One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes is excellently handled by director Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi and his assistants had to plow through 30,000 reels from the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal which took place between May, 1946 and November, 1948. It took two days to read the charges against the 100 alleged war criminals in the docket (only 28 top officials are actually in the courtroom, which was limited in space), and the final judgment took one week to read. Before the proceedings of the trial itself are highlighted, there is a review of Japanese-Asian history leading up to World War II. Later on, a caveat noting that since this trial — conducted by Western, Caucasian judges and with some overtones of racial bias — many heinous events have transpired, including the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Vietnam War with all its loss of life, and the nuclear arms race. During the trial itself, both prisoners, prosecutors, defense attorneys (all American in this case), and judges display fits of ill temper, unbearable boredom, and just about all emotions ranging in-between. —filmaffinity.com
Masaki Kobayashi (小林 正樹, Kobayashi Masaaki, February 14, 1916–October 4, 1996) was a Japanese director.
Among his films is Kwaidan (1965), a collection of four ghost stories drawn from the book by Lafcadio Hearn, each of which has a surprise ending.
Kobayashi also directed The Human Condition, a trilogy on the effects of World War II on a Japanese pacifist and socialist. The total length of the films is over 9 hours. Other notable films include Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967). Harakiri won him an award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, solidifying his place in the history of cinema.
He was also a candidate for directing the Japanese sequences for Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) but instead Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda were chosen.
Kobayashi, himself a pacifist, was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, but refused to fight and refused promotion to a rank higher than private. —Wikipedia
Problematic reduction of the hundreds of hours of footage from the IMTFE, not least due to the absence of subtitles (although the dvd I viewed contains english narration, in addition to the japanese track, lengthy excerpts from the original footage is not translated). Kobayashi, responsible for one of the most beautiful works of art in all of cinema - 1964's "Kwaidan" - crafted a narrative that arguably diminishes the extent of Japanese atrocities and, thus, the culpability of those men on trial.
