Children of all Races will find friendship in the easiest way when grown-ups don't intervene, and in the case of American boy Jon Provost ("Lassie") and the Japanese Roger Nakagawa, their friendship is based on the need for Nakagawa to protect him as a stranger in a strange land. Provost has survived the plane crash, and was discovered by the fisherman parents of Nakagawa floating in the ocean in a life raft. They take him in as people of good Nature's do, feed him, and try to figure out how to reunite him with his parents, Teresa Wright and Cameron Mitchell. They are having marital problems and needed time alone to sort them out so Wright had left Provost with relatives. The two boys decide to run away when they fear that police will arrest the young Provost and end up in Tokyo and other parts of the previously unseen Japan while Mitchell, Wright and Nakagawa's parents search valiantly for them.
A touching story that is a photographic look at postwar Japan and the values of real friendship. It is a sweet film that is done in the beautiful Technicope, looking much like the Cinerama films that had started coming out a few years before. Even though you know there will be a happy ending, the film is still fraught with tension, especially when they end up on the top of a very high Japanese rooftop with everybody watching them from Below. It's an easy film to get lost in, especially as the parents close in on their children, and you know there will be plenty of hugs and you're said, and hopefully not much discipline because it's a joyful situation regardless of the trouble the boys unintentionally caused.
Films like this did a lot to promote International understanding, and it's a rare dramatic film for Arthur Lubin, best known for directing some of the Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule films. Some of the highlights include the boys being taken in by a geisha, the innocent questioning of certain traditions the other nationalities don't understand (from the viewpoint of a child), and their amazement at the sights neither of them ever expected to see. Of course, the most heartwarming part of the film is the wondering if the two boys will ever get to see each other again. Clint Eastwood is the pilot on the plane in the beginning of the film, having worked with Lubin the previous year in "The First Traveling Saleslady". Perhaps a bit dated in the time frame, but certainly not in human spirit.
A touching story that is a photographic look at postwar Japan and the values of real friendship. It is a sweet film that is done in the beautiful Technicope, looking much like the Cinerama films that had started coming out a few years before. Even though you know there will be a happy ending, the film is still fraught with tension, especially when they end up on the top of a very high Japanese rooftop with everybody watching them from Below. It's an easy film to get lost in, especially as the parents close in on their children, and you know there will be plenty of hugs and you're said, and hopefully not much discipline because it's a joyful situation regardless of the trouble the boys unintentionally caused.
Films like this did a lot to promote International understanding, and it's a rare dramatic film for Arthur Lubin, best known for directing some of the Abbott and Costello and Francis the Talking Mule films. Some of the highlights include the boys being taken in by a geisha, the innocent questioning of certain traditions the other nationalities don't understand (from the viewpoint of a child), and their amazement at the sights neither of them ever expected to see. Of course, the most heartwarming part of the film is the wondering if the two boys will ever get to see each other again. Clint Eastwood is the pilot on the plane in the beginning of the film, having worked with Lubin the previous year in "The First Traveling Saleslady". Perhaps a bit dated in the time frame, but certainly not in human spirit.