The Naked Island is 60 y.o.
On November 23, 1960, Kaneto Shindo's film "Hadaka no shima 裸の島 (The Naked Island)" was released in Japanese cinemas.
"Hadaka no shima 裸の島 (The Naked Island)" was made, in the words of its director, "as a 'cinematic poem' to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature."
In 1961, the jury of the Moscow International Film Festival, chaired by the outstanding Soviet director Sergei Yutkevich, awarded Kaneto Shindo's film "The Naked Island" (along with Grigory Chukhrai's film "Clear Skies") the Grand Prix - the main prize of the festival. By the way, the great Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti was part of that jury.
In 1963, "The Naked Island" was nominated for the British BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source. But members of the British Film Academy awarded this prize to the British film "Lawrence of Arabia" directed by David Lean. Moreover, "Lawrence of Arabia" received the BAFTA award as the Best British Film as well. The Japanese film was accompanied by such films as "L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad)" by Alain Resnais, "West Side Story" by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, "Jules et Jim" by François Truffaut, "Såsom i en spegel (Through a Glass Darkly)" by Ingmar Bergman, "The Miracle Worker" by Arthur Penn and others. Of course, the film "Lawrence of Arabia" is a film masterpiece. But the desire repeatedly shown by British film academics to award "domestic" films in all nominations may testify, in our opinion, if not to xenophobia, but at least an arrogance and lack of decency.
Kaneto Shindo's film was highly acclaimed by film critics. Even the picky Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, in his review of the film, which he somehow dubbed a documentary, wrote: "Why is it so extraordinary that this eloquence is conveyed without words? The eloquence is in the fidelity, the solidity and clarity with which Kaneto Shindo, the author, director and co-producer, has embraced the rhythmic beauty of the landscape and the mountain-fringed waters of the bay and the rhythmic toil of his people — the man and the woman, especially. It is in such piercing poetic images as that of a boat against the sunset on the bay; of a woman's face turned upwards or of a boy running freely across a hill. That his lovely composition of images has no words—no exchanges, of dialogue among his people only simple, expressive natural sounds and a gentle, melodic, persistent (almost too persistent) musical score, renders the silences more touching and the ultimate heart-broken wail of the mother over the death of one of her youngsters more shattering and meaningful."
Russian critics have praised Kaneto Shindo's film no less, if not more than American ones. Sergei Kudryavtsev gave the film the maximum 10 points, and another well-known critic Yevgeny Nefyodov, in his review wrote: "The Naked Island", turned out to be close to our compatriots in spirit not only by praising people of labor, day after day stoically enduring adversity in the fight against an uncompromising nature, but also by defending - In contrast to the propagated benefits of civilization - the values of traditional society, despite the successes of forced industrialization, which retained enormous influence in the USSR, Kaneto's achievement seemed all the more impressive because the leading Western avant-garde artists, who were preoccupied with searches in the field of cinema language, could envy such an innovation of the cinematic form. "
We do not have exact data on the budget of the picture and its box office. However, it is known that the film company Kindai Eiga Kyokai was on the verge of bankruptcy before filming began and could not finance the production of the film. Kaneto Shindo had to invest his own funds in the production of the film. But the funds raised by the film at the box office turned out to be enough to return the funds spent and save the film company from bankruptcy.
It is known about another positive result of filming this film. Prior to the start of work on the film, the male lead in the film, Taiji Tonoyama, who was 44 years old at the start of filming, suffered from cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol addiction, which he could not get rid of. (So, alcoholism is not only a disease of the Russian intelligentsia, first of all, of actors.) But the shooting, carried out in conditions close to those described in the film, that is, on an island cut off from civilization, cut off the actor from the possibilities "kiss the bottle". Thanks to this, the actor was able to recover and live for almost 30 more years, during which he played more than 120 roles, including in the film "Devil Woman".
74% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film "The Naked Island" ratings from 8 to 10, moreover, 32%, that is, almost every third, rated the film with the highest score - "ten". Taking this into account and the above, the rating of Kaneto Shindo's film "The Naked Island" according to FilmGourmand's version was 8.682, making it the 248th place in the Golden Thousand.
