Behind the Rising Sun (1943) User Reviews

of course, it was propaganda...

[arwebevenstar · 6/10 · 2 June 2005]

Well, where do I start? I would like to point out some erroneous statements by the first viewer commenting. He states that the introductory statement says it is "100% true" and "authentic". Actually, its says "true-to-life", which I would construe to be similar to today's films saying that the movie is "based on...". It states that the film is not biographical, but the incidents depicted did occur. We know from historical works that the Japanese were responsible for many atrocities in China, especially Manchuria...the giving of opium to the starving villagers, the bayoneting of infants and toddlers, the raping of Chinese women and the setting up of houses of prostitution to "service" the Japanese Army & so on. So as Hollywood has always done, they take real facts and fictionalized & personalized them to give them more impact. A statement by the previous commenter, about how all the major roles were played by white actors, while actors of Japanese heritage played lesser/support roles. Well, as far as I can tell by cast listing, there were no Japanese actors in the movie. Philip Ahn (Korean descent), Benson Fong and the other Asian actors are Chinese ancestry. J. Carroll Naish had played other Asian characters throughout his career. Tama was played by Mexican-American actress, Margo (married to Eddie Albert).Tom Neal makes a very strange Japanese, even for the time...For a propaganda film, it is more even handed in its portrayal of the Japanese characters and the upheaval in Japanese society then many war films of its day. There are two story strands, the brutalization of Taro, from a americanized frat boy to a murdering martinet and the humanizing of his father, Reo Seki, who comes to see the loss of son and his son's happiness in marriage to Tama, a farmer's daughter and the destruction of the rigid social order of his beloved country... The Russian is portrayed positively; the German a bit dismissively; and the three Americans (woman reporter, the male engineer, the baseball coach), are all different faces of American society: the brave American (the woman reporter); the status-quo American (the engineer) and the "ugly" American (the baseball coach).

An interesting propaganda film that actually isn't quite as ridiculous as it appears...

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 19 September 2009]

This film is the story of a fictional family. Their son had gone to Cornell University in the USA to study and when he returns, he's not used to the Japanese ways. However, he is anxious to be accepted and soon gravitates towards the militaristic wing of Japanese society and he rather quickly shifts from a nice and decent person to a cold monster.

This film is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, it does look pretty ludicrous, particularly today, to see American actors like J. Carrol Naish and Tom Neal done up with heavy makeup--playing Japanese people! Sure, there may not have been that many actors of Japanese descent in Hollywood at the time, but at least having an Asian of some sort play the roles would have made a lot more sense. As one reviewer put it, the film was "loopy". On the other, while much of the propaganda may seem ridiculously overzealous and ridiculous today, the truth is that in many ways what the Japanese had really been doing wasn't that much different than in the film...though it was actually worse. This film showed a few atrocities being committed in China and talked about the Japanese troops doing bayonet practice with a baby--surely this didn't happen, right?! Well, actually it did--and a whole lot worse. It's actually pretty amazing that films made since WWII have mostly ignored the many, many Japanese atrocities committed in China and this wartime propaganda film is one of the few to even mention it. Don't believe me? Read Irish Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking" or the documentary NANKING. I hesitate to go into the details, but they are considerably worse than the killing of a few babies.

Back to the film. Aside from alluding to the truth of the killing of innocents by Japanese troops, the film is amazingly silly in parts. The boxing match with the Judo expert was really silly and the dialog often stilted...and silly. But overall, it's a really interesting curiosity piece and worth seeing. Plus, it lacks the overt racism and stupidity of one of Mr. Neal's other films, FIRST YANK IN TOKYO.

This will teach you to stay out of the way of a Japanese Soldier!

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 5 September 2009]

**Mild Spoilers** Surprisingly mild-in the propaganda department-motion picture for an American made war movie at the very hight, with the Axis winning at the time it was made, of WWII.

The movie "Behind the Rising Sun" does show the Japanese as villains but only the most nationalist and fanatical as well as racist, towards the white or Caucasian race, among them. The Japanese people for the most part are shown being brutalized and exploited by Japan's Fascist military junta, headed by Gen. Tojo, as much as the Chinese people-who are under Japan's thumb-shown in the film. The film incredibly also shows that the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, descendant of the Sun God, as an innocent stooge being manipulate by Tojo's Military Junta and in no way involved in the crimes that he was at the time, in both US newspapers and heavily propagandized war films, accused of committing. This is exactly what happened two years later in the United State, under the urging of Gen MacArthur, and its allies refusing to indite Hirohito for war crimes! Which turned out to be one of the most brilliant decisions that Gen MacArthur ever made in peace as well as wartime!

