Anatahan

The origin of "The Saga of Anatahan" was a trip Josef von Sternberg made to Japan in 1936, during which he met producer Nagamasa Kawakita, while Arnold Fanck was shooting "Atarashiki tsuchi" (1937), a movie Kawakita was financing to promote the image of Japan in Europe. Sternberg was a well-known admirer of Japanese culture, so he discussed with Kawakita the possibility of making a motion picture in the country, about one of their national themes, but war exploded, and the project fell.

Cut to the end of the war. Sternberg and Kawakita had to wait until the end of American occupation in Japan. Kawakita had been scorned for his liking of everything related to China, considered a war criminal, and expelled from the Japanese film industry for five years. However, his lengthy career as producer of films that faithfully portrayed the Japanese culture, and his distribution of Japanese cinema abroad since the 1920s, allowed Kawakita to produce this free retelling of an incident that by 1951 was hot in the Japanese media.

According to Michiro Maruyama's memoirs -which served as starting point for the screenplay-, during World War II he and 29 fellow sailors shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean and stayed for almost a decade in the island of Anatahan, populated only by a peasant and a woman. With the collaboration of Tatsuo Asano, Sternberg made his version of the story, and concentrated on the power struggle, the triumph of hedonism and the search for sexual favors from the woman (newcomer Akemi Negishi).

However, I find the result a bit confusing and whimsical. Besides directing, co-producing, co-writing, co-editing, and co-photographing the film, Sternberg opted to narrate it (himself) in English, while the voices of the Japanese players were recorded and heard performing. The effect of the first-person narration disorients more than distances from the action: it seems to be the reflection of one of the main characters, but the narration is never associated with anybody. Moreover, Sternberg's commentaries contain ethical and moral views and perceptions that we cannot tell if they are more pertinent to Occident than to Japanese culture.

In 1953 the film opened and was rejected in Japan, for it dealt with recent war events that had traumatic effects on the population, who had a different moral view. The film was a failure in the United States, Sternberg went to teach cinema, and Kawakita released the movie in Europe with a new narration told by a young Japanese actor.

However, Sternberg kept working on it, asked cinematographer Kôzô Okazaki to film additional shots (including a nude Akemi Negishi, sitting by the sea), and in 1958 made the version I am reviewing, which he gave the title of "The Saga of Anatahan", and stated that this was the definitive version. I believe that, instead of identifying it simply as "Anatahan", we should respect his decision, as we do with George Lucas' final retitling of his original "Star Wars" trilogy.

So, since 1958, "The Saga of Anatahan" was reconsidered as among his best works. It does not lack interest but is far from his silent masterpieces, "The Blue Angel" and other titles with Marlene Dietrich.

Sternberg's famous swan-song (at the time of writing his equally notable autobiography in 1965, he had hoped to direct again but died 4 years later!) was considered a rarity until a few years back: in fact, I first watched snippets from it as a kid in the 1990 documentary Hollywood MAVERICKS on local TV; then, it eventually turned up on late-night Italian TV. I later acquired a low-grade and problematic copy of it but subsequently upgraded to a serviceable one, albeit still plagued by the occasional audio drop-out and accompanied by forced French subtitles!

Disillusioned with Hollywood by this time, Sternberg tried his luck abroad and, while he described the circumstances of shooting this one as ideal (in that he was free to exercise his well-documented autocracy!) in his autobiography, it was far from easy since the film was directed through interpreters and sometimes had to resort to storyboards in order to get across what was required of cast and crew! Sternberg writes bemusedly about the complexity of the Japanese language, the hiring of a kabuki actor for one of the main roles and his being gradually seen by all and sundry as a father-figure (being even asked by her family to protect the virtue of the virginal{!} leading lady). In any case, it is interesting that, being set and shot in Japan, this came at a time when that country's cinema was enjoying world-wide recognition largely through the works of Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi.

Incidentally, though the film features Japanese dialogue throughout, this is not translated into English – instead, we get the writer-director himself supplying intermittent commentary to expound on the action! Even so, this and the ghostly parade of victims at the finale constitute the only stylistic flourishes within the film. Indeed, the picture is unusually stark for Sternberg – treated almost like a documentary, with superimposed dates indicating the passage of time, and utilizing stock footage of returning Japanese WWII veterans. Opting as always to shoot entirely within the controlled environment of a studio, he took his traditional artificiality to new levels – with sets and props sometimes being no more than just drawings (including the titular Pacific island!) and deploying copious lighting equipment, given that most of the proceedings occur in the daytime!!

