JAPAN’S LONGEST DAY (1967) – Epic drama of Japan’s surrender in 1945

Yesterday, August 15, was the 70^th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. It was on that date in 1945 that a recorded speech by Emperor Hirohito was broadcast to the Japanese people to formally declare surrender and end all activities related to the war effort. (My father, then stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, was one of the marines assigned to the invasion fleet being prepared to embark for Japan.) I used the occasion yesterday to finally watch a lengthy film (157 minutes) entitled JAPAN’S LONGEST DAY (1967), which dramatizes the events of August 14-15, 1945, and the decision to agree to surrender terms and formally end the war. Available on DVD from AnimEigo, it was produced in black-and-white by Toho Pictures and directed by Kihachi Okamoto (SWORD OF DOOM), with an all-star cast of Toho stars, including Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Chishu Ryu, So Yamamura, Yuzo Kayama, Susumu Fujita, and practically every actor we know from every kaiju movie: Akihiko Hirata, Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Yoshifumi Tajima, with only Akira Takarada and Franky Sakai notable by their absence. Tatsuya Nakadai does the narration. There’s an extraordinarily large number of speaking parts, most of them military officers, and at a certain point, it becomes very difficult to keep track of who’s who and what their roles are in certain events. There’s only one woman with a speaking role in the entire film, a household servant in the home of Prime Minister Suzuki, and she’s seen briefly when a group of rebellious soldiers tear through the place looking to kill Suzuki. (The IMDB cast list identifies the character as Yuriko Hara, played by Michiyo Aratama, although the woman is never identified in the film.)

The Secret of Convict Lake (1951)

Why is this movie so little-known? Yesterday I was checking the day’s schedule for the Fox Movie Channel and I came across the listing for the THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE (1951) at 10:25 AM (EST). The onscreen description sounded really intriguing. I didn’t write it down and it’s no longer available on the Fox Retro website, so I can only tell you it said something about five escaped convicts entering a western town populated entirely by women, with a cast topped by Glenn Ford, Gene Tierney, Ethel Barrymore, Ann Dvorak and Zachary Scott, surely enough to make me sit up and take notice. This premise and that cast are not to be taken lightly. I then looked it up in Maltin’s Movie Guide (the only place I’d ever previously seen a reference for this film) and it said, simply, “Set in 1870s California, escaped prisoners hide out at settlement comprised largely of women; fine cast makes the most of script.” It gave the film a **1/2 rating, which, in Maltin, can often be taken as a *** rating. The director was Michael Gordon, who had a few credits I liked very much, including PILLOW TALK and PORTRAIT IN BLACK. So I made plans to watch it. This is the kind of minor studio film that used to play constantly on local broadcast TV back in the day when local channels ran movies during the day, at night and on weekends, yet I don’t recall this one ever playing.