Movielogr

Rating: 7.5 stars

Tags

mubi Japan WWII island survivors soldiers Japanese survival stranded book adaptation

All movies seen on 07/03/2019

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Anatahan (1953)

Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Drama | War | History

Overview

During WWII, a group of Japanese soldiers are stranded on the remote Pacific island of Anatahan.

Length 91 minutes

Actors

Akemi Negishi | Tadashi Suganuma | Kisaburo Sawamura | Shoji Nakayama | Jun Fujikawa | Hiroshi Kondô | Shozo Miyashita | Josef von Sternberg | Kikuji Onoe | Rokuriro Kineya

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

This is p wild and something I hadn’t heard of until it showed up on MUBI. Josef von Sternburg adapted this Japanese book that’s supposedly a true story of these soldiers + fishermen that are attacked during the late stages of WWII and find themselves stranded on an island inhabited by only one couple, husband & wife. The woman (Akemi Negishi) becomes a primary focus because she’s the only woman.

So there’s a voiceover that tells the story while all the Japanese spoken is not translated. All the basic stuff was easy to pick up but at least the narration fills in the gaps. Overall this is a good film with plenty of conflict (all due to the desires of the men, of course). The war ends but they are stuck on the island for 7 years. It’s an interesting take on this story (and similar stories) by an outsider.

The film was shot on a set created in Kyoto and the music is so familiar I guessed it was Akira Ifukube (maestro of all the Toho films) and it was! Happy to be correct even tho this isn’t a Toho production. Also of note: Tsuburaya does all the special FX. There’s not a lot in that dept but very neat.

Makes me curious if Toho did have a secret hand in the production to loan the talents of those two for the film. Glad to have seen this.

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