War

Very entertaining Kihachi Okamoto feature, and while it is a WWII film, it is also a tribute to John Ford’s Westerns, set in Manchuria. In addition to the regulars in the series, a fine performance by the always lovely Kumi Mizuno.

One of Okamoto’s trademarks is his recessive staging, i.e. the big foreground wide-angle look, the kind of wide-screen composition which is quite common in spaghetti westerns, particularly those of Sergio Leone’s (partly due to the technical problems of the Techniscope format, widely used in Italy in that period). We could notice this signature in Okamoto’s late 50s films already, that is, a few years earlier than Leone and other western directors.Read More »

Winter, 1941. World War II rages on as Nazi troops invade the Soviet Union and besiege the devastated city of Leningrad. Foreign journalists are quickly evacuated, but in the chaos that ensues, Kate Davies is left behind.Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

A beautiful Austrian refugee in England–who is also a Nazi agent–marries a scholarly English pacifist. He lives near a secret military base she needs to get information about so she can help in Hitler’s planned invasion of England.Read More »

A battle weary GI and his unit stand ready to defend a small German town, a key position in the Allied advance to win the war, against the assault of the seasoned infantry and tank units of the German 11th Panzer Ghost division.Read More »

The Chinese army stops the Japanese army in 1938 at Suzhou.Read More »

Synopsis:
Saeed who is suffering from injuries that he received in the Iran-Iraq War, is sent to Germany for treatments. In Germany, he meets his sister and her German husband. Saeed and his sister who have not had any relations in many years try to re-establish the close relationship that they had long time ago.Read More »

Bleak, dark psychological drama set during the tail end of the Korean War. The film won an “out of competition” award at Cannes in May of 1961 but was held from US release for almost three years because of its controversial and what was claimed by some to be anti-American content. It was finally released in the US after Audie Murphy filmed a prologue explaining that the film told the story of one soldier and one platoon. Murphy grew up near Dallas and The Texas Theatre screened War Is Hell. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald walked into the screening a few minutes after the film started and was “removed” by The Dallas Police Department a few minutes later. United Artists released the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love, with War Is Hell as the second feature of a double bill in the US on May 27, 1964.Read More »