In "Behind the Rising Sun" we see the lives of father and son Reo & Toro Seki, J. Carrol Nash and Tom Neal, change directions because of the upheaval in their native Japan. Toro who was educated in America is anything like his father Reo in respecting or upholding Japanese tradition. Reo at first is as fanatical a Japanese nationalist as you can get but it's his son who in the end, after being brainwashed by the Japanese military, turns the corner and outdoes even his, who by then finally saw the light, gong-ho and kamikaze like pop! In fact as the movie starts we already see that Toro made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and wait to see, by watching the film, what exactly lead him to do it!

Sent to fight in China as an officer in the Japaneses Army's Communication & Engineer Corps Toro became insensitive towards the horrors that his fellow Japanese soldiers inflicted on the helpless Chinese population. Back in Tokyo Toro's father Reo soon realized that his beloved country Japan was descending into barbarism, in its plans to conquer the entire world, and wanted no part of it. I wondered watching the movie if those behind it were somehow trying to put a wedge between Japan and its ally in WWII Nazi Germany! In its hinting that Germany being as white and Caucasian as any nation on earth would be on Japan's hit-list after it, together Germany & Italy, won the war!

It becomes very apparent to Reo that his son Toro had gone off the deep end when he came back home on leave from China and even worse he, in his pushing Japanese nationalism on Toro, together with him being indoctrinated by the Japaneses military was a major cause of it! With his son now gone forever, killed during the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo, Reo could no longer face what he did and did the only thing left for him to do by doing-via Hiri Kiri- himself in Japanese style.

Together with the very deep and thought-provoking political menu in the movie we also have Toro's love interest the exotically beautiful Margo as Tama Shimamuka as well as a secondary love affair with American businessman Clancy O'Hara, Donald Douglas, and American newspaper woman Sara Braden, Gloria Holden, which was more or less padding or fillers, to stretch the film to it's eventual 88 minutes, then anything else.

P.S By far the best part of the movie had nothing at all to do with the war but a knock down drag out "Battle of the Century" between American prizefighter Lefty O'Doyle, Robert Ryan, and Japanese martial arts expert, even though he's about as Japanese as I'm inner Mongolian, Mike Mazurki. That incredible slug fest between the two giants of pugilism was more then worth the price of admission!

"What's getting into these birds, anyway?" - Lefty

[cutterccbaxter · 4 June 2005]

This film was an attempt by Edward Dymtryk to show the Japanese as individuals, and not as stereotyped sub-humans commonly portrayed in the other films of the period. The goal was to show Japan's aggressiveness was the result of a militaristic culture that came to dominate the country by squashing out all forms of liberalism. The Office of War Information (OWI) approved of the approach for they were constantly dismayed by Hollywood's depiction of the Japanese, feeling that after the U.S. had won the war these types of negative portrayals would only hinder a solid relationship between the two nations. I think it could be argued that "Behind The Rising Sun" failed to meet expectations, and ended up being a confused piece of propaganda. This is what probably makes it rather fascinating to watch today. It never firmly develops any major sympathetic Japanese character except the one played by Margo, and the basis of her character is that she is intrigued by all things American. The Japanese character played by J Carrol Naish has changed his political outlook by the conclusion of the film to be against Japan's expansionist aspirations. He decides his best course of action is to kill himself. Tom Neal, who looks like he is auditioning for a part in a video for The Vapor's "I Think I'm Turning Japanese," is apparently supposed to be an example of how Japan's militaristic culture can take a happy-go-lucky fellow, and transform him into a ruthless and cold hearted killer. His transformation doesn't seem very believable. His actions seem to support the racists notions the viewer might have had at the time rather than cast doubt on them.

"We never let a cat break up a good poker game in Idaho" --Lefty I think my favorite scenes in the film involve Robert Ryan's character, Lefty. When he shoots his pistol at a cat, and the authorities show up and confiscate his gun he is completely befuddle. It's like he can't believe he is in a country that is so oppressive that a fellow can't even shoot a cat. His fight scene with Mike Mazurki is quite memorable too.

