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 who sets off with her two children in search of her exiled husband. When the three are kidnapped, the mother is sent to become a courtesan, and the children are sold into slavery to the cruel Sansho of the title. After a decade of subjugation and tragedy, the son, spiritually restored by a Buddhist monk, sets out to avenge his family’s sufferings by aiding humanity.