Sansho the Bailiff: The Aesthetic of the Camera Movements

Mizoguchi's cinema has one key element as its ingredient which may be separately identifiable from the rest of the significant aesthetic achievements that are attributed to his name. It is not quite difficult of course to examine this element at the beginning of his films which is motionless and attentive, but the spectator's direct line of vision dramatically changes as long as the camera is starting to move. The expanding of sense of awareness to each side of the screen and in the space behind the camera enforces the audiences to reconstruct their vision and version of dramaturgy beyond the frame.

Kenji Mizoguchi paid his homage to Kitagawa Utamaro (1756-1806) who is known for his portraits of women in love in Five women Round Utamaro (1946). He displayed the sense of variety and richness of camera movement in his post-war film which standardized and portrayed the Mizoguchi's stylistic elements of his Japanese religious representation in the aesthetic of his narrative: the sacrificial theme of the female characters for the male protagonists. Of course, his static composition and mobile camera reveal the dignity, integrity and submissiveness of his female characters. Indeed, Mizoguchi's fascination with prostitutes, Geishas and the historical figures of suffering women in which his extravagant and controversial stylization for bizarre experimentation with different historical periods in Japan, his cultural and traditional references to Japanese painting and calligraphy, the representation of religious elements, Kabuki and Noh theaters as the fundamental elements of cultural antiquity and the sense of guilt to his sister for her sacrificial role in his life brought into Japanese self-consciousness a sense of revival to the ignored traditional culture during the American occupation and the years after Second World War.

Mizoguchi's responsive reaction to the cinematic texts as a multilayered phenomena which can be considered also as the single continuum is in overall expressivity of his allegiance to his cultivated knowledge about Japanese culture and the international influence of the masters of cinema. Renoir's long take is beginning to gather focus in Mizoguchi's films such as The Life of Ohara (1952).The stylistic camera movement in Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) is reminiscent of Orson Welles' fascination with the long take. The pictorial motifs which can be brought to the existence from Japanese paintings can be followed anywhere from pre-production to post-production issues. The authentic sets, props, and architecture of the mise-en scene are truly superb and the western audiences who are not familiar with Japanese artistic and historical authenticity are satisfied with difficulty. His entire visual system like Yasijiro Ozu's forms the basis for representing the quality of the Japanese theatrical architecture of the houses and the design of the rooms. For the same reason, mise-en scene of the stage which seems to be inseparable from Japanese traditional domestic life and their ceremonies emphasizes Mizoguchi's dedication to the art of acting which comes from Kabuki and Noh traditions. In a similar way, the circular pattern of narrative and storytelling which can be found in Ozu's films is also maintained as the moral fingerprint of religious doctrine of painful cycle of life here in his stylistic visual system. The choreography of actors and actresses' movements in the static frame shifts in crucial way from the ultimate metaphorical and metaphysical meaning and definition of each shot to represent the visual style of compositions, and automatically reduces the rhythm of temporal and spatial juxtaposition of images in which the process of editing occurs inside the camera movement to maintain religious meditation between the audiences and the film as the artistic work.

Sansho the Bailiff  which belongs to Mizoguchi's latest period of filmmaking is considered as one of his anti-patriarchal, anti-feudal and anti-capitalistic works which radically challenges the contradictory potential of militaristic elements through anti-spectacular style of its presentation in Japanese culture. The deciphering of the formal and the aesthetic stylization of the film requires intellectual analysis through which the relationship between style and content has to be prioritized according to the laws of multi-point perspective. the silver lion at Venice Film Festival for the film implies a little familiarity and affection with Mizoguchi whose emotional response and moral stance to the novelist Ogai Mori and his original story is part of serious intensive investigation of his country's historical landscape. The most striking element about Mizoguchi's adaptation is the twisting of the central character from the female to the male protagonist who carries the burden of the narrative for the first time. Such a radical alteration of tonality in characterization is fundamentally different from Mizoguchi's conservative formalism in terms of stylistic representation of his suffered female protagonist as the leitmotif. the unmasking or revealing moment is happening on detailed accuracy of set-decoration, the costume design for each character which represents his social class and personality on the screen, dialectic architecture of his long takes and visual concentration on deep docus traveling shots. The lack of close up and point of view shots, the absence of rapid cutting in the climaxes and the fact that camera is placed most of the time so far back from incidents immediately offer us as the audience to receive the moral perception of the final redemption of the characters. The awakening which results in his approaching reality through religious meditation follows the minimalism that is essential property of Mizoguchi's stylized images.

