Anatahan (aka The Saga Of Anatahan) (1953)

Set in 1944 during WWII. After their ship is sunk, twelve Japanese seamen are stranded on an abandoned island for seven years. Upon their arrival, they find only a man (Tadashi Suganuma) and his "wife" (Akemi Negishi) who were left behind when the island was abandoned. It isn't long before all the men begin to fight over the woman. Based on the book by Michiro Maruyama and written, photographed and directed by Josef von Sternberg (MOROCCO). What could have been a superior film is sabotaged by von Sternberg himself. While the actors speak Japanese, intentionally there are no subtitles and instead von Sternberg narrates the entire film! Alas, his narration is as somber and pompous as Cecil B. DeMille's pontificating narration on his biblical movies. While the story has a basis in fact (30 Japanese sailors and a woman were stranded on an island for some 6 years), von Sternberg uses the incident as a morality tale of man giving in to his baser desires and abandoning all semblance of civilization while the woman is Eve driving men to their destruction because of her gender. Clearly, von Sternberg thought he was making an important piece of film art. Unfortunately, it's simply a missed opportunity. What remains is a cinematic curiosity, the swan song of a legendary director. Actually, his last released film is JET PILOT (1957) but that was filmed in 1949 and sat of the shelf for 8 years. There's a very good underscore by Akira Ifukube. With Kisaburo Sawamura and Shoji Nakayama.