Hadaka no shima (1960) watch online HD

I was living next to the Seto Naikai (Inland Sea) at the time this movie was made, and marvel at its matchless, eclectic choice of images and atmosphere to convey the ambiance of the time and place. The photography, music, and restrained acting are perfection itself. The lack of dialogue helps, rather than hinders, its beautiful, simple story. It has captured a Japanese way of life and culture (actually lived by the director---the movie was made as a tribute to his parents) forever and in the very highest artistic sense. The movie is so genuine, so sympathetic to its participants and subject matter, that the viewer is softly, irresistibly, drawn in to share their travails. For years it has been a wonder to me why this classic film has been forgotten. Of the thousands of movies I have seen in my lifetime, this is the finest.

I came to the internet searching for information on this movie. Not only did I find it, but I found a comment that mirrored my own experience with the movie. I too saw it in my student days, nearly 30 years ago, in a Friday-night "cinema" series in the student union theater. I see it's listed as B&W; I remember it in color -- maybe colorized it in my head? No dialog, just music and environmental sound; gorgeous photography of the island, the sea, the brutally hard work ferrying water for the crops on the terraces. And we follow that work for a long long time; we go through impressed, to irritated (why don't they move to town for chrissake), to rage at being made to sit through this for so long, to numb resignation. So we're right where the characters are. Writhing in my seat, hoping it will come to an end. And then the brief scene that left me stunned, that made sense of all that lead up to it, two seconds of film that explain us in the universe. Like William, I've never met anyone else who's seen this movie. And I don't know if I could sit through it again. But I'm sure glad I did back then.

I was surfing on the t.v. and came across this incredible "little" film on a French Canadian station. As there is no dialogue and the story is so human and pure, it is truly the most universal picture I've seen. I defy anyone not to be moved by the challenges which the characters face, the realism in the minimalist acting and the beauty of the simplistic black and white camerawork. I've never heard of this film, but I will tell all my friends about it.

I saw this movie twenty years ago and I still remember it fondly. It should be part of the training of movie directors to see and analyze this movie. The naked island (as it was named in France) shows the hard struggle of a fisherman's family to survive in a very harsh environment. It is very emotional yet does not call on any modern artifice to carry the message. The music will stay with you forever. My only regret is that I can't get a copy to show my children what movie making can be.

Naked Island or Hadaka no Shima is a movie made by director Kaneto Shindo after he directed the movie Number 5 Lucky Dragon which was semi documentary about a ship that was hit by a nuclear fall out while fishing in the pacific ocean. Shindo has a theme to his movie and this one is no exception.

A family consisting of mother, father and two boys makes a daily ferrying of water from the mainland to an island to water their farm. There are no machinery to help with their farming, and the farm is situated on a steep slope. Every day the family struggles to care for their farm, except for few days out of the year they take a break for a time out in town.

The movie having no dialog was highly experimental, and no movie studio was willing to take on this project, so Shindo self financed the five million yen project out of his own pocket. There're not many actors in this movie except for the four people in the family, and the movie was made by a staff of 13 people. The project no movie studio wanted to touch won the grand prize at the Moscow movie festival that year and was shown in 66 countries around the world. Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quoted that this is the most moving movie he's ever seen.

The movie is a reminder of how harsh a life can be if there is no enterprising society to forward the standards of living. The premise of the movie is little unrealistic because I don't think you can actually shuttle enough water by foot and a row boat to cultivate a farm. If I were them, I'd look around to see if there's a place suitable for perma culture.

Shot in the back drop of Seto inland ocean in Japan, the scenery of this movie is stunningly beautiful. Music by Mitsuru Hayashi is also beautiful. I wish I had access to the DVD released in Japan where the director's commentary is available on the bonus track ( it is available from Amazon.co.jp ).

Nobuko Otowa who played the mother in this movie went on to make many other movie and TV drama including the now famous Oshin series. Otowa later marries the director of this movie Kaneto Shindo in 1978 after Shindo's first wife passed away. Otowa and Shindo were a team since she made her film debut in 1951, and they had a long relationship until her death in 1994.

