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5.6/10
2.4K
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World War II film about female volunteer workers at an optics plant who do their best to meet production targets.World War II film about female volunteer workers at an optics plant who do their best to meet production targets.World War II film about female volunteer workers at an optics plant who do their best to meet production targets.
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- TriviaMost filming for the movie was shot on location at a real factory in Hiratsuke, named Nippon Kogaku, which helped give the movie more of a documentary feel to it. To get the best performance out of his actors, Akira Kurosawa had them live in the dormitory at the factory during filming, while being trained in the same jobs their characters were doing. This would start the career long trend of Kurosawa having his cast and crew live on set as big families during both preproduction and filming.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999)
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Valuable as insight into the supreme pliability of human beings
Typical of Japanese war-time propaganda, the film suggests that Japan's fascist ideology, its inculcation of fanatical obedience, its vast perpetration of unthinkable atrocities in a systematic manner, and its aggressive military expansionism can all be replaced by Japan's supposed victimization. Rather telling in this respect is the song that the girls repeatedly sing to boost morale, a song that recalls that barbarian Mongol conquerors once tried to invade Japan from China, but that the perpetrators of such heinous deeds of aggression could not possibly co-exist under the same sky with the innocent and pure Japanese-- this, of course, is being sung during a war that was begun when an utterly unprovoked Japan invaded China and slaughtered untold numbers of its population mercilessly.
All of this would be something that one could simply shrug off as the past blindness of war, but films such as these are more disturbing today than, say, Triumph of the Will because while Germany was forced to confront the horrors it had unleashed upon the world, most Japanese films even today (and textbooks for that matter) still tend to view Japan as a victim in the war (see, for instance, Kurosawa's own Rhapsody in August so many decades later). Assisted by the policies of the American post-war occupation, Japan has never had to come to terms with what it did to the planet, and what in human history can possibly more disturbing than a lack of accountability for the worst sins humanity can commit? And by the way, I say all of this despite the fact that Kurosawa is probably my favorite director.
All of this would be something that one could simply shrug off as the past blindness of war, but films such as these are more disturbing today than, say, Triumph of the Will because while Germany was forced to confront the horrors it had unleashed upon the world, most Japanese films even today (and textbooks for that matter) still tend to view Japan as a victim in the war (see, for instance, Kurosawa's own Rhapsody in August so many decades later). Assisted by the policies of the American post-war occupation, Japan has never had to come to terms with what it did to the planet, and what in human history can possibly more disturbing than a lack of accountability for the worst sins humanity can commit? And by the way, I say all of this despite the fact that Kurosawa is probably my favorite director.
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- Local Hero
- Mar 27, 2010
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 25 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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