Behind the Rising Sun (1943)

Director:

Edward Dmytryk

Writers:

James R. Young (book)
Emmet Lavery (original screenplay)

Release Date:

25 January 1946 (Finland)

Genre:

Drama | War

Tagline:

The year's most timely story.

Plot:

In Japan, foreigners and their Japanese friends are caught up in the rising tide of militarism.

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Torture | Tokyo Japan | Told In Flashback | Father Son Relationship

Cast

Margo	...	Tama Shimamura
Tom Neal	...	Taro Seki
J. Carrol Naish	...	Reo Seki
Robert Ryan	...	Lefty O'Doyle
Gloria Holden	...	Sara Braden
Donald Douglas	...	Clancy O'Hara (as Don Douglas)
George Givot	...	Boris
Adeline De Walt Reynolds	...	Grandmother
Leonard Strong	...	Tama's Father

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Spain:7 | USA:Approved (PCA #9350) | Sweden:(Banned) (1944)

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

Film debut of Benson Fong.

Soundtrack:

Three Little Words

of course, it was propaganda...

Well, where do I start? I would like to point out some erroneous statements by the first viewer commenting. He states that the introductory statement says it is "100% true" and "authentic". Actually, its says "true-to-life", which I would construe to be similar to today's films saying that the movie is "based on...". It states that the film is not biographical, but the incidents depicted did occur. We know from historical works that the Japanese were responsible for many atrocities in China, especially Manchuria...the giving of opium to the starving villagers, the bayoneting of infants and toddlers, the raping of Chinese women and the setting up of houses of prostitution to "service" the Japanese Army & so on. So as Hollywood has always done, they take real facts and fictionalized & personalized them to give them more impact. A statement by the previous commenter, about how all the major roles were played by white actors, while actors of Japanese heritage played lesser/support roles. Well, as far as I can tell by cast listing, there were no Japanese actors in the movie. Philip Ahn (Korean descent), Benson Fong and the other Asian actors are Chinese ancestry. J. Carroll Naish had played other Asian characters throughout his career. Tama was played by Mexican-American actress, Margo (married to Eddie Albert).Tom Neal makes a very strange Japanese, even for the time...For a propaganda film, it is more even handed in its portrayal of the Japanese characters and the upheaval in Japanese society then many war films of its day. There are two story strands, the brutalization of Taro, from a americanized frat boy to a murdering martinet and the humanizing of his father, Reo Seki, who comes to see the loss of son and his son's happiness in marriage to Tama, a farmer's daughter and the destruction of the rigid social order of his beloved country... The Russian is portrayed positively; the German a bit dismissively; and the three Americans (woman reporter, the male engineer, the baseball coach), are all different faces of American society: the brave American (the woman reporter); the status-quo American (the engineer) and the "ugly" American (the baseball coach).