Human Condition, The - Pt. 1 - No Greater Love (1958)

This first segment of THE HUMAN CONDITION, Masaki Kobayashi's adaptation of Jumpei Gomikawa's novel NINGEN NO JOKEN, stars Tatsuya Nakadai as Kaji. During WWII, the pacifist Kaji decides to avoid the draft by working as a labor superintendent at a mine in Manchuria. His efforts at treating the workers in a humane fashion backfire, blunted by the cruelty of their direct boss, Okazaki (Eitarô Ozawa), with only mine supervisor Okishima (Sô Yamamura) offering support. To complicate matters, 600 ill and starving Chinese POWs arrive at the camp. Naturally, Kaji takes complete responsibility for them but soon finds that Chinese prisoners resent his attempts to treat them with kindness, too traumatized by the harsh treatment they've received from the Japanese to ever trust one of them. Consequently, Kaji's unusual behavior ends up angering both the prisoners and his fellow supervisors. When, after achieving a productivity gain, he decides to take a brief vacation, his enemies arrange for some of the Chinese prisoners to escape, creating an uproar and endangering Kaji's position. Nakadai is, once again, astounding in Kobayashi's attack on the dehumanizing effect of the Pacific war on the Japanese. A brilliantly made film, it's appeal for a measure of compassion in the direst straits remains disturbing in its naked emotionality.