The structural and spiritual affinity of Sansho the Bailiff  with Mizoguchi's former films such as Sisters of the Gion (1939) and Osaka Elegy (1936) which depicts the life story and the destiny of prostitutes and Geishas become obvious when Zushio's mother, Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), is sold to the brothel and becomes prostitute for the rest of her life. Like all the Geishas characters in Mizoguchi's films, Tamaki is also destined to live in the cage, and water is the only symbolical natural element which connects her metaphorically to Anju (Kyôko Kagawa) and Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi). The desire for Japanese suicide in Anju's self sacrifice for Zushio and the brutality of the ending in which Tamaki and Zushio ultimately meet each other in melancholic and pessimistic atmosphere are also considered as the convention of rhetorical symbolism. This symbolism formulate a sense of continuity and rejection to any artificial transition between shots to represent a new humanism in Japanese post-war period. For instance, Mizoguchi's camera movement from mother and son to the landscape of the land and sea in the final scene suggests the possibility of integration between humanity and nature as our extension of mankind's existentialism in the form of family survival. Mizoguchis' respect for the non-violence teaching of religion can be followed in the shots and camera movements in which the glorifying of violence is avoided by deviating the audienc's center of focus to off screen at the harsh moments such as invisibility of Anju's suicide, Tamaki's punishment for her unsuccessful escape and the burning of the face of the escaping slave by Zushio's brutality and ruthless obedient to Sansho and his fatherhood figure in the background.


Mizoguchi's establishment sequences at the beginning of the film revolve around Tamaki's memories in the past which are transferred to the present through her state of mind by using the dissolves and the lateral camera movements. Her attempts to maintain the united family are associated with her memories and later on with her song which can be heard and realized only by Anju, and then; Mizoguchi tries often to isolate them to emphasize their loneliness and alienation with patriarchal society and its chaotic outcome by lateral or slight camera movements. even Anju's insistent advice to Zushio to remember the lost moral values and the past memories despite his resistance are perceived automatically as her motherhood figure for Zushio. It seems again that Mozoguchi's preoccupation and enthusiasm with camera movement follows the same interest to construct an aesthetic style in which there is an existential continuity between remembering the past and experiencing the present. The astonishing anthropological fact about the mise-en scene is the nature and its symbolical representation in creating the balance between human beings, his moral values and his deliberate choices. Sansho's vertical presence to the horizontal structure of the narrative and the image embodies his ruthless masculine authority which tears the feminine elements of nature and its beauty apart. The admiration for the traditional and moral values that metaphysical configuration of Buddhism imposes on the text of Sansho the Bailiff  is noticeable and properly manipulated in the narrative, aesthetic style, sound design, camera movement and editing. Right after Anju's suicide, there is a cut to a statue of Buddha that creates emblematically a metaphorical image for Anju's transformation from human being to the other form of nature, water.

The theoretical frames of references which can help the western audience to receive  Mizoguchi's text are not psychoanalytic or structuralist in the final examination, and the function of his camera movement in the cinematic representation cannot be recognized based upon the conventional norm of the western subjective and objective aesthetic theories. In order to understand his cinematic experience with the narrative, it is required to seek another school of analysis to achieve the higher perceptual level in capturing the essential moments of his filmic text.  Mizoguchi's camera mobility can be analyzed and understood only by minimizing the western dualistic interpretation of the text and concentrating on the context  in terms of the religious metaphorical elements in the image as well as its visual cues. Furthermore, the sense of violence which can be brought to the images by the stylistic editing is reduced and eliminated through his long takes and camera movements. The presentation of geometrical artificiality in three dimensional architecture of mise-en scene has no advantage over his simplified spatial landscape and theatricality. In fact, the suggested model to explore the underlying treasures of the text is absolutely philosophical and meaningful in Mizoguchi's cinema which is always associated with Japanese rituals and mythological beliefs. Within the visual field. there is a kind of flow and continuity of space and time which have not been visualized by any mathematical formulae of any school in the history of western art designing.  Mizoguchi's complexity of his camera movements occur in the same4 model in the moments of awareness and miracle. In other words, his characters achieve a kind of knowledge and perception at the end of each shot in camera movement which invites the audience to identify with them and their suffering through the journey of life and death. In terms of representing the miracle, for instance, there is a camera movement from left to right to the Sansho's mansion through which the liberated slaves celebrate their miraculous liberation from slavery, and it is interesting that this movement is presented in the reverse axial momentum of Sansho's mobility which happens from right to left in the frame. Indeed, the optical view of the camera in these precise moments is constructed on the character's physical and psychological communication with the spatial and temporal continuity from the past to the present.

Sansho the Bailiff  has extraordinary exterior images whose masterly visual compositions are nearly presented in long shots.  Mozoguchi's appreciation for long shot even in his camera movements has nothing to do with Brechtian distance. It seems that his audience is expected to respect to the whole story as the cycle of life in nature which appears to be a part of Buddhist teachings. The noble drawing of nature on the Japanese costumes, paintings, and potteries is in interconnection with morality and ethics which can be followed and explored in  Mizoguchi's stylistic aesthetic. Therefore, the optical distance with the mise-en scene and the horizontal camera movement enforce the audience to take a strategic position to explore the film content by a striking indirectness in Mizoguchi's camera style. The center of focus in multiple perspective of the Mizoguchi's mise-en scene is governed by a need for concealment and dissemblance so great in order to give his text a sense of magic and enigma.


By: Morad Sadeghi