Amazing! Let me join the happy few who saw this film when it first came out. It was in Paris. I was a student. It was L'Ile Nu I think. And I have never forgotten it and never seen it again. That's over 40 years ago! And now it is coming out on DVD and most people will never have heard of it. So my dear golden oldies who were young in 1961, rejoice and tell everyone. This is pure cinema with no frills, worthy of comparison with Dreyer, Bresson and O'Flaherty and a lovely companion piece to Shindo's ONIBABA. That onibaba grass stayed with us over the years as did that naked island. Talking of films lost but not forgotten, I can draw a comparison with MERE JEANNE DES ANGES (same subject matter as Ken Russell's THE DEVILS)which I saw in Leipzig in about 1962 and which I have never seen since. What a coincidence! That Polish film (MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS)is also coming out on DVD. Real poetic cinema is trickling through the mishmash.

Okay, we have a loving tribute here, personal for director Kaneto Shindo as portraying the life of his parents. We have the rural hardship, and dogged persistence for live in a place where water is painfully hauled over a steep cliff, and we have the quiet cinematic language that describes it.

But also describes a life of simple pleasures. Shindo observes both closely, with sympathy.

The narrative thread of The Naked Island flows with the slow and dull repetition of life itself - if the movie is dull and monotonous it is because life is dull and monotonous and with a handful of fleeting moments of pleasure and joy scattered among the daily routine of making ends meet. In that sense, the artificiality that some reviewers have spoken of (certainly Shindo's decision to include no dialogues and the film almost silent save for a few natural sounds and voices) touches upon the heart of the thing.

The film follows the cycle of the seasons as the family tries to survive in the small island and it is by using the renewal of nature as a backdrop that Shindo draws emphasis on the periodic nature of life and time - the snake that eats its tail. The theme of renewal and the cycle of life and death is further symbolized through long, repetitious sequences of the man and wife transporting irrigation water in large buckets through the steep steps of a hillside and even further as Shindo ends the film cyclically with the same aerial shot that opened it.

The other major triumph for the great Japanese director is the visual language he employs to tell the simple and languidly paced story. This is probably a point that will only interest the avid film buff but I'm fairly sure it's that kind of person only that will seek out such a film anyway. The cinematography consists of full images, superb staging and framing of the (little is the truth) action, images as much beautiful in the subject they present as in the presentation of the subject itself and vibrating with honesty and clarity of vision. As with Kurosawa in DERSU UZALA, The Naked Island captures the essence of 'life as lived in' - the texture, the mood, the smell.

Combined with the symbolism he has carefully planted within the film, The Naked Island is a complete depiction of life on both macrocosmic and microcosmic levels. Of a very specific kind of life the truth is (rural life in a Japanese island in the 30's) but in the larger scheme of things and in the things that actually matter, what is true of one man is true of many.

In an age where directors are content to just wink at their audiences with a sense of smug satisfaction, presenting us with cynic and gimmicky films, swapping emotional catharsis for surprise 'twists', doing away with honest character portrayals in favour of decorating characters with random quirks, having forgotten visual storytelling in favour of redundant voiceovers, shaky cams or self-consciously, witty dialogue; in an age like this, The Naked Island seems to come from another planet, alien to the mentality and ethics of modern cinema as much as its bucolic subject matter is to modern city life. It's definitely not something that will appeal to most but those that will set out looking for it will not be disappointed.

If you have ever wondered what a film would be like that exemplifies how the tools of the craft can be used to do powerfully what no other art can do, this film answers the question. It is among the most carefully wrought, least encumbered yet profound movies ever made. The fact that it has long been unavailable in America and Europe in any accessible format reflects very sadly upon us all. (Addendum 15 March 2008 for those of you with region-free players: the English distributor, Eureka, has thankfully released the original widescreen version of the movie in PAL format in its 'The Masters of Cinema Series', #12, with an optional commentary by Shindo and his composer, Hikaru Hayashi. Available from Amazon.uk.)

