Archive

100 Years of NIKKATSU: Inventions and Challenges

Alone Across the Pacific

Kon ICHIKAWA

Japan1963 97min 35mm Color Korean Premiere

Synopsis

Directed by Kon ICHIKAWA, a film maestro who passed away early this year, the movie features an adventure of a young mind performed by Yujiro ISHIHARA struggling alone against the ocean. Yujiro ISHIHARA is a representative star in the Japanese culture history of the postwar. Debuted in 1956 with Crazed Fruit, he was an actor starred in more than 100 features as well as a singer of hundreds of songs.
James DEAN or SHIN Sung Il of the 60s in Japan, Yujiro ISHIHARA met Kon to take the lead in the monodrama Alone Across the Pacific, an exceptional maritime adventure. Based on a real story of a man who sailed alone across the Pacific in 94 days, ICHIKAWA persuasively portrays a human challenged with extreme conditions in solitude. It is overwhelming then to see at last the main character going wild with joy upon finding San Francisco in the distance. The typhoon in the movie is the first work of Tsuburaya Productions, a genuine forerunner of special effects in Japan. (KWON Yong Min)

Diretor

Kon ICHIKAWA

His films cover a wide spectrum of moods, from the comic to the overwhelmingly ironic and even the perverse. ICHIKAWA began his career as a cartoonist, and this influence is apparent in his skillful use of the widescreen. His Biruma no tategoto(1956) won the San Giorgio Prize at the 1956 Venice Film Festival.