Fires on the Plain (film)
Encyclopedia
is a 1959 Japanese war film
directed by Kon Ichikawa
, starring Eiji Funakoshi
. The screenplay, written by, Natto Wada, is based on the novel Nobi
(Tokyo 1951) by Shohei Ooka, translated as Fires on the Plain. It initially received mixed reviews from both Japanese and international critics concerning its violence and bleak theme. It is now generally well regarded.
Fires on the Plain follows a tubercular
Japanese private and his attempt to stay alive during the latter part of World War II
. Kon Ichikawa
has noted its thematic struggle between staying alive, and crossing the ultimate low.
on Leyte
is in desperate straits, cut off from support and supplies by the Allies, who are in the process of liberating the Philippine island
. Private Tamura has tuberculosis
and is seen as a useless burden to his company, even though it has been reduced to little more than a platoon in strength. He is ordered to commit suicide if he is unable to get admitted to a field hospital
. A sympathetic soldier gives him several yams from the unit's meager supplies.
On his way, he notices a mysterious fire on the ground. When he reaches the crowded hospital, he is judged not sick enough to treat. He joins a group of other rejectees outside. When the Allies start shelling the area, the medical staff abandon the patients and run away. The hospital is hit and destroyed. Tamura flees as well; looking back, he sees many bodies strewn around, but chooses not to go to the aid of any who may still be alive.
Traveling alone, Tamura discovers a deserted village on the coast, where he finds a pile of dead Japanese soldiers. As he searches for food, a young Filipino
couple arrive by canoe and run to a hut to retrieve a cache of precious salt hidden under a floorboard. When Tamura enters the hut, the girl begins to scream. Tamura tries to placate them by lowering his rifle, but she continues to scream. He shoots her. The young man escapes in his canoe. Tamura takes the salt and leaves.
He next encounters three Japanese soldiers. They sight another fire. Tamura believes they are signal fires, but one of the others tells him that farmers are just burning corn husks. The squad leader mentions that the army has been ordered to go to Palompon
for evacuation to Cebu
. Tamura asks to accompany them. When one soldier notices Tamura's full bag, he shares his salt.
They soon join a stream of ragged, malnourished, dejected soldiers heading to Palompon. Among them are Nagamatsu and Yasuda, familiar men from Tamura's company. Yasuda, wounded in the leg, has Nagamatsu try to trade tobacco
for food. When the soldiers come to a heavily traveled road, they decide to wait for night before trying to cross, but they are ambushed by the waiting Americans. The few survivors flee back the way they came.
Later, an American jeep arrives. Tamura prepares to surrender
, but gives up the idea when he sees a Filipino woman gun down a fellow Japanese trying the same thing. The accompanying American soldiers are too late to stop her.
Tamura wanders aimlessly. He comes across a crazed, exhausted soldier, who tells Tamura he can eat his body after he is dead. Tamura hastily departs.
He comes across Nagamatsu and Yasuda again. They claim to have survived on "monkey meat" and are living in the forest. Later, Nagamatsu goes out to hunt more "monkeys". When Tamura mentions he has a grenade (given to him to commit suicide), Yasuda steals it. Tamura leaves to find Nagamatsu. When Nagamatsu almost shoots him, he realizes what monkey meat really is. Nagamatsu tells Tamura they would be dead if they did not resort to cannibalism
.
They head back to camp, but when Tamura mentions that Yasuda has his grenade, Nagamatsu says they will have to kill him, or he will do them in with the grenade. However, Yasuda is too wary. A standoff ensues. Nagamatsu stakes out the only source of water in the area. After several days, Yasuda tries to bargain, to no avail. Finally, he makes his way to the water and is shot. Nagamatsu begins butchering the body for meat. Tamura becomes disgusted and shoots Nagamatsu.
