Anatahan (1953)
- Original title
- アナタハン
- Directed by
- Josef von Sternberg
- Genre
- drama film
- Country
- Japan
- Runtime
- 1h 32m
- Rating
- 6.8 of 10 from 46 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A group of Japanese soldiers stranded on a remote island after World War II refuses to believe the war is over. They struggle with isolation, dwindling resources, and internal conflicts as years pass.
bleakslow-burntenseatmosphericisolatingintrospectivestarkmeditative
What happens
Anatahan (アナタハン), also known by its on-screen title of The Saga of Anatahan, is a 1953 black-and-white Japanese war drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It was adapted by Sternberg from Michiro Maruyama's nonfiction account of the seven years he and a group of World War II Japanese holdouts spent on Anatahan island, which was then part of the South Seas Mandate of Imperial Japan and is now one of the Northern Mariana Islands of the United States. This story also inspired the 1998 Japanese novel Cage on the Sea. The film was the final one directed by Sternberg (although Jet Pilot, which he worked on earlier, was his final film to be released), and he had an unusually high degree of control over the project, which was made outside the studio system, allowing him to not only direct, but also to write, photograph, and narrate. It opened modestly well in Japan in 1953 and was screened in competition at the 14th Venice International Film Festival, but it did poorly in the US, and Sternberg continued to re-cut the film for four more years. Eventually, he abandoned Anatahan and went on to teach film at UCLA for most of the remainder of his life. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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A Lonely Woman In A Lonely Land (1953)
Ugetsu (1953)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.