I remember this film from my student days. I saw it in an uptown, shabby, art house theatre (when art meant porn) in Philadelphia. I was amazed. As I recall, it is a film without dialog. Not silent, but no dialog. Black and white, but singularly visual. Three, maybe four characters with self- effacing directing and camera work, it was as intimate as small off-Broadway theatre. I've seen nothing since as cinematic, or moving. No one I've ever met, has seen it. But I remember it vividly.

I was reminded of this film last night when I saw the Ewan McGregor action-adventure SF movie of the same English title (The Island, 2005). In that, everything happens at breakneck speed, and shot is piled on shot, giving you very little sense of place or indeed of what is happening. And it "borrows" from about seven other SF movies.

This could hardly be more different. It's like no other movie. Almost nothing happens. There are basically only two incidents. The first is quite shocking, and sets you up for the second to be much more so. But instead, life goes on. And that is the point of this little gem. See this film when you really have nothing else to do. Maybe take it on holiday and nothing else. For the first 3/4 hr you may find yourself asking "Why am I watching this?" Don't give up. Once it's over, you'll have a little experience of a very different way of life from your own that you can look back on for the rest of your life.

Edit: This film was called "Island" when I saw it. IMDb has changed its name automatically and I had to read the review to find out what film it was. "The Naked Island" is a terrible title for this film.

Probably one of the most moving movies in the history ; the more so because of the simplicity of the movie: no dialogs, B&W, a very slow pace and non professional actors. But from the first to the last minute it is about fate and courage and man. Do see it. You'll understand.

Probably one of the most simple and still moving movies ever seen. No words. No special effects. A family: human beings that live and work and suffer and die and live.

A top rate drama from post-war Japan!

A family struggling to survive the toils of daily life is portrayed excellently. We get to see the effects of farming life and the family's scant opportunity for relief from such work.

Don't avoid it just because it's "in black and white" because you'd be missing out on one of the key films that form the solid base that all post-war Japanese cinema stands on. Technique and storytelling combine for a satisfying and truly human film without relying on the devices of obvious, heavy symbolism too often seen in quasi-religious dramatic films from this period.

If you drive a car, you may have experienced a common phenomenon. Spend hours driving at super-highway speed, then, when you exit onto a road where the speed limit is 45 MPH, you will feel as though you are going very, very slowly. This phenomenon has a parallel in the world of movie viewing. With the pervasive acceleration of film pacing that is evident in today's action/thriller films, audiences have become conditioned to expect and even demand fast moving story-telling on their cineplex screens. In 1959, when the curtains closed and the lights came up for the intermission in William Wyler's "Ben Hur", people in the theaters expressed surprise that so much time had elapsed. In its day, that film (particularly the first half) seemed to fly by so quickly that people could scarcely believe its actual running time was as great as it was. Nowadays, we have grown so accustomed to faster-moving fare that many find "Ben Hur" to be rather slow.

Consider then the extraordinary production that Kaneto Shindo brought to the screen in 1960. It was a daringly slow-paced film even then! If you were the sort of film-goer who was forever impatient to see the action unfold swiftly (and there were many such people, then as now), this was hardly going to be your kind of movie. "The Island", as it was titled in its original U.S. release, asked the viewer to enter into the grinding, arduous existence of a little family monotonously toiling to eke out a meager existence on a remote and rugged little island. It continually invites deep contemplation of the minute details of this struggle and the environment in which it occurs. If you are attuned to the style and purpose of the director, you will respond deeply to his visual poetry. You will gain an appreciation of the extraordinary lives and labors of the characters in his story. When the film's intense climax arrives, it will have all the more impact on you because of the way that you have been drawn into an atmosphere of numbingly repetitious daily struggles. What happens to this family will come closer to feeling like it is happening to you. I can not imagine any way this might have been accomplished with greater effectiveness.

Having said all of this, I am not deluded into imagining that this is a film for everyone. Impatient viewers who will never be drawn to contemplative film-making which aims primarily to immerse the viewer in the world of its characters, rather than to hurtle the audience along through a cinematic thrill-ride, had best ignore this picture. For the rest of us, I believe it to be a one-of-a-kind treasure.

