Opulent and Radiant

THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN (***1/2)
(Josef von Sternberg, 1953, Japan, 92 mins.)

Though language is not always the best way to communicate
an idea, its use should not be ignored entirely.
-- Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969)

*****

It's just like Viennese director Josef von Sternberg (Morocco, Shanghai Ex-
press) to go out in style. Populated by an all-Japanese cast, his final film
plays like a cross between Woman in the Dunes, Underground, Letters From
Iwo Jima, and ABC's Lost. (Though Sternberg narrates in English, the dial-
ogue is not translated; an initially off-putting, but effective choice.)

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Michiro Maruyana, the story
begins in 1944 when 12 sailors, ranging from captain to cook, are shipwrecked
on the volcanic island of Anatahan. They are not alone. The tiny speck of land
is inhabited by a grumpy gentleman (Tadashi Suganuma) and his common-law
wife (Akemi Negishi, Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear and The Lower Depths), who
were stranded years before. The new arrivals are inexorably drawn to Anata-
han's lovely Queen Bee. And she to them. Well, some of them, at any rate.

Years pass, the war ends, but the "Drones" remain forgotten, so they continue
to drink coconut wine and to compete for Keiko's favors, but she stays faithful
to her longtime companion because, as Sternberg tells us, that's what good
Japanese women do. Keiko likes to flirt, but that doesn't make her bad.

Simmering tensions finally come to a boil when a plane crashes on the island. The passengers seem to have landed elsewhere, but the vessel parts contain pistols, ammunition, cords for a shamisen (a traditional stringed instrument), and a print-
ed parachute, which someone—presumably Keiko—stitches into spiffy new outfits.

The fun doesn't last long. The armed men try to make Keiko their own, but
the island has other plans, and the bodies start to drop. Though filmed in Ky-
oto, this expressive picture transpires primarily on studio sets, and the moss
and shell-covered locations are obviously fake, but Sternberg uses the limitation
in his favor, living up to Andrew Sarris's claim, in classic auteurist text The Ameri-
can Cinema, that the Pantheon Director was "a lyricist of light and shadow." Or as
Ephraim Katz puts it, he "used the camera as a painter's brush or a poet's pen."

Sarris adds that the filmmaker's sharp-dressed protagonists tend to "retain
their civilized graces despite the most desperate struggles for psychic survival,
and it is their poise under pressure, their style under stress, that grants them
a measure of heroic status and stoic calm." And Sternberg's sympathies for a
proud and sensuous woman make Keiko a worthy successor to the regal an-
gels and empresses Marlene Dietrich once embodied for her favorite director.

*****

One of his greatest talents lay in making everything appear opulent
and radiant when in fact he worked on a very thin shoestring.
-- Dietrich on Sternberg



The Saga of Anatahan plays the Harvard Exit on Sun., 6/1, at 1:30pm. Click here
for a more in-depth analysis of Sternberg's narration. As Phil Hall notes, "In a strange way, the constant and often mysterious narration gives The Saga of An-
atahan a uniquely odd quality...as if we are eavesdropping into a bizarre parallel universe." Images from Accelerated Decreptitude and Cinematheque Ontario.