Tamura then heads towards the "fires on the plains", desperate to find someone "who is leading a normal life." He slowly walks forward, even as the Filipinos shoot at him. The film ends with Tamura collapsing on the ground, his fate ambiguous.
stated in a Criterion Collection interview that he had witnessed the destruction of the atom bomb
first hand, and had felt since then that he had to speak out against the horrors of war, despite the many comedies that made up most of his early career. Fires on the Plain got greenlighted
by the studio Daiei
, because they thought it would be an action movie. Ichikawa decided that it was a film that needed to be made in black and white, specifically requesting Eastman's black and white
. The studio initially balked, but after a month of arguing, the studio agreed to Ichikawa's request. Ichikawa also said that he had wanted actor Eiji Funakoshi
to be in the film from the beginning. Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, penned the script
which got the approval of novel author Shohei Ooka.
The film was shot entirely in Japan
in Gotenba, Izu
and Hakone. The actors were fed little and were not allowed to brush their teeth or cut their nails to make it look more realistic, but doctors were on set constantly. It was delayed for two months when Eiji Funakoshi fainted on the set. When Ichikawa asked Funakoshi's wife what had happened, she responded that he had barely eaten in the two months that he was given to prepare.
Mickey Curtis
said, also in a Criterion Collection interview, that he did not think he was a good actor, but Ichikawa said he just needed to act naturally. Ichikawa had heard that Curtis was very thin, so he decided to use him, as the characters in the story have eaten very little. Ichikawa specifically told each actor how he wanted them to react, and would not rehearse. Ichikawa expressed that the narrator (Tamura) could not be a cannibal because then he would have crossed the ultimate low. Ichikawa consulted with his wife, Natto Wada, and they decided against having him eat human flesh. As a result, Tamura never eats any in the film because his teeth are falling out.
and Mickey Curtis
. Also included is a video introduction with Japanese film scholar Donald Richie
and a booklet with an essay on Fires on the Plain by Chuck Stephens. The film was digitally restored
from a Spirit DataCine
35 mm composite fine-grain master positive print. The sound was restored from a 35 mm optical soundtrack. It was co-released by the Criterion Collection with another Ichikawa
film, The Burmese Harp
.
film critic Bosley Crowther
gave the film a quite harsh description, writing "Never have I seen a more grisly and physically repulsive film than 'Fires on the Plain.'" He continued, "So purposefully putrid is it, so full of degradation and death... that I doubt if anyone can sit through it without becoming a little bit ill... That's how horrible it is." He notes however, "this is a tribute to its maker, for it is perfectly obvious to me that Kon Ichikawa, the director, intended it to be a brutally realistic contemplation of one aspect of war." He points out, "...with all the horror in it, there are snatches of poetry, too..." He ends the review commenting that the only audience who would enjoy the film were those with bitter memories towards the Japanese held over from World War II.
A 1961 Variety
review also cautioned that the films bleakness made it a difficult film to promote to audiences, commenting that it "goes much farther than the accepted war masterpieces in detailing for humanity in crisis." Varietys review is more positive than the New York Times, calling it, "one of the most searing pacifistic comments on war yet made... it is a bone hard, forthright film. It is thus a difficult vehicle but one that should find its place."
Dave Kehr
of the Chicago Reader said: "No other film on the horrors of war has gone anywhere near as far as Kon Ichikawa's 1959 Japanese feature." John Monogahn of the Detroit Free Press
compared it to Clint Eastwood
's Letters from Iwo Jima
. The film is not without criticism however, and many Japanese critics dislike Ichikawa's work.
In response to the recent Criterion collection release, Jamie S. Rich of DVD Talk
review, had the following to say about it: "I wouldn't call Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain – Criterion Collection an anti-war film so much as I'd call it a realist's war film. Rather than build his story around big explosions and the thrill of battle, Ichikawa instead brings the human drama front and center, directing his spotlight on a soldier who is left to his own devices when the guns stop blazing. He poses the question, 'When stranded on the bombed-out landscape after the fighting has calmed, what will those left behind do to survive?' It's bleak and it's chilling, and yet Fires on the Plain is also completely engrossing. It's the post-action picture as morality play, the journey of the individual recast with Dante-esque overtones. Ichikawa doesn't have to hit you over the head with a message because the story is so truthfully crafted, to state the message outright would be redundant. Once you've seen Fires on the Plain, the movie will get under your skin, and you'll find it impossible to forget."
s for Best Director
and Best Cinematography
, the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Screenplay
and Best Actor
(Eiji Funakoshi
) and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor (Eiji Funakoshi
), all three in Tokyo
.