Ahead of its time

[djpass9 · 7/10 · 14 April 2020]

I wasn't expecting much from a Tom Nea movie, but this was an instructive bit of propaganda. dougdoepke in his review here makes some excellent points. The Japanese people are portrayed as being the victims of rigid class system. In this film it is the Japanese who are the racists. Aside from that, I enjoyed seeing Gloria Holden and Don Douglas, who died too young....Some of the air raid footage looked as if it was recycled from "Bombadier."

Honor is destroyed when one becomes a slave to a power hungry master.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 8 April 2020]

This World War II propaganda drama has many great things about it, but subtlety is not one of them. If I had a nickel for every time some Japanese villain said "please", I'd be rich. the fact that most of the Japanese characters are played by non-japanese or even other Asian actors is extremely noticable, as obvious as all of the English signs in Tokyo settings. This starts long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, focusing on an idealistic young Japanese man (the very American looking Tom Neal) who returns after graduating from Cornell University and quickly finds himself pulled into the war with China, completely changing his liberal, democratic ways of thinking as imperialistic Japan prepares to strike American soil. This focuses on his growing love for the gehtle Margo, a young Japanese girl who longs to go to America. There's also American foreign correspondent Donald Douglas who is in love with reporter Gloria Holden, taken prisoner upon the strike on Pearl Harbor, and American boxer Robert Ryan who goes toe to toe with judp expert Mike Mazurki, one of the silliest castings in history, but fortunately, the very American Mazurki never gets to speak.

While some of this is very shocking (abuses of children, off screen rapes, insinuations of murderous torture), it's often overdone as an attack on the lifestyle of the imperialistic Japanese government and military, although there are subtle portrayals of regular Japanese citizens who are as much victims of the ruthlessness as the foreigners are. This is technically an excellent film, with superb art direction, a great musical score and outstanding photography. But the script is often high-handed and one-dimensional, and there really seems to be no conclusion presented since the conflict was still going on at the time. The final speech by a Japanese imperialist about to commit hari carey seems to be a desperate measure to bring this to a conclusion, but seemingly all it accomplishes is to create anger in a way that doesn't aid in what the war was being fought about.

faux Japanese drama gets points for ambition, not execution

[funkyfry · 3/10 · 10 December 2007]

Considering that this is blatant propaganda – basically it is to Japan what "Hitler's Children" is to Germany, and from the same director – it's a somewhat difficult film to evaluate today. I end up going on the negative side – I really don't think that for anyone other than people like myself who are interested in propaganda as a subject that there is very much of value in this film at this point. But I do think that for war-time American audiences it wasn't a rip-off; it did provide a varied entertainment vehicle with surprising elements like a young Robert Ryan boxing against a Sumo wrestler and a fairly interesting love story between the secondary American characters (Gloria Holden and Donald Douglas).

The most striking thing about this movie is how hard it strives – like "Children" – to establish the humanity of the Japanese characters before showing how fascist systems of thought dehumanize them and make them capable of doing unimaginable deeds (this film implies that babies are being thrown into some kind of pit and shows children being separated from their mothers so the Japanese army can have their way with them). Unfortunately this effect is greatly damaged by having non-Japanese actors for all the major roles. This isn't a practice that I think deserves the kind of blanket-condemnation that it's received lately. I don't think it's inherently racist to have an actor portray a role that's not of their racial type – Lon Chaney's appearance in "Shadows" is no more racist for example than Denzel Washington's appearance in "Much Ado About Nothing." We should not dismiss the artistic validity of a performance simply because the actor is playing outside his native racial heritage – to do so is far too limiting for actors and shows a lack of imagination on the part of audiences. But in this case I just feel that given how sensitive the material is – Japan's atrocities in China and the Pearl Harbor bombing, for example – it would be highly preferable to have actual Asian-American actors in the roles. And I think this would even have strengthened the film's function as propaganda at the time of its release both here and abroad. And the final nail in the coffin is the fact that they picked Tom Neal ("Detour"), an unimpressive actor with no screen presence and a distinctly European face that simply defies all putty and paint and never convinces. Usually in these kind of films I start to ignore the racial difference regardless of how European the actor looks – for instance Boris Karloff was convincing in "West of Shanghai." But Neal is not a good enough actor to make us want to forget that he's playing outside his racial type because he's also playing outside of the range of his talent. J. Carrol Naish shows how it's done – his performance as the father, Reo Seki, is very subtle and accomplished and we stop thinking about any racial difference within minutes because of the skill with which he fills out the role. So there's a strong contrast here within this movie that really damages whatever is left of its dramatic strength. But it really would have helped as well if they had selected an actor for Taro Seki who had a somewhat less distinctive face without quite as strong a jaw as Neal.

