tsuchi ( film )
tsuchi (earth). 1939. japan. directed by tomu uchida. courtesy national film center, tokyo
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tsuchi (earth). 1939. japan. directed by tomu uchida. screenplay by yasutaro yagi, tsutomu kitamura. with isamu kosugi, akiko kazami, kaichi yamamoto. in japanese; english subtitles. 115 min .
uchida’s most famous prewar film and a masterpiece of realism, earth is an epic portrait of the lives of peasant farmers in northern japan’s tohoku region, filmed secretly over the course of a year against the nikkatsu film studio’s wishes. (legend has it the studio never officially approved the project until its completion .) the film juxtaposes the story of one peasant’s hardships with documentary - like shots of farmers toiling in the rice fields. for many years this early sound film survived only in a cut - and - battered german print. this version, still incomplete but considerably longer, is a 2006 restoration incorporating elements from a print discovered in moscow’s gosfilmofond archive in 1999 .
uchida designed a fugitive from the past with virtuosic, geographical symmetry: the original title is in fact straits of hunger. this is where the film begins and comes to an abrupt end, leaving essential aspects of the resolution unspoken. various stylistic experiments, including the use of negative images and an emphasis on shamanistic elements, intensify the impression of the work' s supernatural force, while in the center of the film, a concrete, historical void is left wide open: ten years go by between inaki' s escape in 1947 and the resuming of the action in tokyo. on top of the film' s implicit subject of japan' s immediate post - war history, there lies an explicit subject—inaki' s struggle for survival, concrete and spiritual, and above all: at any price. the film' s entire critical / historical dimension only develops through the combination of both levels .
film history is full of holes, but some are filled in more reluctantly than others. consider, for example, the strange case of tomu uchida (1898 - 1970). in his home country japan, he is considered a canonized master. in the west, he was mostly a name without any practical meaning, at least until a (still slimmed - down) touring series in the wake of tokyo filmex’s 2004 13 - film - retrospective made the rounds for a few years, e. g. to international film festival rotterdam in 2005 and new york’s bamcinématek in 2008, allowing for the first time the appreciation of a sizable selection from uchida’s rich and diverse body of work, with emphasis on his fascinating post - war period .
originally written in 2005 for the german newspaper taz on the occasion of the touring retrospective. the final sentence now strikes me as a bit too optimistic—possibly uchida’s major films would have to be released in digital home formats to gain more traction in today’s culture, and this still hasn’t happened. their full aesthetic splendor needs to be experienced on film prints, anyway. at least for some lucky few, there are second chances: moma will present an uchida retrospective in october / november 2016 .
this original compositional form can be understood as the key to uchida' s work: gaps and breaks are for him not only essential, aesthetic tools, they have a biographical correlation as well. in the middle of his filmography there is a nearly one and a half decade gap: after the outbreak of the war in the 1940s, uchida went to occupied manchuria, likely because he hoped for better working conditions far from the war - incited rationing at home. only repatriated in 1953, he directed his first post - war film two years later. we learn in his autobiography (and not only there) almost nothing about the time in between .
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the print found in east germany in 1968 was missing its first and last reels. another print found at gosfilmfond ussr in 2001, has a first reel .
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these years were the culminating point of a permanent irritation that perhaps explains why uchida has been so long ignored in the west: he is as hard to categorize politically as aesthetically. he is obviously a virtuosic stylist, yet without a consistent style. it is even more complicated ideologically: born in a well - off family, uchida apparently grew up with progressive / idealistic tendencies—his pronounced love for all things from the west is expressed not the least in his choice of the pen name tomu, a translation of his western nickname tom, which he chose to write in kanji characters meaning “to spit out dreams. ”
still, the study of uchida, one of japanese cinema' s most exciting figures, is now finally possible .
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tsuchi ( 土 ) , or earth , is a 1939 film directed by tomu uchida . it won the 1940 kinema junpo award for best film . a seriously compromised print of earth was discovered in germany in 1968 . it suffers from nitrate damage and includes german subtitles . it is missing its first and last reel . the original film was 142 minutes long ; this version runs 93 minutes . a 119-minute version of the film , with subtitles in russian , was discovered in russia around the turn of the millennium . it too is missing the last reel . 
tsuchi (土), or earth, is a 1939 film directed by tomu uchida. it won the 1940 kinema junpo award for best film. a seriously compromised print of earth was discovered in germany in 1968. it suffers from nitrate damage and includes german subtitles. it is missing its first and last reel. the original film was 142 minutes long; this version runs 93 minutes. a 119-minute version of the film, with subtitles in russian, was discovered in russia around the turn of the millennium. it too is missing the last reel.
tsuchi (土), or earth, is a 1939 film directed by tomu uchida. it won the 1940 kinema junpo award for best film. a seriously compromised print of earth was discovered in germany in 1968. it suffers from nitrate damage and includes german subtitles. it is missing its first and last reel. the original film was 142 minutes long; this version runs 93 minutes. a 119-minute version of the film, with subtitles in russian, was discovered in russia around the turn of the millennium. it too is missing the last reel.