In 1961 it also won the Golden Sail at the Locarno International Film Festival
. The film was also selected as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film
at the 32nd Academy Awards
, but was not accepted as a nominee.
has written that Fires on the Plain is in contrast to Ichikawa's earlier The Burmese Harp as it "could be considered conciliatory" whereas Fires on the Plain is "deliberately confrontational". Alexander Jacoby has written: "The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain differ in approach – the one sentimental, the other visceral, rather in the manner of the American Vietnam
movie of later years. The comparison is telling: just as Hollywood has largely failed to deal with the politics of US involvement in Vietnam, preferring to focus on the individual sufferings on American soldiers, so Ichikawa's war films make only a token acknowledgement of wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese, and largely buy into assumptions of Japanese victimhood in World War II – assumptions which to this day remain too widespread in the country." He has further written that, like Tamura, many of Ichikawa's characters are loners.
Ichikawa has been called a cinematic entomologist because he "studies, dissects and manipulates" his human characters. Max Tessier calls Fires on the Plain the summit of this tendency in Ichikawa's work, and "one of the blackest films ever made." Tessier continues that by criticizing the loss of humanity which war causes, the film remains humanist. James Quandt calls Ichikawa a materialist, noting that he represents abstract concepts in simple objects. In Fires on the Plain, life and death are carried by Tamura in the objects of salt and a grenade respectively.
points out that in the novel the narrator is in Japan with a Christian view of life, while the film ends with Tamura walking, hands up into gunfire. When first shown in London, critics complained about this changed ending. By ending with the hero in a hospital meditating on the past, the novel implied a faith in man and the possibility of progress. However Ichikawa's film rejects faith. Tamura puts his faith in man by walking towards the villagers, and he is shot. The individual Tamura may be purified at the end of the film, but the world and mankind are not.
Asked about the controversial change in ending, in which the narrator apparently dies rather than survive, Ichikawa replied, "I let him die... I thought he should rest peacefully in the world of death. The death was my salvation for him." Further, the main character in the film does not have the Christian outlook that narrator of the novel has. Ichikawa explained, "...it somehow didn't seem plausible to show a Japanese soldier saying 'Amen'."
Film critic Chuck Stephens, in his essay Both Ends Burning for the Criterion Collection release of Fires on the Plain, said the following about Ichikawa : "At once a consummate professional and commercially successful studio team player and an idiosyncratic artist whose bravest films-often displaying a thoroughly odd obsession (to borrow the title of one of his most brilliantly sardonic black comedies) with fusing the brightest and bleakest aspects of human nature-were passionately personal (if not political or polemical) prefigurations of the Japanese new wave, has always had a gift for crystallizing contradition."
The black humor employed by Ichikawa has also often been the subject of comment by others. It has been claimed that Eiji Funakoshi was fundamentally a comic actor. The noted Japanese film critic Tadao Sato
points out that Funakoshi does not play his role in Fires on the Plain in the usual style of post-World War II anti-war Japanese films. He does not put on the pained facial expression and the strained walk typical of the genre, but instead staggers confused through the film more like a drunk man. Sato says that this gives the film its black-comic style which results from watching a man trying to maintain his human dignity in a situation which makes this impossible. Quandt notes that Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, wrote the script to the film and contributed this sardonic wit. Audie Bock
says that this black humor, rather than relieving the bleakness of the film, has the effect of actually heightening the darkness.
