A Saga de Anatahan

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.

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.

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

More of less ten years before making a film and twenty years after his great Marlene Dietrich seven films, Josef von Sternberg was out of luck. Then the Japanese offer him money over there and him to work with people in Japan. The dialogue is all Japanese and rather than subtitles Sternberg narrated the whole film. He found a dancer for the part and she in her first film is really good and ends having a decent career. The story is okay but not really very wonderful although we are surprised to get a couple of nude scenes although it was usually censored. Unfortunately as usual the director is without real locations other than a couple of a shots of the sea and two rocks with talk of the war and a plane. It's a sad end as more of less his film career is all over.

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.