Friday | May 1, 2009 7:00 pm

Sansho the Bailiff
(Sansho dayu)

Screening on Film

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
With Eitaro Shindo, Kinuyo Tanaka.
Japan, 1954, 35mm, black & white, 120 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: Janus Films

An intensely lyrical, uncompromising study of tragedy and psychic degradation, Sansho the Bailiff is among Mizoguchi’s great masterpieces. The story, set in eleventh-century Japan, concerns a mother and her two children, who are kidnapped and sold into slavery. After a decade of subjugation the son sets out about deposing the cruel bailiff who brought tragedy upon his family.

March 6, 2007 – May 1, 2009

Masterworks of World Cinema

March 5, 2007 – May 1, 2009

The Perverted Desires of Slavoj Zizek

May 16–June 23, 2014

The Tales and Tragedies of Kenji Mizoguchi

January 20–February 26, 2023

Kinuyo Tanaka—Actress, Director, Pioneer

August 21–October 19

The Cold Heart is More Precious than Diamonds. The Cinema of Graham Greene

September 11–October 30

João César Monteiro, Poet-Provocateur

September 12

Marathon '77 All-Night Movie Marathon

September 18–November 15

Marie Antoinette and Friends, Three Films by Sofia Coppola

September 19–December 12

Nostalgia, A Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque Program

September 27–28

The Adventures of Lotte Reiniger

October 2–18

The Human Condition

October 23–November 20

Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945 – 1960

November 6–9

Visions of a City, Or A Weekend in San Francisco