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...
directed by Kon Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
, starring Eiji Funakoshi
Eiji Funakoshi
was a Japanese actor. He received the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actor and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor for his performance in Fires on the Plain.-Biography:...
. The screenplay, written by, Natto Wada, is based on the novel Nobi
Fires on the Plain
Fires on the Plain is a Yomiuri Prize-winning novel by Ooka Shohei, published in 1951. It describes the experiences of a soldier in the routed Imperial Japanese Army on the Philippines in the final days of World War II....
(Tokyo 1951) by Shohei Ooka, translated as Fires on the Plain. It initially received mixed reviews from both Japanese and international critics concerning its violence and bleak theme. It is now generally well regarded.
Fires on the Plain follows a tubercular
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
Japanese private and his attempt to stay alive during the latter part of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Kon Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
has noted its thematic struggle between staying alive, and crossing the ultimate low.
Plot
In February 1945, the demoralized Imperial Japanese ArmyImperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
on Leyte
Leyte
Leyte is a province of the Philippines located in the Eastern Visayas region. Its capital is Tacloban City and occupies the northern three-quarters of the Leyte Island. Leyte is located west of Samar Island, north of Southern Leyte and south of Biliran...
is in desperate straits, cut off from support and supplies by the Allies, who are in the process of liberating the Philippine island
Battle of Leyte
The Battle of Leyte in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the invasion and conquest of the island of Leyte in the Philippines by American and Filipino guerrilla forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines led by...
. Private Tamura has tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and is seen as a useless burden to his company, even though it has been reduced to little more than a platoon in strength. He is ordered to commit suicide if he is unable to get admitted to a field hospital
Field hospital
A field hospital is a large mobile medical unit that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent hospital facilities...
. A sympathetic soldier gives him several yams from the unit's meager supplies.
On his way, he notices a mysterious fire on the ground. When he reaches the crowded hospital, he is judged not sick enough to treat. He joins a group of other rejectees outside. When the Allies start shelling the area, the medical staff abandon the patients and run away. The hospital is hit and destroyed. Tamura flees as well; looking back, he sees many bodies strewn around, but chooses not to go to the aid of any who may still be alive.
Traveling alone, Tamura discovers a deserted village on the coast, where he finds a pile of dead Japanese soldiers. As he searches for food, a young Filipino
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
couple arrive by canoe and run to a hut to retrieve a cache of precious salt hidden under a floorboard. When Tamura enters the hut, the girl begins to scream. Tamura tries to placate them by lowering his rifle, but she continues to scream. He shoots her. The young man escapes in his canoe. Tamura takes the salt and leaves.
He next encounters three Japanese soldiers. They sight another fire. Tamura believes they are signal fires, but one of the others tells him that farmers are just burning corn husks. The squad leader mentions that the army has been ordered to go to Palompon
Palompon, Leyte
Palompon is a 2nd class municipality in the province of Leyte, Philippines. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 50,754 people in 10,790 households.Lat 11°03’N Long 124°23’E W coast of Leyte Island SE of Canagayan Point, Palompon, Leyte....
for evacuation to Cebu
Cebu
Cebu is a province in the Philippines, consisting of Cebu Island and 167 surrounding islands. It is located to the east of Negros, to the west of Leyte and Bohol islands...
. Tamura asks to accompany them. When one soldier notices Tamura's full bag, he shares his salt.
They soon join a stream of ragged, malnourished, dejected soldiers heading to Palompon. Among them are Nagamatsu and Yasuda, familiar men from Tamura's company. Yasuda, wounded in the leg, has Nagamatsu try to trade tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
for food. When the soldiers come to a heavily traveled road, they decide to wait for night before trying to cross, but they are ambushed by the waiting Americans. The few survivors flee back the way they came.
Later, an American jeep arrives. Tamura prepares to surrender
Surrender (military)
Surrender is when soldiers, nations or other combatants stop fighting and eventually become prisoners of war, either as individuals or when ordered to by their officers. A white flag is a common symbol of surrender, as is the gesture of raising one's hands empty and open above one's head.When the...
