The Outsiders
Mori to mizuumi no matsuri
Japan
1958
113 Min
Color
Japanese
Synopsis
Magnificently shot in ‘Scope in the mountaintops of rugged Hokkaido, this rich and surprising drama about Ainu aboriginal people will remind you from moment to moment of a Western (Shane, say, or The Searchers) or of the ethnographically inclined films of Imamura or Ichikawa. The great Ken Takakura radiates unbridled pride as a hero of the Ainu people, intent on maintaining their health and culture. A conflict soon arises between the natives and their shamo (non-Ainu) neighbors when money disappears from Ainu charity funds, and the shamo responsible for the organization that oversees the charity imports a young woman landscape painter from Tokyo to accompany him on his field trips. Teeming with incident, The Outsiders delves, with startling insight still relevant today, into matters of aboriginal culture, discrimination, and the sad matter of ethnic “passing.” The film’s final battle in autumnal Hokkaido landscapes deserves comparison with the finest Westerns. —James Quandt
Director
Tomu Uchida
Born in 1898, Uchida joined a theater troupe in his youth, perfecting a sense of stagecraft and theatrical aesthetics that would become the backbone of his films. He turned to directing in the late 1920s; comedies and police actioners dominated his early production, but Uchida also developed a fledgling realist aesthetic rare in the industry at the time. In 1945, he fled Tokyo and joined the leftist Manchuria Film Association, spending ten years there. His return to Japan heralded a new outburst of creativity, as he applied his talents to everything from social critiques to theater adaptations, samurai movies to gritty noir. His late-fifties output in particular could serve as a sampling of nearly every genre and pleasure that Japanese cinema can offer, and also as a snapshot of the country’s postwar aesthetics, concerns, and imaginings. “Uchida crystallized the social, political and artistic passions of an epoch crucial to modern Japan,” critic Max Tessier wrote, “and did so with a… read more
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