Sol de sangre

I wasn't expecting much from a Tom Nea movie, but this was an instructive bit of propaganda. dougdoepke in his review here makes some excellent points. The Japanese people are portrayed as being the victims of rigid class system. In this film it is the Japanese who are the racists. Aside from that, I enjoyed seeing Gloria Holden and Don Douglas, who died too young....Some of the air raid footage looked as if it was recycled from "Bombadier."

"Know the worst about the Japs!" screamed the original ads for this delirious WW II time capsule, a violent, rabble-rousing propaganda piece purporting to show how Japan rose to become a world terror. But with the first act of Japanese savagery, the film's true intent becomes crystal clear: to foment outrage and demonize the enemy by dishing out heaping helpings of barbaric cruelties. Atrocities on the menu include gang rape, wince-inducing torture, bayonet practice on babies, the mass slaughter of innocents, and the likes of Tom Neal, J. Carrol Naish and Abner Biberman playing sons of Nippon in heavy Asiatic makeup.

By turns, unintentionally hilarious and horrifyingly brutal, the film is never less than gripping thanks, in large part, to Edward Dmytryk's deft direction. Worth the price of admission alone is a blistering, brilliantly edited ten-minute ring fight between an American boxer played by Robert Ryan (a real-life college boxing champ) and a towering Japanese judo expert played by Mike Mazurki. It's a genuine showstopper, expressly designed to whip homefront theater audiences into a frenzy of cheers, cat-calls and general bloodlust. With Gloria Holden, Margo and Richard Loo (wonder of wonders, a genuine Asian).

... and to talk about them in any sympathetic way whatsoever. Taro Seki(Tom Neal), a happy go lucky kid, returns to Japan after finishing his degree in engineering in America. His father, Reo (J Carrol Naish) is a VIP in the government. Now it did seem a bit much that Taro would greet his dad after only four years in the U.S. with the 1940's version of "Hi daddy-O how's it hanging? I'm just swell!", but I guess the writers had to quickly show how much he had bought into the American dream and planned on living it in Japan. Taro goes to business man Clancy OHara (Donald Douglas) for an engineering job, gets one, and meets Tama (Margo), Clancys secretary. They begin seeing each other and decide to marry, but Taro is drafted into the Japanese army and is shipped off to China. All the while, Taro's father is disapproving of Taro marrying someone he considers to be a commoner, although he has nothing personal against the girl.

There is a sideplot of the European and Americans living in Japan. American journalist Sara practically proposes to Clancy, but you can tell he is scared stiff of the idea of marriage even though he enjoys Sara's company. Sara feels rebuffed, and goes off to report in China on the Japanese occupation for years. Occasionally she runs into Taro, who becomes increasingly hardened to the violence around him.

Then Taro finally returns to Japan. And then December 7,1941 rolls around with his American friends still there, where things soon become very unpleasant.

The war was still on when this was made, so naturally Japanese actors couldn't have taken these parts even if they had wanted to take them. It does a good job of showing how traditions that had held fast in Japan for centuries - loyalty to family, belief in the emporer, the high esteem given to the military, could warp into something that becomes a killing machine under the right circumstances and the wrong leaders. I'd recommend it if you ever get a chance. It isn't as preachy as many films made during WWII about WWII.

today, it is easy to criticize it. for the unrealistic Japanese characters, for the too subjective message, for the cruelty and conflicts who are perceived as strange. but the bad opinion has a fragile root. because we ignore the context. for 1943, a propaganda film, mixing few romantic and film noir slices, is the predictable tool for encouraging and answer to expectations. and this is the most useful angle for see it. because, if you ignore all the points of your superiority about it, it is a decent war film. and this, maybe, is the essential thing. because, behind the scenes, the real dramas are easy to be discovered. so, an useful lesson.

Today (even in 1943) this film is very racist dealing with Japanese son educated in US goes back to Japan and takes part in atrocities there and in China. The whole China sequences are very grisly and actually disturbing, such as nailing the baby to the door by his/her pigtail along with the usual raping and pillaging of the Chinese countryside. They even keep the Chinese drugged up with free heroin handouts from trucks that pull into the villages. There is just one "good" Japanese character in the movie, the female secretary who works for an American architect caught in Japan with some Western reporters when WW2 finally erupts. But then these characters get tortured and sentenced to death. On the whole film it is NEVER boring...never. It has very good production and fine actors (even though Japanese are all played by white Europeans a la Charlie Chan). Now get this! RKO was asked by US government to make a picture that would portray Japanese in a real and fair way instead of the crop of anti-Japanese pictures that were made already so to stave off racial hatred toward this group. It was rampant in US (not so, for Germans though, interestingly films about Nazi's always had numerous "good" Germans, never in propaganda Japanese films who were usually portrayed as sub human hordes.)Anyway this was Hollywood's answer to the problem. Unbelievable! Film though is considered an excellent yet hysterical example of WW2 propaganda at the time.