, but gives up the idea when he sees a Filipino woman gun down a fellow Japanese trying the same thing. The accompanying American soldiers are too late to stop her.
Tamura wanders aimlessly. He comes across a crazed, exhausted soldier, who tells Tamura he can eat his body after he is dead. Tamura hastily departs.
He comes across Nagamatsu and Yasuda again. They claim to have survived on "monkey meat" and are living in the forest. Later, Nagamatsu goes out to hunt more "monkeys". When Tamura mentions he has a grenade (given to him to commit suicide), Yasuda steals it. Tamura leaves to find Nagamatsu. When Nagamatsu almost shoots him, he realizes what monkey meat really is. Nagamatsu tells Tamura they would be dead if they did not resort to cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
.
They head back to camp, but when Tamura mentions that Yasuda has his grenade, Nagamatsu says they will have to kill him, or he will do them in with the grenade. However, Yasuda is too wary. A standoff ensues. Nagamatsu stakes out the only source of water in the area. After several days, Yasuda tries to bargain, to no avail. Finally, he makes his way to the water and is shot. Nagamatsu begins butchering the body for meat. Tamura becomes disgusted and shoots Nagamatsu.
Tamura then heads towards the "fires on the plains", desperate to find someone "who is leading a normal life." He slowly walks forward, even as the Filipinos shoot at him. The film ends with Tamura collapsing on the ground, his fate ambiguous.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Eiji Funakoshi Eiji Funakoshi was a Japanese actor. He received the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actor and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor for his performance in Fires on the Plain.-Biography:... |
Tamura |
| Osamu Takizawa Osamu Takizawa was a Japanese actor. He was born in Ushigome, Tokyo, Japan. Starting at the Tsukiji Little Theater, Takizawa participated in a number of theatrical troupes before forming Gekidan Mingei with Jūkichi Uno. His was praised for his performance in Death of a Salesman and also directed a version of The... |
Yasuda |
| Mickey Curtis Mickey Curtis is a Japanese actor, singer, and TV celebrity. He began his entertainment career in 1958 as an actor, and later became a rockabilly singer. In 1967, he became internationally known through his avant-garde rock band "Mickey Curtis & The Samurai". After five years, Mickey disbanded the group and... |
Nagamatsu |
| Mantarô Ushio | Sergeant Sergeant Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent.... |
| Kyu Sazanaka | Army surgeon Medic Medic is a general term for a person involved in medicine, especially emergency or first-response medicine, such as an emergency medical technician, paramedic, or a military member trained in battlefield medicine. Also the term is used toward a Nurse in pre-hospital care and/or emergency... |
| Yoshihiro Hamaguchi | Officer Officer (armed forces) An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position... |
| Asao Sano | Soldier Soldier A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary... |
| Masaya Tsukida | Soldier |
| Hikaru Hoshi | Soldier |
Production
Kon IchikawaKon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
stated in a Criterion Collection interview that he had witnessed the destruction of the atom bomb
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
first hand, and had felt since then that he had to speak out against the horrors of war, despite the many comedies that made up most of his early career. Fires on the Plain got greenlighted
Green Light
Green light or greenlight may refer to:*The wavelengths of light perceived as green by the human eye*The green light on a traffic light*Green-light, formal approval of finance for film or TV production*Fishing light attractor...
by the studio Daiei
Kadokawa Pictures
is a Japanese movie studio.-History:One of the most famous studios in Japan and founded in 1942 as , it is best known for having produced the giant monster Gamera film series and the Daimajin Trilogy. It also produced the Zatoichi and Nemuri Kyoshiro film series and the television series Shōnen Jet...
, because they thought it would be an action movie. Ichikawa decided that it was a film that needed to be made in black and white, specifically requesting Eastman's black and white
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
. The studio initially balked, but after a month of arguing, the studio agreed to Ichikawa's request. Ichikawa also said that he had wanted actor Eiji Funakoshi
Eiji Funakoshi
was a Japanese actor. He received the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actor and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor for his performance in Fires on the Plain.-Biography:...
to be in the film from the beginning. Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, penned the script
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
which got the approval of novel author Shohei Ooka.