I knew going in that this celebrated Shindo film would have no dialogue and that, basically, it would be a lyrical, quasi-documentary ode to the power and beauty of nature…but, to me, it felt more like a celebration of drudgery instead, as I would have expected a little more drama to sustain its 1½-hour length! As it stands, probably more than half its running-time consists of the woman crossing back and forth to the mainland by boat in order to provide irrigation water for their crops; actually, the film was criticized at the time by fellow Japanese film-makers – particularly Nagisa Oshima – because Shindo opted to adhere to the general view held by foreigners of the Japanese people as stereotypically quaint and passive!

Besides, the concept of making it almost completely silent (apart from sound effects, the singing of school-children, and the musical score that is present virtually all the way through) is an artificial one to begin with: at the very least, one would have appreciated some sort of narration to fill us in on what the characters might be thinking at any particular moment, considering how they do not even feel the need to make conversation. In fact, the only emotion that ever seeps through their stoic façade to break the unmitigated monotony of their simple, humble lifestyle is: a) when the husband unaccountably slaps the wife for spilling the water – which she has to carry uphill on her shoulders in buckets filled practically to the brim on either side of a pole!; b) the mother crying over the death of their elder boy (the father had to go to the mainland to get a doctor and, since the latter is not at home, goes to look for him all over the place on foot!); and c) towards the end, following the boy's funeral, as the mother breaks down – sobbing in desperation at their futile existence – and vents her anger on the crops they work so hard all year long to grow.

Ultimately, after my initial disappointment (considering the passion and energy at the centre of the only other two films I've watched from this director, ONIBABA [1964] and KURONEKO [1968]), the twin virtues of its hypnotically beautiful images and the sublime music by Hikaru Hayashi – surely one of the most beautiful scores I've ever heard – are more than enough to make THE NAKED ISLAND a quietly impressive achievement in its own right.

In a time where cinema was in the whole world was still concerned by representation of lives and social studies, this movie is an intense an important piece. It's great! Strong, hard, oppressing, nice, and emotive. Everything in the hard (but sometimes amazing) life of those workers is showed in it... It's really something the cinema can do at his best. A social study showing every aspect of a style of life, with its private feelings and possible events (thoose who are saying nothing happens mustn't have watched the whole movie. I was surprised by the changing of rhythm in the last 30 minutes).

It's showing everything essential cinema can show: Life, conditions of life, feelings of those who are living, and it's showing it in a very good way. This is a touching and oppressive movie which could maybe even be used as an historical document (for history of the Japanese island farmers in the middle of the XX century) , but also as an intense fiction.

I do not know how the DVD of this film came into hands of a friend of mine who recommended it to me. But it obviously still grips. Now it's 46 years later and it still touches the heart of us who live thousand miles far from Japan, on other continent. (Belgrade, Serbia) No great political history, no big social questions, no great fable, no big thoughts, no cult actors, there's even no great scenes nor great "ethno" attractions: there's just true minimalistic story of life and death as they were then and there, simple emotions, and no repellent pretensions to make smart, touchy, political, etc. story-to-be-liked. Like "Man from Aran". Thus this film became even philosophically: because it's true and simple. It's so consequent! It's so consequent in it'aim to show hard everyday struggle: nothing but that, and all of it. I recommend this film even to people who do not like such films. It has nice shots of landscapes, nice music and wonderful pace. I saw it few days ago - and I was surprised!

I think this film prove that visual effects can be more efficient than sound. Hadaka no shima is a beautiful film without words. I love it very much.

On a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea, a small family consisting of husband, wife, and two sons, struggle to get by. They are the island's sole inhabitants, and spend their days fetching water from the mainland and carrying up the steep hill in order to water their crops. One day when the mother and father are away from the island, one of the sons falls ill, and the father races to get help. Their lives are all portrayed in painstaking detail, and the film contains no dialogue whatsoever. The film is directed by Kaneto Shindo, who directed the two brilliant Japanese New Wave horror films, Kuraneko and Onibaba, the only two other films of his I've seen.

