Anatahan

The Saga of Anatahan

Japan, 1953

Drama, War

Synopsis

Set during the dying stages of World War II, Anatahan tells the story of twelve Japanese seaman stranded on a forgotten island for seven years. Accompanied only by Keiko, a young Japanese woman, all rationality and discipline are soon overcome by a struggle for power and control.

Anatahan Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Show all (4)

Awards & Festivals

Venice Film Festival

1953

International Film Festival Rotterdam

1976

2000

FIDMarseille

2018

Show all (27)

Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Land of the Lost: Close-Up on Josef von Sternberg’s “Anatahan”

The last film made by the legendary Hollywood director is a beautiful and unusual Japanese production about stranded soldiers during WW2.

Movie Poster of the Week: Ernst Lubitsch’s “Broken Lullaby” and Other Auteurs Gone Wild

Posters for a series of films at Anthology Film Archives.

Our Daily Bread #5

The moon + a century of cinema.

Program Notes Gone Wild

A film series in New York asks “If the Hollywood auteurs were the ghosts in the studio machine, what would they look like exorcised?”

Critics reviews

Show all (8)

…All of these formal quirks make Anatahan quite the cutting-edge accomplishment for 1953, though the film hardly gives the impression of a work made for aesthetes alone. On the contrary, Sternberg’s distancing maneuvers imply humility in the face of a story far outside his lived experience, and it’s a vantage point that enables the director to very directly probe existential questions that long consumed him.

Carson Lund

February 02, 2017

Read full article

Somehow, through all this abstraction, the feeling of bearing sobering witness to the breakdown of civilization comes through vividly.

Kenji Fujishima

January 31, 2017

Read full article

One of the great masterpieces of cinema, ANATAHAN may not be as well known as Sternberg’s 1930’s films with Marlene Dietrich, but it’s a rich and raw culmination of the themes and stylistic attributes he had been pursuing since the 1920s.

Patrick Friel

December 07, 2012

Read full article

Show all (23)

What are people saying?

Eric Eidelstein's rating of the film Anatahan
Eric Eidelstein

In it for Sternberg’s eerie narration, a straightforward examination of the cost power has on humanity. Fun stuff for a final film!
June 11, 2019 05:45
- 1
- 0
bartkl's rating of the film Anatahan
bartkl

Very convincing tragedy showing us how civilized men increasingly revert to cavemen, given they've had to endure sufficiently long the scarcity of primary resources such as food, love from familiy and friends, but most of all: sexual intimacy. It's remarkably well done how these people are still clearly modern and cultured, but in them primal forces are addressed under the pressing circumstances. Wonderful.
June 11, 2019 05:45
- 1
- 0
Daniel S.'s rating of the film Anatahan
Daniel S.

A universal story that doesn't need subtitles. Highly recommended.
June 30, 2019 12:02
- 4
- 0
FISCHER's rating of the film Anatahan
FISCHER

cette avant-dernière création du cinéaste, où il cumule à la fois les fonctions de réalisateur, de producteur, de scénariste, de chef-opérateur, tout en assumant lui-même la voix off de la narration, se présente comme une splendide virtuosité cinématographique, de part sa fulgurante mise en scène du rapport de l'homme au désir, de la femme à la séduction, de la civilisation face à la barbarie. www.cinefiches.com
June 11, 2019 05:45
- 1
- 0
Duncan Gray's rating of the film Anatahan
Duncan Gray

Sternberg's best film? Well, it's definitely one of his most experimental, structured like he dove into one of his fantasias and reported on it like a newsreel. It's a fine and dandy allegory for the carnality that drives civilization, though I caught myself missing the wit and rapture of his more opulent Dietrich films. Still, this is a statement of his obsession: women transcending a world run and dominated by men.
July 04, 2019 04:10
- 5
- 0
Warren Spratley's rating of the film Anatahan
Warren Spratley

Sternberg's greatest achievement?
June 11, 2019 05:45
- 6
- 1
Stephane Tanaka's rating of the film Anatahan
Stephane Tanaka

I'd like to love it: cult, rare, based on a serious true story (12 sea fishermen "imprisoned" 7 years with one pretty girl...); but... it's long and slow and too classical/theatrical (not in a Brooks or Greenaway way) and most of time not very catchy... Lack a bit of craziness and good shootings. I know, it was 1953...
June 04, 2019 23:38
- 1
- 0
dionysus67's rating of the film Anatahan
dionysus67

A brilliant film from von Sternberg that is purposely reticent and set in a studio constructed jungle, where Japanese troops question military hierarchy and come to face their own bestial instincts. The wonderful recreation of the island is supplemented by the luminous shot of a naked Keiko that breathes life into the demoralized group. The Brechtean finale completes a unique and thoroughly original (anti)war film.
April 14, 2018 12:55
- 0
- 0