once said that Mizoguchi "can't be praised enough, really." I hope one day this film will be as well known as it deserves to be.

With tears of emotions the word "masterpiece" begins to develop on my lips. Incapable to speak it out loud, a gentle smile surrounds my face. I am deeply blessed. (This is my immediate reaction after having finished watching "Sansho".)

In long, meditative shots, Mizoguchi fluently tells the story of two siblings who get separated from their mother and have to work for a cruel slave owner. It is an old legend of destitution and revenge, brought in pictures so beautiful, that you would want to frame each and every one of it and hang them up above your bed. Those are pictures of utter elegance, extreme subtlety and an intoxicating abstinence of brutality, of vain love and the slam of fate, which form that one condition people usually call life.

Probably the best film I have seen in 2006.