This is a break in style and subject for Shindo. The two aforementioned horror films were similarly slow and detailed, but The Naked Island contains no action or atmosphere, but certainly shares their beauty. This is a film that shows how far humanity can be pushed in order to merely get by. The climax of the film (and I don't feel I'm ruining anything by revealing it, the story is not important) has their ill son dying, as his father and the doctor arrive too late. After the funeral, they are forced back to work. The mother, needing to grieve, throws down the water and screams into the ground, as the father watches helpless. Afterwards, she gets up, and methodically resumes watering.

Shindo tackles a universal subject with the neglect of the working class. Filmed with no dialogue, it emphasises their facial expressions and body movements in a way the silent era did, and forces the audience to live through the work they do, every step at a time. The director said he wanted to "capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature," and he certainly does that. The film is slow, and focuses a lot of time on the struggle of carrying the water up the hillside. Yet it's filmed with such elegance, it only hammers their struggle home. This is a beautiful and moving film, that is almost brutal in its relentlessness.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Since cinema is primarily a visual media, in a way silent films can be called the purest type of films. Still, sound is also an essential part of human perception, so the real challenge may lie in finding the best possible combination of showing things through the visuals and telling them via dialogue or narration. In The Naked Island, director Kaneto Shindô has chosen a very quiet approach to his subject, a poor peasant family of four living on an isolated rocky island. The father and the mother (Taiji Tonoyama and Nobuko Otowa) spend practically all of their time fetching water from another island by a rowboat for their meager crops that require constant nurture to survive on the harsh island. Their two sons (Shinji Tanaka and Masanori Horimoto) sometimes help their parents in their work, but also have time to play and go to school on the other island where they have to be taken to and from by rowboat.

The presentation is very documentary-like: the plot is borderline non-existent and the focus is mostly on the mundane tasks the family completes. The notable thing about the style is the complete lack of dialogue; nobody ever utters a word and intertitles are used minimally. While the obmutescence could have come across as awkward and artificial in less skilled hands, Shindô maintains a perfect understanding of how to use visual means to tell his story. The expressive faces of the family members and the stark scenery of the island lend themselves for the black and white cinematography and the beautifully composed shots so magnificently that conversations or verbal explanations never feel necessary. In spite of the nearly mute characters, the film doesn't neglect sound design either; the calm, non-diegetic score and occasional chanting and other human sounds by the locals support the style seamlessly.

Shindô's view of life in poverty is surely highly romanticized, but the film probably works best as an inspirational cinematic poem as opposed to a sharply realistic piece of cinema vérité anyway. However hard the family's life may seem at first, it is never devoid of emotion: there is joy, disappointment, frustration and sorrow, not forgetting a beautiful sense of community that is not hindered by the physical remoteness of the island. It could be said that one of the points the film makes is about finding meaning in a seemingly empty state of mind. Earlier in the film one wonders what it is that keeps the family in their unrelenting home; couldn't they just move to the mainland or the inhabited islands nearby? At the end, an understanding has been formed: home is where the heart is, and life can be full even on the Naked Island. In brief, the slow-paced film is not for everybody, but those willing to allow themselves to sink into its world will not be disappointed.

one of the top ten best: why ? ... the most touching music;... the purest actors;... the most moral movie ever;... the greatest scenery;... the best dialogs !

Pure. Thick and heavy. It's like going through a gallery of paintings where every piece is a timeless treasure. It's as pure a movie as can be found. It's got its own style, it makes its own rules. There is no dialogue, no sound of human voice other than when the family goes to town. And just when you feel like you can't take anymore of this life, the movie slaps you in your face and you simply understand: this isn't make-believe, it's real life, and if you are busy being bored, you're simply wasting precious time when there's work to be done. The work for us is to enjoy all the beautiful angles, the daring framing which somehow often cuts off part of the image but by virtue of that cutting-off keeps the realness perfectly intact. The editing alone is a masterpiece, cutting just as the characters and setting reach a sublime visual harmony, and returning with a new set up full of many little details fluttering and seeking balance all over again. This movie defines what visual story-telling is and forever should be, because it almost never gets bogged down in drama, it ebbs and flows in synch with the nature around it. Plus, the talent of the actors is beyond belief, most definitely owing much to the direction.