I did think it was pretty surprising that the narrative so completely abandoned Taro Seki (Neal)… I kind of kept expecting it to make a hero out of him again in the end somehow. Instead the film shifts to the point where Reo Seki is someone we can relate to more than the son who seems to be so American at the beginning of the film. So the movie benefits by not being as predictable as it could have been. It really allows Japanese culture to emerge with some dignity. Too bad they felt they had to fill it with absurd elements. For example in one scene when Japan declares war on China, a man with a rather comical but somehow scary Asian face (Paul Fung, apparently) jumps out and the American characters say something like "oh no, it's the Samurai Sword dance!" just as he starts to twirl and pounce ridiculously around the room. In another scene Japanese soldiers hand out opium to small Chinese children instead of bread.

It would be really fantastic if the movie actually was what it appears to be – an exploration of how good people become evil people under the influence of fascist ideology. Some of the early scenes like the one where Taro Seki takes his girlfriend (Margo) to a baseball game that's interrupted by military drills and an instruction that "everything you see on the field should be viewed as military preparation", seemed to promise such a movie. But in reality it's a bit more ambitious than it probably should have been in terms of humanizing the Japanese, producing a film that from today's eyes (at least, mine) appears even more bizarre than some of the more one-sided propaganda films from the period simply because it's trying to do so much but then betrays that attempt whenever necessary or even perhaps convenient. The director, Dmytyrk, actually got in trouble later on in the 50s for some of the things he did in these films and in some of the films he made after the War ended. In this film for example we have a sympathetic Communist figure in "Boris" (George Givot). Dmytryk always had big ideas but his style of directing is very straightforward and in this particular film there's not much personality to distinguish it from your run of the mill B propaganda picture, except perhaps the attention that's been paid as I said above to keeping the humanity of the Japanese front and center, and this goes for both negative and positive portrayals of the characters.

HUAC's attention

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 28 May 2016]

Although some very interesting things were said in it, in the final analysis Behind The Rising Sun was more propaganda than truth to it. It was also insulting and in fact a couple of things might have gotten director Edward Dmytryk membership in the Hollywood 10.

J. Carrol Naish and Tom Neal with Oriental makeup on them play father and son. Naish a member of the rising new business class in Japan can afford to send Neal to Cornell in America. He comes back sporting new hep cat idioms of expression.

The film tries for some verisimilitude as Naish says that Japan is about to take its place in the world, that the white man is not a majority by any means in the world. Neal doesn't quite to make of his dad's militance but drinks it in far more than he realizes then. That bit of dialog I'm sure got noticed by the folks at House Un American Activities Committee headed around then by Mississippi racist John Rankin.

Later on the roles reverse as Naish decides his country has become to fascist with its Samurai based code of military behavior. Japan is the great example always held up by historians about the need for civilian control of the military. By then Neal is a true believer in the destiny of Japan.

Another thing that got HUAC's attention was George Givot playing the Russian journalist who becomes friend and benefactor to Americans caught in Japan after Pearl Harbor. A friendly portrayal of a Communist would certainly do the trick with the HUAC thought police.

At one point Neal and former employer engineer Don Douglas have a nasty confrontation and decide to settle it with seconds. Neal gets wrestler Mike Mazurki who excels in Judo. Douglas gets his friend Robert Ryan to go in for him. In real life Mazurki was a wrestler before turning to acting and being really good at it. Ditto for Ryan who did box as an amateur and both look like they know what they're doing. Both go into the ring using their arts. Ryan and Mazurki must have had one good laugh over it because the heavier and very agile Mazurki would have killed Ryan.

A couple of other key roles are Dorothy Thompson like reporter Gloria Holden and Margo playing the girl Neal wants to marry. Her heart is truly broken.

Behind The Rising Sun had some serious things to say, but in the end with that insulting makeup just doesn't hold up today.

Patronizing American horseshyt, as usual

[ArtVandelayImporterExporter · 2/10 · 17 January 2023]

Japanese secretary to Japanese guy who has returned from Cornell to work as an engineer in a Japanese factory: "Can everyone do just as he wants to do? And can anyone get to be president? Whether he was born in a log cabin or not?"

