Anatahan

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.

By the time Josef von Sternberg made "The Saga of Anatahan" you might as well say his career was over. His glory days working with Dietrich were in the past and since the critical disaster that was "The Shanghai Gesture" in 1941 he had made only three other features, one of which, "Jet Pilot", wasn't released until after "Anatahan". He filmed "The Saga of Anatahan" in a studio in Kyoto 'especially built for the purpose' as an opening credit tells us, with a Japanese cast acting out a drama in an artificially constructed jungle, speaking Japanese but without subtitles. Instead von Sternberg himself narrates the film in English; he also wrote the film and photographed it in a black and white as evocative as that used in "The Scarlett Empress" or "Shanghai Express".

The story is a familiar one; a group of men find themselves stranded, in this case, on an island on which there is only one woman and set about destroying themselves over her. It was quite an erotic film for the period, featuring female nudity, something rare at the time. Indeed it was just the kind of film you might have found in a Soho or 42nd Street porno cinema rather than in the mainstream and for years it was thought of as a lost work but no von Sternberg movie, especially one as strange as this one, is going to remain lost for long and today is often considered something of a masterpiece.

It is certainly extraordinary; an avant-garde film totally unlike anything the director had done before and von Sternberg himself though it was his best film, a bold experiment that may have failed commercially but not artistically. If the acting is closer to Kabuki Theatre than mainline cinema it's because most of the cast came from the Kabuki Theatre. What audience did von Sternberg think would be attracted to such a film? Surely he knew it would be a flop but equally he must have known that a film as imaginative and as bold as this would not pass unnoticed. Although von Sternberg was never to work again he would live another sixteen years yet not long enough to see this extraordinary film reassessed and given its rightful place in his canon. See it and marvel for yourselves.

After many months of searching I located Josef's The Saga of Anatahan. It definitely held my attention and was a unique viewing experience. A completely Japanese war tale relayed in english (?) it has a strange beauty that is difficult to approximate in plain text. I don't know how Sternberg decided on this as his last cinematic statement, but it is certainly a fascinating b & w piece.

This film actually had a run in Paris outside the Cinematheque and it attracted considerable attention. It's an audacious,in-your-face sort of quirky film that works on many levels. Sterberg's autobiography "Fun in a Chinese Laundry" spells out some of techniques he employed but the film needs to be experienced beyond a mere description. It was shot in an airplane hangar to begin with, with all the tinsel and tin foil representing an island jungle. The limited number of players (all non-professional) and space (on an island) make this more of a chamber work rather than the Hollywood cast of thousands and its subdued drama will disappoint some who want things to be more explicit. It's purely artificial and looks that way deliberately. The film is in Japanese without subtitles and the narrator in English is none other than Sternberg himself. He warns the audience of what will happen BEFORE it happens, thus leaving us free to discover the camera-work, the scenery and the atmosphere minus the drama. Drama there is, of course, but detached from what's happening on screen. Everything in the film - minus the very last shot, alas - is artificial, dream-like and absolutely fascinating. What a remarkable end to a remarkable career. I highly recommend it although I wouldn't know how to find it. Good luck!

Curtis Stotlar

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}