A total oddball curio here, The Saga of Anatahan. Was Josef Von Sternberg's last film, and one which apparently he was of being. I'm really not too sure what we see on the screen justifies of Von Sternberg's original finished product.
The story is about a group of a troop of Japanese soldiers that get marooned on an island on the dying days of World War II. While waiting for the rescuers that the soldiers KNOW that's coming to them, they soon discover they're not alone, and better yet, one of the two people they meet is a woman! Soon, carnal lust takes over, and man's eternal fight, lust and power, soon takes over..
Sounds pretty good, right? It would have been, except for the fact that while the actors are speaking Japanese in this, the whole thing is narrated in English, and even worse, by someone who seems to narrate action films for a living, who seems to flourish in the somewhat less exciting things that are going on screen. Another thing that bothered me about this film, is the very clumsy foreshadowing going on. Time after time, we had the narrator telling us clearly what was going to happen, eg, "This was a nice day, little did they realize one of them would be DEAD!" Oh brother. Why did they fool around with something that was fine to begin with?
The story is about a group of a troop of Japanese soldiers that get marooned on an island on the dying days of World War II. While waiting for the rescuers that the soldiers KNOW that's coming to them, they soon discover they're not alone, and better yet, one of the two people they meet is a woman! Soon, carnal lust takes over, and man's eternal fight, lust and power, soon takes over..
Sounds pretty good, right? It would have been, except for the fact that while the actors are speaking Japanese in this, the whole thing is narrated in English, and even worse, by someone who seems to narrate action films for a living, who seems to flourish in the somewhat less exciting things that are going on screen. Another thing that bothered me about this film, is the very clumsy foreshadowing going on. Time after time, we had the narrator telling us clearly what was going to happen, eg, "This was a nice day, little did they realize one of them would be DEAD!" Oh brother. Why did they fool around with something that was fine to begin with?