The film was shot entirely in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in Gotenba, Izu
Izu
Izu may refer to:*Izu Province, a part of modern-day Shizuoka prefecture in Japan**Izu, a city in Shizuoka prefecture**The Izu Peninsula, near Tokyo***The Izu Islands, located off the Izu Peninsula...
and Hakone. The actors were fed little and were not allowed to brush their teeth or cut their nails to make it look more realistic, but doctors were on set constantly. It was delayed for two months when Eiji Funakoshi fainted on the set. When Ichikawa asked Funakoshi's wife what had happened, she responded that he had barely eaten in the two months that he was given to prepare.
Mickey Curtis
Mickey Curtis
is a Japanese actor, singer, and TV celebrity. He began his entertainment career in 1958 as an actor, and later became a rockabilly singer. In 1967, he became internationally known through his avant-garde rock band "Mickey Curtis & The Samurai". After five years, Mickey disbanded the group and...
said, also in a Criterion Collection interview, that he did not think he was a good actor, but Ichikawa said he just needed to act naturally. Ichikawa had heard that Curtis was very thin, so he decided to use him, as the characters in the story have eaten very little. Ichikawa specifically told each actor how he wanted them to react, and would not rehearse. Ichikawa expressed that the narrator (Tamura) could not be a cannibal because then he would have crossed the ultimate low. Ichikawa consulted with his wife, Natto Wada, and they decided against having him eat human flesh. As a result, Tamura never eats any in the film because his teeth are falling out.
Distribution
Fires on the Plain was released November 3, 1959 in Japan. It was later released on June 6, 2000 by Homevision. Then it was released as part of the Criterion Collection on March 13, 2007. The disc includes a video interview with Kon IchikawaKon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
and Mickey Curtis
Mickey Curtis
is a Japanese actor, singer, and TV celebrity. He began his entertainment career in 1958 as an actor, and later became a rockabilly singer. In 1967, he became internationally known through his avant-garde rock band "Mickey Curtis & The Samurai". After five years, Mickey disbanded the group and...
. Also included is a video introduction with Japanese film scholar Donald Richie
Donald Richie
Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17...
and a booklet with an essay on Fires on the Plain by Chuck Stephens. The film was digitally restored
Film preservation
thumb|300px|Stacked containers filled with reels of [[film stock]]The film preservation, or film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images which they contain...
from a Spirit DataCine
Spirit DataCine
Spirit DataCine is a telecine and/or a motion picture film scanner. This device is able to transfer 16mm and 35mm motion picture film to NTSC or PAL standards or one of many High-definition television standards. With the data transfer option a Spirit DataCine can output DPX data files. The Spirit...
35 mm composite fine-grain master positive print. The sound was restored from a 35 mm optical soundtrack. It was co-released by the Criterion Collection with another Ichikawa
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director.-Early life and career:Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture. In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department...
film, The Burmese Harp
The Burmese Harp
is a 1956 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Kon Ichikawa. It was based on a children's novel of the same name written by Michio Takeyama. It was Ichikawa's first film to be shown outside Japan, and is "one of the first films to portray the decimating effects of World War II from the point...
.
Reception
In its early release in the United States, many American critics dismissed Fires on the Plain as a gratuitously bleak anti-war film. In 1963, The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
film critic Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
gave the film a quite harsh description, writing "Never have I seen a more grisly and physically repulsive film than 'Fires on the Plain.'" He continued, "So purposefully putrid is it, so full of degradation and death... that I doubt if anyone can sit through it without becoming a little bit ill... That's how horrible it is." He notes however, "this is a tribute to its maker, for it is perfectly obvious to me that Kon Ichikawa, the director, intended it to be a brutally realistic contemplation of one aspect of war." He points out, "...with all the horror in it, there are snatches of poetry, too..." He ends the review commenting that the only audience who would enjoy the film were those with bitter memories towards the Japanese held over from World War II.