Well, sure, doll, as long as he isn't bl#ck or Asian, he can do whatever he wants and go wherever he wants. On the other hand, American citizens who look like your new pal here have been put into prison camps because President Roosevelt is a spineless, civil liberties hating authoritarian tyrant who provoked a war with your country with a naval blockade. And your racist, war-mongering authoritarian tyrant decided butchering Chinese didn't give him enough kicks so he figured he'd take a shot at Pearl Harbour. But why quibble.

Anyway, I think this movie is supposed to show that there are plenty of Good Japanese, sop when the good guys win WWII we shouldn't hate on them. Almost as clumsily rendered as a middle-school education film.

Ultimately all the round-eyes made up in Y3llow-Face talking pidgen-English is too distracting. I couldn't stick with it.

About the only film made during WWII to talk about the Japanese pre-war...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 30 May 2016]

... and to talk about them in any sympathetic way whatsoever. Taro Seki(Tom Neal), a happy go lucky kid, returns to Japan after finishing his degree in engineering in America. His father, Reo (J Carrol Naish) is a VIP in the government. Now it did seem a bit much that Taro would greet his dad after only four years in the U.S. with the 1940's version of "Hi daddy-O how's it hanging? I'm just swell!", but I guess the writers had to quickly show how much he had bought into the American dream and planned on living it in Japan. Taro goes to business man Clancy OHara (Donald Douglas) for an engineering job, gets one, and meets Tama (Margo), Clancys secretary. They begin seeing each other and decide to marry, but Taro is drafted into the Japanese army and is shipped off to China. All the while, Taro's father is disapproving of Taro marrying someone he considers to be a commoner, although he has nothing personal against the girl.

There is a sideplot of the European and Americans living in Japan. American journalist Sara practically proposes to Clancy, but you can tell he is scared stiff of the idea of marriage even though he enjoys Sara's company. Sara feels rebuffed, and goes off to report in China on the Japanese occupation for years. Occasionally she runs into Taro, who becomes increasingly hardened to the violence around him.

Then Taro finally returns to Japan. And then December 7,1941 rolls around with his American friends still there, where things soon become very unpleasant.

The war was still on when this was made, so naturally Japanese actors couldn't have taken these parts even if they had wanted to take them. It does a good job of showing how traditions that had held fast in Japan for centuries - loyalty to family, belief in the emporer, the high esteem given to the military, could warp into something that becomes a killing machine under the right circumstances and the wrong leaders. I'd recommend it if you ever get a chance. It isn't as preachy as many films made during WWII about WWII.

Laying the Basis for Post-War Occupation

[dougdoepke · 19 September 2009]

Unlike boilerplate propaganda films of WWII, this one has some complexity. I suspect Washington DC was smelling victory in 1943 and was correctly concerned with post-war occupation and how the American public would react. Thus, as other reviewers point out, the enemy is depicted as Japan's medieval warrior society and not the Japanese people as a people. The movie's propaganda aspects center on familiar stereotypes (cruel soldiers and inhumane policies), but more importantly, these ugly aspects are also portrayed as the result of a conditioning process (Taro), and not the result of some genetic, sub-human flaw as in typical propaganda films of the time.

This distinction opens the possibility that a reformed social order with better values and socializing process can produce a more modern and democratic people better attuned to Western ideals (Tama, Reo, & the early Taro). The end result thus suggests that the Japanese people may be human after all, yet suffering from what may be termed a "social disorder"-- A disorder that a good dose of American-style democracy can remedy under an astute post- war occupation regime, such as Gen. MacArthur's turned out to be. Now, no matter how self- congratulatory these political assumptions may be, the result turns out to be shrewdly visionary in an historical sense.

Of course, this is a pretty heavy load for what is essentially an RKO programmer. Nonetheless, the subtext plays out in a screenplay more shaded than most. I suspect audiences expecting something more typically simplistic were a bit put off by the ambiguities. Still and all, there are familiar American stereotypes to anchor the audience—the good-hearted Irishman (O'Hara), the competitive sportsman (Lefty), and the enterprising reporter (Sara). Revealingly, they're shown as getting along quite well with those liberally minded Japanese who will share power during the post-war period.

This mixture of crude stereotype along with the more subtle humanizing aspect creates a rather awkward combination that doesn't work very well for the movie as a whole. Perhaps this is why the film remains pretty obscure in movie annals. Nonetheless, two episodes remain memorable for me. It's easy to overlook architect O'Hara's passing observation about sturdy Western construction materials. These, he points out, can withstand natural calamities that Pacific islands are prone to, such as earthquakes and floods, better than traditional, less substantial, Japanese materials. To me, this illustrates the potentials of a genuinely cooperative internationalism outside this particular one-sided context. Also, the central action scene of a gangly American boxer (Ryan) vs. a Japanese martial arts expert (Mazurki) may not be very convincing, but it certainly is eye-catching.

