Director: Dorrell and Stuart McGowan
Year: 1951
Rating: 6.0
This is clearly a film of another time - made during the Cold War and the
war in Korea - it is an anti-Communist bit of propaganda - that has a B picture
look to it - but there are aspects to it that I found fascinating. Primarily
because the entire film was shot in Tokyo (a Japanese company were co-producers)
and there are a number of scenes that felt like going back into a time machine.
There are lots of street scenes and crowd scenes - the Americans are still
an occupying force with M.Ps able to check into bars (it had to get McArthur's
approval) as well as a performance from a well-known geisha at the time (Ichimaru),
a nightclub cabaret performance and a scene inside a seedy bar with scantily
clad girls performing on tables. I really enjoyed all of this - Tokyo in
1950 still recovering from the war - I only wish they had given a part to
the 13-year old female star Hibari Misora as an orphan singing for her dinner!
There was in fact a Communist Party in Japan going back to the 1920's but
they had been illegal till the US Occupying force made them legal and they
began participating in elections (as they still do garnering some 3 million
votes recently). But once America entered the Korean War, elements of the
Party probably on instructions from China or Russia began sabotaging the
supply chain to Korea. That is where this film begins.
US Intelligence sends in undercover agent Carter because a college classmate
of his was now an important member of the Party and they want to turn him.
Carter hires a state-less secretary - White Russian perhaps - who has a sister
in North Korea which seems highly suspect. In a bigger budgeted film she
would have been played by Dietrich. The college friend Taro had come back
to Japan from the USA to join the Imperial Air Force as a Kamikaze pilot
- and they have a scene of Kamikaze class showing how to hit a boat for maximum
damage - but the war ends before he gets a chance to graduate - by of course
killing himself. The film is a bit clunky but not bad at all and not a lick
of romance thankfully. The film claims to have had 40 ex-Kamikaze pilots
in the cast but that sure sounds unlikely!
Initially, Carter was to be played by Lloyd Nolan (the Michael Shayne series)
which would have been great, but the role ended up going to Lee Frederick
(aka Robert Payton) who to be kind is no Lloyd Nolan. If he was any stiffer
in delivering his dialogue, he would break. The secretary is played by Florence
Marly who was something of a name at the time. This Czech actress had been
in some big films in France pre-war but escaped ahead of the Nazi's. She
came back and was in Rene Clement's The Damned (1947) for which she won an
acting award at Cannes. But then she moved to Hollywood and after falsely
being accused of being a Communist (she entertained the troops in Korea)
she was blacklisted and her career never came back. Turned out to be another
Marly who was the Communist. One other actor of note is the man who plays
Taro's father - Tatsuo Saito whose career stretches back to the silent days
and who appeared in some films by Ozu.