A 1961 Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
review also cautioned that the films bleakness made it a difficult film to promote to audiences, commenting that it "goes much farther than the accepted war masterpieces in detailing for humanity in crisis." Varietys review is more positive than the New York Times, calling it, "one of the most searing pacifistic comments on war yet made... it is a bone hard, forthright film. It is thus a difficult vehicle but one that should find its place."
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...
of the Chicago Reader said: "No other film on the horrors of war has gone anywhere near as far as Kon Ichikawa's 1959 Japanese feature." John Monogahn of the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
compared it to Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's Letters from Iwo Jima
Letters from Iwo Jima
is a 2006 war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, and starring Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya. The film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the...
. The film is not without criticism however, and many Japanese critics dislike Ichikawa's work.
In response to the recent Criterion collection release, Jamie S. Rich of DVD Talk
DVD Talk
DVD Talk is a website for DVD enthusiasts founded in January 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman when DVDs and DVD players were first beginning to hit the market.The site started as an online forum, an email newsletter, and a page of DVD news and reviews...
review, had the following to say about it: "I wouldn't call Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain – Criterion Collection an anti-war film so much as I'd call it a realist's war film. Rather than build his story around big explosions and the thrill of battle, Ichikawa instead brings the human drama front and center, directing his spotlight on a soldier who is left to his own devices when the guns stop blazing. He poses the question, 'When stranded on the bombed-out landscape after the fighting has calmed, what will those left behind do to survive?' It's bleak and it's chilling, and yet Fires on the Plain is also completely engrossing. It's the post-action picture as morality play, the journey of the individual recast with Dante-esque overtones. Ichikawa doesn't have to hit you over the head with a message because the story is so truthfully crafted, to state the message outright would be redundant. Once you've seen Fires on the Plain, the movie will get under your skin, and you'll find it impossible to forget."
Awards
In 1960, the film won the Blue Ribbon AwardBlue Ribbon Award
Blue Ribbon Award can refer to:* Blue Ribbon Award , an annual award presented by the Japan Railfan Club* Blue Ribbon Awards, annual Japanese film awards* Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence in Education, awarded by the Blue Ribbon Schools Program...
s for Best Director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and Best Cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
, the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
and Best Actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
(Eiji Funakoshi
Eiji Funakoshi
was a Japanese actor. He received the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actor and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor for his performance in Fires on the Plain.-Biography:...
) and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor (Eiji Funakoshi
Eiji Funakoshi
was a Japanese actor. He received the Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actor and the Mainichi Film Concours for Best Actor for his performance in Fires on the Plain.-Biography:...
), all three in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
.
In 1961 it also won the Golden Sail at the Locarno International Film Festival
Locarno International Film Festival
The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. After Cannes and Venice and together with Karlovy Vary, Locarno is the Film Festival with the longest history...
. The film was also selected as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
at the 32nd Academy Awards
32nd Academy Awards
The 32nd Academy Awards honored film achievements of 1959 on 4 April 1960.MGM's and director William Wyler's three and a half-hour long epic drama Ben-Hur won 11 Oscars in 1959, breaking the previous year's all-time record of nine...
, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Symbolism
Donald RichieDonald Richie
Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17...
has written that Fires on the Plain is in contrast to Ichikawa's earlier The Burmese Harp as it "could be considered conciliatory" whereas Fires on the Plain is "deliberately confrontational". Alexander Jacoby has written: "The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain differ in approach – the one sentimental, the other visceral, rather in the manner of the American Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
movie of later years. The comparison is telling: just as Hollywood has largely failed to deal with the politics of US involvement in Vietnam, preferring to focus on the individual sufferings on American soldiers, so Ichikawa's war films make only a token acknowledgement of wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese, and largely buy into assumptions of Japanese victimhood in World War II – assumptions which to this day remain too widespread in the country." He has further written that, like Tamura, many of Ichikawa's characters are loners.