Now, I'm in no position to judge the historical accuracy of the events depicted here and claimed as fact-based by the prologue. Nonetheless, the movie remains an interesting one for its generally humane message in a time of real war.

Interesting To Say The Least

[irishcoffee630 · 9/10 · 2 August 2003]

Today (even in 1943) this film is very racist dealing with Japanese son educated in US goes back to Japan and takes part in atrocities there and in China. The whole China sequences are very grisly and actually disturbing, such as nailing the baby to the door by his/her pigtail along with the usual raping and pillaging of the Chinese countryside. They even keep the Chinese drugged up with free heroin handouts from trucks that pull into the villages. There is just one "good" Japanese character in the movie, the female secretary who works for an American architect caught in Japan with some Western reporters when WW2 finally erupts. But then these characters get tortured and sentenced to death. On the whole film it is NEVER boring...never. It has very good production and fine actors (even though Japanese are all played by white Europeans a la Charlie Chan). Now get this! RKO was asked by US government to make a picture that would portray Japanese in a real and fair way instead of the crop of anti-Japanese pictures that were made already so to stave off racial hatred toward this group. It was rampant in US (not so, for Germans though, interestingly films about Nazi's always had numerous "good" Germans, never in propaganda Japanese films who were usually portrayed as sub human hordes.)Anyway this was Hollywood's answer to the problem. Unbelievable! Film though is considered an excellent yet hysterical example of WW2 propaganda at the time.

Loopy, intriguing WWII propaganda

[kev-22 · 22 May 1999]

We'd call it racist today, but this constantly amusing bit of rabble rousing did what it had to do at the time, while allowing somewhat refreshingly that not all Japanese were monsters. When this was made, the outcome of the war was still not assured, although the bombing raids over Tokyo were in full swing, as the end of the film shows. Along the way there's an incongruous mix of white RKO stock leads unconvincingly playing the main Japanese characters while actors of actual Japanese descent play minor supporting parts. J. Carrol Naish may seem silly as a Japanese businessman, but he is surprisingly sincere as the misguided father who goads his nonviolent, Americanized son with jingoistic pleas to enter military service. To the father's eventual dismay, the son, played by Tom Neal in one of Hollywood's more notable instances of miscasting, becomes an increasingly callous savage who comes to relish Japanese atrocities while on duty in China. Showing that Hollywood could do the Goebbels thing with the best of them, the film proceeds to show Japanese soldiers pushing opium on children, yanking mothers away from crying infants, hauling Chinese women into prostitution houses, bayoneting children, and--worst of all--slapping around American nationals! The highlight is a wacky, drawn-out duel of strength between an American boxer (Robert Ryan doing his "The Set Up" thing six years before the fact) and a Japanese jujitsu expert. The film's opening titles claim that the whole thing is 100 percent true and authentic, a perfect red flag to take it all with a grain of salt.

propaganda. at the first sigh

[Kirpianuscus · 31 July 2017]

today, it is easy to criticize it. for the unrealistic Japanese characters, for the too subjective message, for the cruelty and conflicts who are perceived as strange. but the bad opinion has a fragile root. because we ignore the context. for 1943, a propaganda film, mixing few romantic and film noir slices, is the predictable tool for encouraging and answer to expectations. and this is the most useful angle for see it. because, if you ignore all the points of your superiority about it, it is a decent war film. and this, maybe, is the essential thing. because, behind the scenes, the real dramas are easy to be discovered. so, an useful lesson.

propaganda movie

[Vincentiu · 27 June 2013]

a classical propaganda movie. with usual ManicheAN speech, with good Americans and a sort of Japanes villain, with cruelty, happy end and a sad love story. it can be ridiculous , amusing, a document or, only, a pure nice film from an old period. in fact, it is little more. a map about perception of a nation, a exercise for few American actors to perform under make-up for becomes Japaneses, remember about a war traces and, sure, interesting comparison between box and judo. like many old films, it is a mirror for its period. naive, strange, not serious, full of pathetic scenes. but, in a special manner, realistic. because the crumbs of fiction grows - up on real earth.