12. Sansho The Bailiff
Daiei FilmWhen most people think of classic Japanese cinema the name Akira Kurosawa immediately springs to mind, and with movies such as The Seven Samurai and Rashomon featuring on dozens of Top 100 Movies of All Time lists it's easy to see why. Kurosawa's popularity has sometimes meant that other great Japanese directors are unfairly overlooked - Kenji Mizoguchi is one such director, and Sansho the Bailiff is perhaps his finest film. Set in feudal Japan, it tells the story of the wife and children of a banished governor sent to stay with her brother, who are captured by bandits along the way and sold into slavery and prostitution. If Kurosawa is the filmmaker renowned for his exploration of masculinity - frequently mirroring the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks with his stoic male protagonists - then Mizoguchi is the humanistic poet. Sansho the Bailiff is shot with a precision and beauty which belies its aching melancholy just as its apparent simplicity does its overarching wisdom, proving that Mizoguchi is every bit the master of cinema as Kurosawa.