Ichikawa has been called a cinematic entomologist because he "studies, dissects and manipulates" his human characters. Max Tessier calls Fires on the Plain the summit of this tendency in Ichikawa's work, and "one of the blackest films ever made." Tessier continues that by criticizing the loss of humanity which war causes, the film remains humanist. James Quandt calls Ichikawa a materialist, noting that he represents abstract concepts in simple objects. In Fires on the Plain, life and death are carried by Tamura in the objects of salt and a grenade respectively.
Christianity
Audie BockAudie Bock
Audie Elizabeth Bock is an American film scholar and politician who served in the California State Assembly from 1999 to 2000....
points out that in the novel the narrator is in Japan with a Christian view of life, while the film ends with Tamura walking, hands up into gunfire. When first shown in London, critics complained about this changed ending. By ending with the hero in a hospital meditating on the past, the novel implied a faith in man and the possibility of progress. However Ichikawa's film rejects faith. Tamura puts his faith in man by walking towards the villagers, and he is shot. The individual Tamura may be purified at the end of the film, but the world and mankind are not.
Asked about the controversial change in ending, in which the narrator apparently dies rather than survive, Ichikawa replied, "I let him die... I thought he should rest peacefully in the world of death. The death was my salvation for him." Further, the main character in the film does not have the Christian outlook that narrator of the novel has. Ichikawa explained, "...it somehow didn't seem plausible to show a Japanese soldier saying 'Amen'."
Degradation
Some critics have seen in Fires on the Plain themes of degradation and brutality. Ichikawa has said that things the characters do, such as cannibalism, are such low acts, that if the protagonist, Tamura did them, he would've crossed such a low that he'd be unredeemable and Ichikawa commented that Fires on the Plain is his attempt to show ""the limits in which moral existence is possible." Others, such as Chuck Stephens, note that Ichikawa occasionally mixes black humour and degradation, like in a scene where Soldiers exchange boots, each getting a better pair, until when Tamura looks down at the boots, they are completely soleless.Film critic Chuck Stephens, in his essay Both Ends Burning for the Criterion Collection release of Fires on the Plain, said the following about Ichikawa : "At once a consummate professional and commercially successful studio team player and an idiosyncratic artist whose bravest films-often displaying a thoroughly odd obsession (to borrow the title of one of his most brilliantly sardonic black comedies) with fusing the brightest and bleakest aspects of human nature-were passionately personal (if not political or polemical) prefigurations of the Japanese new wave, has always had a gift for crystallizing contradition."
The black humor employed by Ichikawa has also often been the subject of comment by others. It has been claimed that Eiji Funakoshi was fundamentally a comic actor. The noted Japanese film critic Tadao Sato
Tadao Sato
is a prominent Japanese film critic and film theorist. Satō has published more than 30 books on film, and is one of the foremost scholars and historians addressing Japanese film, though little of his work has been translated for publication abroad....
points out that Funakoshi does not play his role in Fires on the Plain in the usual style of post-World War II anti-war Japanese films. He does not put on the pained facial expression and the strained walk typical of the genre, but instead staggers confused through the film more like a drunk man. Sato says that this gives the film its black-comic style which results from watching a man trying to maintain his human dignity in a situation which makes this impossible. Quandt notes that Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, wrote the script to the film and contributed this sardonic wit. Audie Bock
Audie Bock
Audie Elizabeth Bock is an American film scholar and politician who served in the California State Assembly from 1999 to 2000....
says that this black humor, rather than relieving the bleakness of the film, has the effect of actually heightening the darkness.
See also
- List of submissions to the 32nd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of Japanese submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
External links
Fires on the Plainat the Japanese Movie DatabaseJapanese Movie Database
The , commonly referred to as JMDB, is an online database of information about Japanese movies, actors, and production crew personnel. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database, but lists only those films originally released in Japan. The site was started in 1997, and contains movies from Meiji...