La Grande Muraille

Like its American counter-part, the Japanese studio system was by 1962 in heavy competition with television. Hollywood had decided to lure viewers back to theaters by making films so big, that television in its infancy could not match them. Many of the biggest films of the era were historical epics, wildly varying in quality. Japan also ventured into making large scale period films, among which this one stands out, because it takes place in China. But then again, if John Wayne could play Genghis Khan, why shouldn't Katsu Shintaro play emperor Quin Shi Huang?

This film tells "the story of the first emperor". The quotation marks are there, because its just about as historical as you could expect from an old time Hollywood film. The film looks impressive. Daie studio has clearly put down the capital to make this a spectacle. The film runs two and a half hours, and boasts an impressive who's-who of Japanese film stars of the day, like Wakao Ayako, Yamamoto Fujiko, Yamada Isuzu, Ichikawa Raizo, Hasegawa Kazuo and Nakamura Ganjiro. The problem is that most of these people are wasted in parts that are way below their talent.

The film is very dialogue-heavy, which would be fine, if the goal of the film was to actually inform the viewer realistically about the period here depicted. Unfortunately the dialogue is not very good, and the plot has difficulty to get moving. Katsu, who is great as the balanced Zatoichi, is not very believale as Quin. His performance features too much yelling and I don't think the film manages to make the character feel like a real person. Some of the action sequences were fine, and so was the cinematography. However the whole of this film is very serious without being the least deep, so in the end, I actually prefer Duke's Genghis Khan adventure.

Shintaro Katsu, best known for playing Zatoichi, plays the first Chinese Emperor, Qin. This is essentially the story of Qin from the founding of "China" by his unifying the various provinces, through the building of the great wall on to close to his death. Its a huge epic production thats been compared to western films like Ten Commandments, Lawrence of Arabia, and Ben Hur. This a film on a scale that they simply don't do any more.

As a epic films go this is one of the most beautiful. Its amazing to look at. The sense of scale and place has been rarely matched. The battle scenes are wonderful and on a scale that few films have ever matched. This is a movie where every person on the screen is a person and you can feel the realness. As an epic spectacle this film is one of the best.

Unfortunately when the spectacle subsides the plot takes over and while its not bad it is rather talky and soapy. Its not bad, but it seems out of place in an epic like this and somehow makes the characters less then the epic size the need to be to inhabit this story. It makes what should have been one of the great films of the world, simply one of the best looking run of the mill ones.

If you can secure yourself a copy do make an effort to see this (on a big screen, TV or theater, its a must.)

(FYI- The full running time of this film is 161 minutes)