FEATURE: Britain discovers delights of neglected Uchida films

Asian Economic News, Dec 8, 2007

LONDON, Dec. 3 Kyodo

The British Film Institute has made a bid to get Westerners more acquainted with the works of the largely neglected Japanese director Tomu Uchida (1898-1970) by presenting rare screenings of his major works in London throughout this month.

Incorporating 13 films and spanning much of his directorial career, the program aims to unearth for Britons Uchida's ''stylistically intelligent'' movies -- many of which are still considered to be avant-garde.

''Uchida's work offers the pleasure of watching a master craftsman make films whose power and flair can still be savored by viewers of any cultural background,'' the institute's introduction to the late director says.

Among the films to be shown, the ''Police Officer,'' made in 1933, one of Uchida's only remaining prewar prints, is described as ''an accomplished silent thriller boasting a classical gangster-film plotline.''

And ''Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji'' (1955), described as an ''affable samurai road movie,'' is presented as Uchida's ''remarkable comeback film'' made after he ended his eight-year stay in China and returned to his homeland.

Additional films to be shown in the month-long Uchida run include ''A Hole of My Own Making,'' ''The Master Spearman'' and ''The Horse Boy'' from 1957 which is described as ''one of Uchida's finest and most neglected films.''

The program closely mirrors that which revived Uchida's films for a Japanese audience at the Tokyo FILMeX in 2004, where British experts of Japanese cinema and compilers of the British Film Institute's version of the Uchida showcase, Jasper Sharp and Alexander Jacoby, were present.

''I knew the name Tomu Uchida before but I didn't really have much of an idea what he was all about so when we saw his films we thought, 'Wow! He'd be a great director to introduce to the West,''' Sharp explained to Kyodo News.

''There are probably three names -- Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu -- that are well known internationally and they've each got a distinctive style and their own genre in which they worked but the thing about Uchida, which I find very interesting, is that he works across many different genres and doesn't have a particular style,'' he said.

Sharp puts Uchida's comparative invisibility in the West down to a couple of key factors, namely that the director, beginning his career in the 1920s, made many classic films which were subsequently destroyed or lost during World War II, and that in the 1950s Uchida worked for a film studio, Toei, that was largely interested in the domestic, not overseas, market.

But he is convinced that the British Film Institute's loyal fan base, combined with a small Japanese audience and a niche group of Japanese cinema enthusiasts, will be impressed with the ''half samurai, half modern-day drama'' Uchida season.

''Actually, the reason I thought Uchida was very good to do is that the films are all very different. You've got samurai, you've got comedy, you've got action and you've even got a western film, so people who go in thinking Japanese cinema is only one thing will be surprised beyond their expectations,'' Sharp stated.

He said the same program ran in Ontario, Canada in October to great triumph and was quick to remind the potential London audience that the lack of availability of the films on DVD means that unless they see the films now then they are unlikely to get a chance in the future.

''I checked out a few internet reviews after the Ontario run and people are already saying, 'How do I get a chance to see these films again?' so I'd say that was a pretty good measure of success,'' Sharp said.