The problem comes in the last quarter of the movie's duration. After teaching us not to be sentimental, the movie then takes us through what would be a tragedy for us in most other movies, but here we don't exactly know how to feel. The movie up to this point taught us to detach from emotion, so we kind of just want to get back to work and we don't see the sense in wallowing in misery. And so when one of the characters displays a desire to wallow in misery, we don't have any connection. That is the downside to not getting to know any of the characters' individuality. We have never heard their voices, never understood their dreams or frustrations. Because of this, the movie's miraculous shots, though technically good, become devoid of cinematic beauty because their context is muddled. The audience slips out of the spell that for more than hour seemed impossible to break. A+ for Ambition though.

I hate to be the dissenting voice amongst this sea of adulation, but I cannot understand what the other contributors see in this film. For the first 36 minutes in this wordless drama, we see mother and father collect water from the mainland and then row back to their island and totter up steep steps with the precious cargo in order to irrigate their crops. I know art films are often slow, but come on! 36 minutes of seeing the same thing? What else happens? Not a lot. We see the family eat, take a bath, catch a fish. Riveting stuff, eh? This is one film that I feel has not stood the test of time. On one aspect however I do concur with the other reviewers: the music is wonderful.

Kaneto Shindô's heart-rending minimalist gem "The Naked Island" (1960) indeed strips movie-making to its very naked basics: imposing black and white pictures, sparsely used sounds and a musical theme to die for turn a film with a simplistic story into a major cinematic event. Dialog there is none. Which is more than an experiment, rather it's an artistic statement. Indeed, as the film shows: Conversations are not required in order to tell a tale that focuses on the burdens of life weighing on its characters, a life that is monotonous, repetitive, bland, but which is lived with dignity and perseverance. And if you are willing to let yourself be guided by images alone, you'll soon forget any ambitions of plot and will find yourself captured by the daily routines of people struggling to grow crops on a tiny rugged island where water is as precious as the sun merciless. There's drama as well, but only as a natural extension of the circumstances.

The cinematography is unobtrusive, doesn't draw attention to itself, yet at the same time every single image is so carefully framed, that it could stand on its own like a painting. Shindô however paints in moving pictures, and the impact is thus even stronger. As an audience we are simply observing the contradictory sublime beauty of the triteness through a gorgeous black and white filter, and while what we see feels like a documentary in content, it is wrapped in visual poetry rarely seen in such condensed intensity. The documentary feel and the poetic approach might be comparable to Flaherty's famous "Man of Aran" (1934). Both pictures focus on people living on an island and fighting the forces of nature, however, while "Aran" is an action spectacle dealing with a torrential confrontation culminating in musical crescendos on the sound track, Shindô's "Naked Island" is anything but a thrilling ride. Because of that it feels even more realistic and less staged, maybe the perfect counterpoint to the Flaherty picture. Still, both have their own merit on different sides of the spectrum.

In "The Naked Island" the melancholic, restrained music sets the pace, reflecting the inescapable daily chores, the circle of life for crops and men, and we are inevitably drawn into the film's meditative life-affirming mood against the harsh backdrop that permeates all. The depiction of these few lives we follow might seem like a slow, tedious journey against all odds that has little value for viewers, especially when we see the same things again and again. But at some point the arduous task of carrying water buckets up a mountain slope feels more like a dance and it's as if the sparkling of the rocking water only affirms how treasured and precious, how life-giving it is. - In short: If you want to leave your own perhaps hectic and stressful existence behind for an hour and a half, here's something that is likely to touch you in a very profound way: an isle of tranquility and contemplation to return to in the pandemonium of modern everyday life.

Loved this movie.Had me in tears.Touching insight into another way of life.

Please if you like fast moving action and special affects in your movies you may not like this.

I am working my way through 'Eight Japanese Masters' collection that I have and I loved this so much.

The movie has next to no dialogue.I watched Shindos'.. Children of Hiroshima before this one and thought that would make me cry but it didn't, this one did!

Watch this in a peaceful time when you have time to reflect on another culture