--- title: "Sansho the Bailiff: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/sansho-the-bailiff/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/sansho-the-bailiff" critics_score: 88 critics_reviews: 9 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Sansho the Bailiff (1954): what the critics said Critics' score 88 from 9 reviews: 9 positive, 0 mixed, 0 negative. The reviews are uniformly positive, with praise clustering around Mizoguchi’s direction and the force of the film’s compassion. Most critics find the family’s suffering deeply moving without becoming sentimental, and connect that restraint to the measured camera movements, long takes and carefully arranged compositions. They also praise the way a simple folk tale accommodates both personal suffering and a wider account of cruelty and injustice. The New Yorker singles out Kinuyo Tanaka’s performance as the mother. There is little substantive disagreement, and the spread runs from warm approval to particularly strong praise. The AV Club notes that the humanist ideals are anachronistic, but finds the film’s rebuke to tyranny persuasive nonetheless. Elsewhere, differences are chiefly matters of emphasis: some reviews stress mercy and human dignity, while others dwell on the women’s courage or the distance between moral principles and what people can endure. ## The AV Club — Scott Tobias Rating A. 23 May 2007. The critic notes the anachronistic humanist ideals but praises how the film powerfully rebukes tyranny through its fairy-tale simplicity and compassion overcoming oppression. Tragedy and transcendence coexist in one of the most profoundly moving final scenes in film history. [Read the review](https://www.avclub.com/sansho-the-bailiff-1798202602) ## RogerEbert.com — Roger Ebert Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 20 October 2007. Ebert calls Mizoguchi’s film one of the best of all Japanese cinema, a powerful lament on cruelty, mercy, and human suffering centered on a family destroyed by slavery and separation in feudal Japan. He singles out the director’s elegant compositions, tactful camera work, and the film’s shift from narrative to profound emotional resonance. [Read the review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-sansho-the-bailiff-1954) ## Slant Magazine — Chuck Bowen Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 26 February 2013. The critic calls it an exquisite masterpiece that testifies to the nourishing value of simplicity amid atrocity, praising Mizoguchi's humane direction, vertical compositions, and the deeply moving grace of the ending that affirms mercy and equality. [Read the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/sansho-the-bailiff/) ## The New York Times Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 17 December 1969. The review praises the film as a serious, profound work of visual beauty and moral depth, following the children’s ordeal under the cruel slave owner Sansho and their father’s creed of mercy. It highlights the director’s mastery in depicting lives shaped by necessity rather than ideals, moving from poetry to difficult, lucid art. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1969/12/17/archives/screen-bailiff-returnsfolk-fable-set-in-japan-of-the-11th-century.html) ## Time Out — TR Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 10 September 2012. The critic praises Mizoguchi's dual perspective on a simple folk-tale of family suffering in feudal Japan, presenting it both as a moving personal moral struggle and a tender historical meditation. The result is a film that is impassioned yet elegiac, dynamic and achingly beautiful. [Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/sansho-dayu) ## The Guardian — Philip French Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 2 December 2007. The review presents the film as a heartbreaking, tragic yet unsentimental story of a noble family torn apart by cruelty and slavery in 11th-century Japan, suffused with belief in human decency and dignity surviving terrible circumstances. It singles out the unforgettable moments such as the song revealing the mother's fate, along with Mizoguchi's beautiful compositions, long takes and discreet camera movements. [Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/dec/02/dvdreviews) ## The New Yorker — Michael Sragow Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 17 May 2013. Festival review. Sragow describes Mizoguchi’s masterpiece as a heartbreaking medieval fable with modern undertones, in which a boy raised in brutality loses his father’s ideal of mercy. He praises Kinuyo Tanaka’s superb performance as the mother and calls the film terrifying, cathartic, and a morality play without easy moralism. [Read the review](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/sansho-the-bailiff) ## Empire — David Parkinson Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 26 June 2006. The critic praises this humanist tale of a man's redemption amid injustice and subjugation, noting how Mizoguchi's mastery of technique and imagery elevates the 11th-century quest story. The women's courage and sacrifice are singled out as central to the film's emotional power. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/sansho-bailiff-review/) ## HeyUGuys — Craig Skinner Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 7 February 2011. The film follows a mother and her children who are separated and sold into slavery under a cruel bailiff, building to a powerful emotional climax centered on themes of equality and happiness. It is exquisitely directed and stands as one of the highlights of Mizoguchi’s career. [Read the review](https://www.heyuguys.com/late-mizoguchi-1951-1956-dvd-review/) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/sansho-the-bailiff.md