Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Josef von Sternberg's Anatahan (1953) is showing June 4 – July 3, 2019 in the United States.Its premise alone is intriguing. A group of Japanese sailors are attacked at sea and become stranded on an island for seven years, with no knowledge of how the outside world carries on without them. A world, it’s worth noting, that is currently at war. The 1944 incident served as the basis for Michiro Maruyama’s 1954 novel, Anatahan, in which he detailed the ordeal and his time on the Northern Mariana island of that name. Intriguing, yes, but perhaps not a subject immediately associated with filmmaker Josef von Sternberg, a director best known for ornate, cloistered, exotic, and sometimes romantically convoluted dramas. Yet von Sternberg had, in fact, harbored an interest in Japanese culture and art for some time, and the prospect of translating Maruyama’s text to film,...
- 6/10/2019
- MUBI
Take one fiercely individual auteur fed up with the Hollywood game, put him in Kyoto with a full Japanese film company, and the result is a picture critics have been trying to figure out ever since. It’s a realistic story told in a highly artificial visual style, in un-subtitled Japanese. And its writer-director intended it to play for American audiences.
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
The Saga of Anatahan
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Anatahan, Ana-ta-han / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring: Akemi Negishi, Tadashi Suganuma, Kisaburo Sawamura, Shoji Nakayama, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroshi Kondo, Shozo Miyashita, Tsuruemon Bando, Kikuji Onoe, Rokuriro Kineya, Daijiro Tamura, Chizuru Kitagawa, Takeshi Suzuki, Shiro Amikura.
Cinematography: Josef von Sternberg, Kozo Okazaki
Film Editor: Mitsuzo Miyata
Original Music: Akira Ifukube
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Written by Josef von Sternberg from the novel by Michiro Maruyama & Younghill Kang
Produced by Kazuo Takimura
Directed by Josef von Sternberg...
- 4/11/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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