AN ACTOR’S REVENGE
ALONE ON THE PACIFIC
Scopophilia is a Freudian term that means the love of gazing, or pleasure in seeing. A punning use of the word often comes to mind when I consider the pleasures to be found in viewing ‘Scope movies. ‘Scope is movie buffs’ jargon for the anamorphic widescreen process known as CinemaScope (introduced by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1953 with The Robe) and a number of similar wide-screen formats; they dominated commercial filmmaking across much of the globe for well over a decade.
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It has been argued that ‘Scope works better in certain cultures and with certain subjects; Fritz Lang once noted grimly that it was best suited for snakes and funerals. The continuing popularity of and respect for ‘Scope in Japan undoubtedly has something to do with the importance of the horizontal line in Japanese architecture and its diverse ramifications, such as the fact that at home the Japanese mainly live on the floor. I have often traced much of my own love for the ‘Scope frame–my scopophilia, as it were–back to the fact that I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama that is very horizontal and Japanese-influenced. In the same connection, it is worth noting that the most accomplished ‘Scope director in Hollywood during the 50s was Nicholas Ray, a former student of Wright who often spoke about this “horizontal” influence.
The two films under review, showing this week and next at the Film Center, were both made by the very versatile Kon Ichikawa in 1963. As utterly different as they are from each other, they have three striking traits in common. Both deal with the obsessive carrying out of a personal project by a lone individual; both are structured around a series of flashbacks that clarify the heroes’ present quests by placing them in a familial context; and both use ‘Scope so brilliantly and integrally that it is impossible to imagine either film existing–much less succeeding–without it. (The films also share a writer–Ichikawa’s wife, Natto Wada, who worked on his films from 1948 to 1965, when she retired from screenwriting–although neither is based on original material.)
It is important to realize that this deliberately perverse presentation represents an aberration in Japanese culture as well as in our own. The film was a box-office flop in Japan when it came out; and while U.S. film buffs have widely recognized it as one of the great Japanese movies over the past quarter century, surprisingly little has been written about it. Like Kinugasa’s dazzling silent and expressionist A Page of Madness (1926), which it resembles in no other respect, An Actor’s Revenge cannot easily be absorbed into surveys of Japanese film because it stands defiantly apart from most recognized traditions.
Alone on the Pacific is based on a true account by Kenichi Horie, a young Japanese who sailed alone from Osaka to San Francisco in a 19-foot yacht over 94 days in 1962. Made the following year, using Horie’s log as its principal source, the film was apparently a commercial success in Japan , and showed at the New York Film Festival in 1964, but it has not been very visible in the U.S. since then. Last September, Penelope Houston, the editor of Sight and Sound, selected it as part of a series called “Buried Treasures” at the Toronto Festival of Festivals, and that led to its becoming available again in North America.
