Du sang dans le soleil

After James Cagney won his Academy Award for Best Actor, he broke free of Warner Bros. and began focusing on what he considered to be art. Cagney's own production company made this wartime thriller, and it is one of his better efforts among his 1940's independent works. Cagney plays an American newspaper reporter living in Japan who crosses wires with the expansionist Japanese government. Cagney's character is fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, and even knows judo. It's refreshing to see a film from the immediate post-war era that doesn't try to simplify the problem of what happened in Japan and Germany with something like - If only these people would start playing baseball, learn to love hot dogs, and be more like Americans, this sort of thing would never have happened.

Cagney's character, Nick Condun, has to hide some expansionist Japanese plans from the Japanese government until he can safely get the data to the American embassy. Along the way he finds an ally in half-Chinese Sylvia Sydney's character Iris Hilliard, who becomes Nick's love interest. One thing about the production code you have to understand - interracial love is strictly taboo, so Nick and Iris' love scenes are less than satisfying. At the end of the film they share just the tiniest bit of a kiss.

Cagney is always fun to watch whether he's on an unrighteous or righteous tear, so I'd recommend it even if the script could have perhaps been a little more lively to match the energy of the lead actor.

Jimmy Cagney is like a firecracker in this movie, set in pre-WWII Japan. In some ways it's a cross between Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon and sometimes it's silly (e.g., white actors in Japanese makeup), but it's one of the most entertaining movies of its era. It reminds you how much of a talent James Cagney was - he carries the picture. There are also excellent character performances by Wallace Ford and Porter Hall. Even Sylvia Sidney as an unconvincing half-Chinese vixen has some good moments.

Beware of the DVD, however - the audio is mixed so badly that at times you'll have to put your ear up against the TV to hear the dialogue.

The only reason this film gets as high as a five from me is because of James Cagney who made everything he was in a little bit better or appear to be so.

Blood on the Sun, coming out as it did in 1945 as World War II was ending focused on an incident from 1929. A document called the Tanaka Memorial which was purportedly a memorandum by the then Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi to Emperor Showa was leaked to U.S. media. It laid forth Japanese intentions to dominate the Pacific, Asia, and even the USA.

Problem was that when the Americans did occupy Japan, General MacArthur sent Army intelligence into sifting through Japanese files. Guess what? No Tanaka Memorial. A lot of people now consider the thing to have been a big old hoax perpetrated by the Chinese who were looking for friends back in 1929 because they rightly suspected Japanese intentions towards them.

So Blood in the Sun came out just in time as the belief in the Tanaka Memorial was still credible.

The brothers Cagney, William and James, produced this. But without the production values of the brothers Warner, this film looks like it was shot on the cheap. Jimmy Cagney played Nick Condon, a reporter who got a copy of the Tanaka Memorial and smuggled it out of Japan.

A lot of the cast played Eurasian roles and looked pretty silly too. Sylvia Sidney, John Emery and especially Robert Armstrong who may have conquered King Kong, but couldn't sound Oriental to save his life.

One point is made repeatedly in this film--the fascist government which ruled Japan was extreme in both concept and execution. James Cagney, as reporter Nick Condon, fights against fascism in this movie and he fought against injustice in so many other films. In a way, this film is another gangster movie, somewhat like the gangster movies of the 1930s, but, too, the story has to do with much more that simple violations of law for the gangsters are in the Japanese Imperial Government. Cagney seems willing to take on the whole Imperial concept of Japanese rule which began prior to World War Two. His efforts are not anti-Japanese but anti-Facist. In fact, the movie could have been made about Hitler's Nazism and the story would have been about the same. One finds Cagney as the tough guy confronting bumbling police and meeting with mysterious women. He even maintains the newspaper tradition relative to the constant drinking of alcohol. Yet, the film transcends the mundane because of the importance of the struggle during the war years, years which follow the movie's time frame. It's vintage Cagney, well worthwhile.

Nicely done war thriller with Cagney as a suave but pugnacious newspaper reporter in Japan who comes into possession of secret war plans. The plans are the work of a fascist Baron Tanaka who pushes the war agenda for the right-wing militarists over the objections of those opposed to war. The characters are interesting, and while many are static yet well-played, quite a few others are nicely fleshed out and grow during the plot. Cagney, some of the newspapermen and the female spy have some plot movement to develop their characters with. Even the villains, who could easily be cardboard, are well-played and exhibit human motivation. Obviously this is not a documentary, but it's also not pure melodrama either.

Perhaps the most visually interesting areas of the film are the contrasts between beautiful, high-class modernist settings, a representation of more traditional Japanese architecture, and gritty realistically-dressed street scenes. All the more interesting that the good production and pretty sets were created in Hollywood backlots in 1945 during the war. While this is not a huge film, the production design is as good as anything from the golden age. There is a lot of eye-candy in the set design, tastefully filmed and a treat to view.

The politics and cultural sensitivities of the film are also fascinating and far more balanced and subtle than other reviewers seem to indicate here. Cagney's character is well-immersed in Japanese culture and aware of the social issues of the time. He speaks Japanese, in addition to Chinese, and is a highly-skilled Judo aficionado. The film portrays Japanese opponents of the war as well-meaning but fairly easily countered by ruthless militarists and their secret police which is likely generally accurate. Surely similar struggles played out in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, along with Stalinist Russia, Mao's China and other 20th century totalitarian dictatorships both right and left.

This film is not anti-Japanese; it's anti-Fascist. Those who claim to be unaware of the difference would imply that Japanese are Fascists. That would be unfortunately ignorant.