Itami Mansaku (Peter High's Excellent Book)

[Jasper Sharp]

Talking of resources on this film, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the work of Janine Hansen.From my notes:
Hansen,
Janine. “Celluloid Competition: German-Japanese Film Relations,
1929-45.” In
Cinema
and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema,
ed. Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007
_.
“The New Earth (136/37): A German-Japanese Misalliance in
Film.” In In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino
Mamoru, ed. Aaron Gerow and Abé Mark Nornes. Ann Arbor: Kinema
Club, 2001: 184-98.

And in the German language:
Arnold
Fancks Die Tochter des Samurai: Nationalsozialistische Propaganda und
japanische Filmpolitik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997.


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> Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:01:07 -0500
> From: mccaskem at georgetown.edu
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Itami Mansaku (Peter High's Excellent Book)
> 
> Dear FB,
> 
> I just read the pages you refer to, in my copy of Peter High's book. It's excellent 
> information, and I was surprised to find that my bits and pieces fit well into the 
> bigger picture. I should have looked there sooner, rather than assuming there 
> wasn't much available in English.
> 
> I never knew that the Itami version was shown in theaters in Japan. That must 
> have been very interesting!
> 
> As for Fanck, I may be wrong, but I think he was a naive person who liked to do 
> outdoor filming. Most of his films are Berg-Film/Mountain Film, in which the 
> scenery is almost more important than the actors.
> 
> Leni Riefenstahl began acting in Fanck's mountain films early on. Fanck did not 
> like using doubles, and wanted his actors to do all the climbing, slipping, and 
> hanging in space themselves. Hitler saw her onscreen in one of them later, and 
> that's how she got mixed up with Nazis.
> 
> Fanck really just wanted to make another mountain film, starring a volcano in 
> Japan. In the long finale of the film, Hara Setsuko and the male lead do a very 
> long and slow trek, one trying to catch up with the other, over fissures with 
> steam coming out, etc. Hara is supposed to be trying to jump in the volcano's 
> core because her "fiance" maybe doesn't care for her, and he schlepps through 
> all perils to save her and prove his love for her.
> 
> I'm not sure anyone in Japan had tried much to make this kind of outdoor film. 
> Fanck was famous for them in Germany & Austria, and it was his main talent.
> 
> Apart from this film, Fanck had a fairly dreary career under Nazi Rule. 
> Riefenstahl & Goebbels always hated each other, so Fanck's connection with LR 
> didn't help him so much in the big picture.
> 
> After the war, unlike Harlan Veit, a notoriously Nazi director through and 
> through, who resumed his bigtime career in the 1950s in W. Germany after a 
> discreet hiatus, and later died while vacationing in his villa in Italy. Fanck instead 
> ended up with a new kind of mountain gig, cutting down trees for a living for a 
> while. Later mountain film nostalgia helped him economically.
> 
> http://www.nevasport.com/nevablogs/retro-ski/art/arnold-fanck--maestro-
> de-peliculas-de-montana---arnold-fanck--the-master-of-mountain-
> films/2625/
> 
> 
> Thank You Very Much For The Good Information!
> 
> mmcc
 		 	   		  
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