Corporate-style filmmaking to celebrate a corporate anniversary (35 Years of TOHO Film), this WWII endgame story makes a fascinating watch. (As for accuracy, don’t look here!) Directed by Kihachi Okamoto, a late draftee in the war*, it handles a myriad of military & government characters (much narration/much on-screen identification) thru intense cabinet meetings over a single day working out the exact terms of surrender & the precise wording of the Emperor’s announcement, recorded for air-play the next day. In theory, in spite of sidebar scenes of military action, this might be as tedious for an audience as it must have been for the exhausted ministers & top-rank officers. Both shown reluctantly tipping toward an admission of defeat only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. But at the halfway point, the film takes a decisive turn and changes focus to what had been minor background rumbling from military units fundamentally (make that fanatically) opposed to any terms of surrender and determined to fight on. Quickly organizing a brutal multi-stage rebellion against their superior officers, insubordination in the name of ‘patriotism,’ their actions include violently taking over the Emperor’s compound. Top priority: finding that recorded speech. ‘My Kingdom For A Horse’ updated to ‘Our Kingdom For a 78rpm Laquer Disc.’ (A detail this bizarre has got to be historically accurate.) Many well known faces involved, including Yasujirô Ozu’s usual father figure Chishû Ryû and Toshirô Mifune shortly after his last film with Akira Kurosawa. Not great filmmaking by any means, but cumulatively effective.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The film leaves you with the impression that Okamoto believed the atomic bombs were the only way to end the war quickly. And approved of their use? The time factor likely saving his life as a late conscriptee. Not an idea you expect in a Japanese film of the period.
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