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Sayonara

Starring: Marlon Brando, Red Buttons, Miiko Taka

Director: Joshua Logan

The film: Unusually critical for its day, Sayonara explores the US military's policy - using measures often tantamount to blackmail -  of strongly discouraging marriage between Americans posted to Japan and local women.

Directed by Joshua Logan and written for the screen by Paul Osborne (who produced and wrote  the Broadway play version of The World of Suzie Wong the  next year), the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, and won four. Most notable among these was best supporting actress for Miyoshi Umeki, the first  win for an Asian performer. (It was another 27 years before another Asian actor - Haing S. Ngor for The Killing Fields - would win again.)

Marlon Brando plays a US Air Force pilot transferred to Japan from the Korean front, whose primary concerns are marrying a general's daughter and preventing a fellow officer and friend (Red Buttons) from marrying a Japanese girl. That is until he meets one himself and finds all  his prejudices - and, eventually, his engagement and career - rapidly going out of focus.

Although he was nominated for best actor, Brando's performance is far from his best, but it's interesting to see him using a laid-back, non-method style for a change. Miiko Taka (above) as his girlfriend is even less impressive, and it's in the tragic subplot of the two supporting stars, Umeki and Buttons - who also won an Oscar - that the film's message really hits home.

Sayonara was made with the co-operation of Shochiku Studios, and that company's dancing girls, the Shochiku Kagekidan Girls Revue, give several colourfully entertaining performances, with Taka as their lead dancer.

Unusually for a film made in the late 1950s - even one shot mostly on location - only one of the Asian characters is played by a non-Asian. Here, it's Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban (Fantasy Island), who gives a surprisingly passable performance as a kabuki master.

Based on the book of the same name by James Michener, Sayonara stands out for being unusually judgmental of US policy for a  film made at the height of the  cold war. And although some  might accuse it of taking a condescending attitude towards Japanese women, it was for its time as politically sensitive as anything seen decades later from directors such as Oliver Stone.

As for the racist non-marriage policy, that was less than successful. By 1951 - according to the film, at least - some 10,000 American GIs had taken Japanese wives.

The extras: Sayonara was made  by Warner Brothers, who produce  the best DVDs of any of the major Hollywood studios, but sadly it's found its way onto the MGM label. Consequently, as is the case with most MGM releases, there are no extra features other than a theatrical trailer. Even worse is that the transfer, while in the original widescreen format, isn't widescreen enhanced, although it's reasonably clear, if a little foggy in places.



FROM THE VAULT: 1957