|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Title: Sansho Dayu Videos
|
|
Sansho Dayu |
|
|
|
Film Description
| The subjugated plight of women in Japanese society was always a subject close to Mizoguchi's heart--never more so than in Sansho Dayu, one of the towering late masterpieces of his final years. Its intensity, compassion, dramatic sweep and breathtaking formal beauty place it among his greatest films. The story is set in the harsh feudal world of 11th-century Japan. A provincial governor is demoted and exiled for showing too much clemency to those he rules; travelling to join him, his wife is kidnapped and forced to become a courtesan and her children are sold into slavery. They grow up under the harsh regime of the bailiff Sansho while their mother (the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, in a performance of heartbreaking desolation) yearns hopelessly for them. Working with his favourite cameraman, Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi films this tragic story in long, intricate takes, rarely resorting to close-ups. The visual elegance and formal restraint of his style make the film all the more emotionally harrowing, and the final scene, on a desolate and windswept island, must be one of the most unbearably moving endings in all cinema. --Philip Kemp |
Directed by:
Kenji Mizoguchi
Studio: Bfi Video Publishing
Release date: 1998-11-09
Cinema release date: 1954-01-01
DVD release date: 1998-11-09
Format: VHS Tape
|
Cast:
Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kinuyo Tanaka
Extras/Features:
PAL, Black & White, Subtitled
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
