Release date: September 26th, 1956
Director: Hiromichi Horikawa
Studio: Toho
Cast: Shintaro Ishihara, Yoko Tsukasa, Mieko Takamine, Setsuko Wakayama, So Yamamura, Kuniko Miyake, Akihiko Hirata, Makoto Sato, Nadao Kirino, Noriko Sengoku et al.
Availability: No home media or streaming release. Very infrequent theater screenings of a print that is noticeably degraded.
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It's finally summer! Not right now, because I’m writing this way back in spring and putting it in the queue, but that's not important - let's celebrate the solstice with a summery-titled movie.1
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| This movie brought to you by... canned peaches, I guess? |
This film was adapted from an original work by its star, writer/actor/sucky politician Shintaro Ishihara, who we met briefly in our post about Toho's Youth School TV series. Ishihara is the brother of Yujiro Ishihara, himself quite a prolific actor who has shown up on the blog a few times, most notably in his mainstay role on the long-running detective drama Taiyo ni Hoero!. Shintaro Ishihara was enjoying quite a bit of success in 1956, with Eclipse being the fourth film released that year in which he had a leading role.
Adaptations of Ishihara's literary works were instrumental in the development of what are referred to as "Sun Tribe" films, which portray a kind of rebellious, youthful subculture closely associated with similar American movements such as rockabilly. (Eclipse is the only Sun Tribe movie in Hirata's vast filmography, due mostly to the fact that Toho was generally not putting these kinds of films out; it was usually Nikkatsu.) In addition to writing the original material, Ishihara also co-authored the screenplay with Toshiro Ide, who we've seen here a few times before as well.
Ishihara plays Naoki Mishima, who from plot synopses sounds like a generally disaffected youth, spending much of his time riding motorcycles and motorboating. He has an elder brother named Masaki (played by Hirata) who recently broke off an engagement to a woman named Taeko (Setsuko Wakayama). We later learn that the reason why the engagement was nullified was because Taeko was having an affair with Masaki's father Kozo (So Yamamura). This is only one of what sounds like quite a few joyless and ultimately futile romantic endeavors had by numerous characters, including the protagonist: starting off the film with a girl his age named Kyouko (Yoko Tsukasa), Naoki eventually begins a relationship with another woman, Setsuko (Mieko Takamine), who is several years his senior.
While Ishihara was at the height of his popularity around this time, it doesn't seem like Eclipse is one of his more well-regarded films. Even the director, Hiromichi Horikawa, a purveyor of otherwise very solid films for Toho, regards this one as "a flop" (shippaisaku). Funnily enough, I also encountered an interview with Nobuyoshi Ishihara, Shintaro's fourth son, in which the interviewer brings up a poster for Eclipse hanging in Nobuyoshi's studio; his response was to say, basically, "Yeah that movie was fine but did you hear about the one he did with Francois Truffaut?"
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| This is a tie-in poster promoting Suzuki's "Colleda" motorcycle model, which featured heavily in the film. (Reminiscent of the Godzilla posters that want to make sure you remember Ogata rides a Cabton.) |
Try as I might (and buddy I am trying) I cannot turn up any pictures of Hirata from the film. Reviews that I've read describe his character as "calculating/scheming" which would seem to imply he does have some kind of role in the overall plot, but evidently it was not a big enough role to get him featured on any posters nor even have a little portrait of him in press sheets, the way Toho often did. Here are some weirdly high-quality stills from the film; none feature our man, but I want access to whatever OP's source was for these. I am very curious about this role because I cannot imagine how a character could be described as "scheming" while also having his fiancée end up leaving him for his dad. What exactly is Masaki scheming? A way to win his fiancée back from his dad?
Screenings of the film seem incredibly sparse and reviewers have noted that the print does not look good. This person writes a travelogue featuring a poster for the movie displayed in the city of Ome, which seems to be a smallish place known as a nice respite for those looking to get away from the general Tokyo-ness of Tokyo. Laputa Asagaya has, of course, shown the film at least once.
Thanks to the attention given to the Sun Tribe movement by film scholars studying Japanese cinema, Eclipse has been cited in multiple research papers. None that I've seen, however, go in-depth on the film's actual content; it is simply mentioned as part of a list of Sun Tribe films produced around this period that demonstrate the same kind of boundary-pushing sensibilities as all of their ilk. The majority of these papers have been in English (I assume there are some in Japanese as well, but have not found any) save for one in Italian and one in French.
Outside of Japan, the film made its way to Hawaiian theaters in late 1957 under the unusual but poetic title The Summer the Sun Was Lost. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin advertised the film as "a tense drama of modern Japan". Thanks to the Hawaii Hochi, we have - blessedly, gloriously - an actual English-language review of the film, written by your friend and mine Max Morinaga. I will quote it here in its entirety.
A film which I saw recently and which I found to be oddly entertaining was titled "The Summer The Sun Was Lost".Shintaro Ishihara, one of present-day Japan's most popular authors, was the star of the film. As an actor, he ain't much. But as I understand it, his novels about juvenile delinquents and teenage sinners are sold by the hundreds of thousands!"The Summer The Sun Was Lost" didn't do so well at the box office of the Kapahulu, where it was shown last week, but it did a terrific big business in Japan.One of the high spots of this picture was the scene showing sweet-faced Yoko Tsukasa indulging in some mighty passionate kissing with Shintaro in the semi-darkness of a private garage.Shintaro is mighty disillusioned when he discovers that his sweet-faced girl has had numerous affairs with numerous boys, and he is also disgusted with his parents when he learns that his father has a mistress and his gentle and gracious mother has a lover!Shintaro himself indulges in an affair with a middle-aged woman (Mieko Takamine) who still looks mighty good in a bathing suit!
On that note, I think I've given about all the information about this surprisingly obscure film that I can. Considering that its Sun Tribe contemporaries are much better preserved, it's disappointing that this one only seems to live on in dingy prints and no home media release. One can always hope it'll get some kind of digitization before the print degrades past watchability, if it hasn't done so already.
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1 I am not allowed to write about Summer Farewell [Natsu no Wakare].