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Japanese cinema’s earliest attempt to depict the full impact of the 1945 atom-bomb attack is one of the best anti-Nuke movies ever… yet it somehow stayed under the radar of American awareness for decades. The bombing is seen from only eight years’ distance, when the nation was seemingly resisting coming to terms with its social and political implications; Hideo Sekigawa’s account includes some subtle commentary on the indifferent political response to the plight of the victims… even in 1953. Arrow’s extras include a Jasper Sharp video essay that fills in a lot of blank cinema history between Enola Gay and Godzilla. The impressive music score will seem familiar; it’s by Akira Ifukube.

Hiroshima

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1953 / B&w / 1:37 flat / 104 85 min. / Street Date July 14, 2020 / 24.99

Starring: Eiji Okada, Yumeji Tsukioka, Yoshi Katô, Masayuki Tsukida, Takashi Kanda, Isuzu Yamada.

Cinematography: Shunichirô Nakao, Susumu Urashima

Film Editor: Akikazu Kôno

Original Music:...

Tomu Uchida first caught my attention during a massive, memorable retrospective of Japanese cinema at the Sherman Theater in Van Nuys, CA in 1980. A quick search of standard reference books revealed that Uchida's official classic was 1939's Earth, a quasi-documentary account of the lives of peasant farmers, shot over the course of a year to capture the changing seasons. No complete prints of the film are believed to exist, and in any case Uchida's reputation in 1980 was too low to generate much demand. For the next thirty years, my assumption that I'd never see Earth remained intact. But I woke up one morning last week to learn that a version had been made available online, with homemade English subtitles; and twelve hours later, Danny Kasman and I were watching it, astonished to be living in such exciting technological times.

Uchida had a broken-backed career. He began directing in the 20s...