With this in mind, the premise is simple enough: at the tail-end of WWII, the crew of a sunken ship are stranded on an apparently uninhabited island in the Philippines; however, it transpires that a couple are living on it and, soon, the battle-weary and sex-starved soldiers begin to disobey the orders of their commanding officer (who insists they keep vigilance over potential attack by the enemy and in the hope of spotting a salvage vessel) and contend over the sole female presence, a vixen-ish girl who actively encourages their attentions despite the stern monitoring of her consort! In this respect, the film anticipates the likes of Seth Holt's STATION SIX SAHARA (1962), Edgar G. Ulmer's THE CAVERN (1964; the last effort by this cult figure, too) and John Derek's ONCE BEFORE I DIE (1965), all of which dealt with a similar situation of one-woman-to-several-men in already-sticky surroundings – for the record, I recently watched the first of these but, while I own the others as well, I still need to check them out. Still, inspired as it was by a true story, there were some initial protests that such a sensitive Japanese story was to be told by a foreigner (even if his work was well-known); in retrospect, its people are depicted in reasonably realistic fashion – so much so that it would later become a clichéd view! – as honorable citizens, prone to making merry but also driven by lust.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the film was badly received in Japan but, then, it ended up being overlooked everywhere else as well (dismissed as an eccentric foot-note to a great directorial career)…except in France, with the glowing "Cahiers Du Cinema" assessment being reprinted in full in Sternberg's memoirs! Personally, I feel that its dramatic and artistic power are undeniable and, after all this time, still very much undiminished. The last word, however, goes to the director who unreservedly called it "my best film" and one that he believed ahead of its time, especially in the way it attempted to make cinema patrons reflect beyond what was on the screen.

Oh great. I finally obtain this incredibly rare film, a blank tape with a sticker on it, in a clear case, from a tiny town in northeast Wiscons, and I pop in the tape, all ready to enjoy the film...if the narrator would just SHUT the HELL UP! The omniscient voice-over (in English, provided by von Sternberg himself) literally talks throughout the entire film. He vocally provides setting, action, subtext, inner monologue and even dialogue! There are no subtitles in the film, and the film isn't dubbed into English. von Sternberg simply reads the lines for both people, giving the direct action the short shrift as he emotionally distanced it from us with his flat delivery. It felt like I was being treated like a six-year-old, watching Reading Rainbow, with Levar Burton slowly enunciating every line in an aloof, patronizing tone, as if he thinks I'm an idiot, like I'm not smart enough to actually comprehend the goings on, which are fairly straightforward.

But even more frustratingly, he abruptly stops talking, almost as if to say, "FINE, YOU TRY IT WITHOUT ME!" and suddenly I'm left adrift; since all the characters have the same voice, I found it difficult to differentiate between them, and suddenly their voices are gone, and I have no idea what was going on, as I felt von Sternberg derisively chuckling and nodding behind me.

It's an intriguing tale, the story of five Japanese soldiers, thanks to the strong values and refusal of surrender instilled in them since childhood, continue to fight and guard an outpost long after the fighting has ceased. Even if he had one glaring post-production failure, von Sternberg still knows how to direct, and there are a few striking visual sequences, several well-made, interesting setpieces, with the give-and-take between the two, three and four von-Sterberg-sans, including a few exciting conflicts that result in violence. But the narrator kept talking, then hung me out to dry, and I was left flailing unpleasantly.

That was the feeling I got from Anatahan, that I was being talked down to, that he was reading a children's book and showing me the pictures, then got mad at me and stormed out, with any possibility of me loving the film went right along with it. To put it one way, I was overly smothered and babied in the kiddie pool, then abruptly shoved into the deep end without my floaties. I think I would have preferred the film on mute, and I probably still could have figured out what was going on from the outset, completely without his f-cking patronage, thank you very much.

{Grade: 6.5/10 (high C+) / #16 (of 22) of 1953}

June 1944. A group of Japanese sailors and soldiers end up on Anatahan, an isolated island, after their boats are sunk by US planes. The island is not deserted: a man and his wife live there. He is not pleased to see them and she and her beauty will test the group's discipline, cohesion and selflessness.

An interesting drama, written and directed by Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, The Last Command, amongst others). Shows how easy it is for people to return to their baser, primal instincts and the effect this has on their behaviour and their community. Has a sort of Lord of the Flies quality to it (or more appropriately, vice versa, as this was released a year before Lord of the Flies was published).

The ending is a bit flat, however. It all seemed set up for a powerful, profound ending but then it wrapped up quite tamely and neatly. A bit disappointing, due to that.

Anatahan is a little island where a group of Japanese soldiers find themselves in 1944. They are a ragtag bunch with a harsh leader. Already on the island are a severe man and a beautiful young woman. It is assumed at first that they are married but it turns out they have both suffered family losses. As time goes by, discipline disappears. The men begin to lust after the woman and she, at times, encourages them. Eventually, she is in danger. The men begin a sort of "Lord of the Flies" thing as they move to their baser instincts. There is death here and we begin to wonder who will be alive at the end. This is an oddity of a film. The great director Joseph von Sternberg did this in Japan with a Japanese cast in 1953. The strange thing is that he narrates the whole thing in a simplistic way. The characters speak Japanese throughout and we don't get to understand what they are saying. This is certainly worth seeing.