Satsuo Yamamoto
1910 - 1983Satsuo Yamamoto (July 15, 1910 - August 11, 1983) was a Japanese film director.
Yamamoto was born in Kagoshima Prefecture on July 15, 1910. He dropped out of Waseda University to join Shochiku, where he worked as an assistant director to Mikio Naruse and others. He followed Naruse when he moved to PCL, and became a director in his own right after the company was reborn as Toho. During WWII he directed several pro-war propaganda films for them despite being a fervent member of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), and after the war he rallied against the company as a driving force behind the union during the 1948 Toho labour dispute (in which the JCP was heavily involved), after which was ultimately fired.
He subsequently worked on independent films and made numerous intensely rebellious and substantial socially conscious works. From the 1960s onward, he directed a succession of major films including the Toyoko Yamasaki adaptations “The Ivory Tower” and “The Perfect Family”, the “Men and War” trilogy, and “Kotei no inai Hachigatsu”. This body of epic works led to him being dubbed “the Red Cecil B. DeMille”.
Three of his films, Shiroi Kyotō, Fumō Chitai and Ah! Nomugi Toge won the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film.
He died of pancreatic cancer on August 11, 1983 at the age of 73.
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Haha no kyoku
Satsuo Yamamoto
Setsuko Hara, Joji Oka
The prewar film Haha no kyoku (Mother's Melody, 1937) is known for its place in Japanese film history as one of the top three melodramas as well as for its authorship: Yamamoto Satsuo is an auteur not usually associated with filming melodramas. Yamamoto made the film right after he moved, along with his mentor Naruse Mikio, to the Toho film company. A number of subsequent postwar mother's films adopted some of its essences, making it a genre-defining moment in Japanese cinema. This great melodrama is atypical of Yamamoto's output, much of which deals with political corruption and inequities within social institutions and offers a strong anti-establishment appeal.
Mother's Melody
日の果て
Satsuo Yamamoto
Koji Tsuruta, Yasumi Hara
Based on Philippines war experiences. Military doctor Leutenant Hanada deserts with a local girl. The officer in command orders Lieutenant Uji to shoot Hanada. Uji takes a sharpshooter called Takagi and tracks him. At first Uji cannot forgive Hanada but as Uji is isolated from the main force he too starts to think of desertion.
The End of a Day
Tale of Japanese Burglars
Satsuo Yamamoto
Rentaro Mikuni, Yūnosuke Itō
Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some communists are found guilty of causing the incident, but he knows it wasn't them. He can save innocent people but for that he must confess his own crime.
Tale of Japanese Burglars
白い巨塔
Satsuo Yamamoto
Jirō Tamiya, Eijirō Tōno
The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.
The Great White Tower
あゝ野麦峠
Satsuo Yamamoto
Shinobu Ōtake, Mieko Harada
The story of the silk industry and the young girls who worked as silk spinners in the early 1900s in Japan. The silk mills were located in Okaya which lies just beyond the Nomugi Pass. The women and girls worked in a hot, humid atmosphere without rest, and endured those conditions and sexual harassment to earn money for their poor families. Across the ocean, it was the great depression in America.
Nomugi Pass
戦争と人間 第二部
Satsuo Yamamoto
Hideki Takahashi, Osamu Takizawa
Second part of an epic drama of war and its effects upon human beings, follows the fortunes of the Godai family from 1935 through Japan's invasion of China. Based on the novels by Jumpei Gomikawa, who also penned The Human Condition.
Men and War II: Land of Love and Sorrow
