Typhon sur Nagasaki (1957)
Directed by Yves Ciampi

Film Review

Set against Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), now considered one of the defining films of the Nouvelle Vague era, Yves Ciampi's glitzier Typhon sur Nagasaki (released two years earlier) can't help looking like an overblown Hollywood blockbuster - a mix of conventional melodrama and full-on disaster movie that is more concerned with being a box office winner than making an intelligent statement on East-West relations after WWII.  Ciampi's film had the bigger budget, attracted a much larger audience (of just under three million in France) and featured two of the most iconic performers in French cinema history - Jean Marais and Danielle Darrieux - but it is now vastly overshadowed by Resnais's more subtle and intimate film, even if both have something meaningful to say about how the Far East and Europe regarded each other after the global conflict that came close to obliterating them both.

Typhon sur Nagasaki started out as an adaptation of Thomas Raucat's 1924 novel L'Honorable partie de campagne, with Gérard Philipe lined up to take the lead role.  Philipe's unavailability at the time led to Marais being cast in his place, resulting in the long-awaited reunion with Darrieux - the two had previously struck box office gold as the romantic leads in Pierre Billon's grand historical drama Ruy Blas (1948).  This was the second time Marais had worked with director Yves Ciampi - their first collaboration, Le Guérisseur (1954), having been one of the director's biggest commercial successes.  Marais's sportman-like physique and willingness to take on highly risky stunts proved to be advantageous for Typhon sur Nagasaki, with the actor's penchant for gutsy action scenes heightening the dramatic impact of the climactic storm sequence at the end of the film.  It is in this shockingly convincing denouement that the film comes into its own, literally pummelling the audience with its graphic depiction of nature's demonic savagery at its most extreme.  It is hard not to reflect on the even more appalling man-made disaster that had been unleashed on Nagasaki a decade before as these stark brutal images smash their way into your consciousness.

Yves Ciampi's most ambitious film, Typhon sur Nagasaki was a Franco-Japanese co-production that was one of the earliest cultural collaborations between Europe and Japan after the end of the Second World War.  In a similar vein to Resnais's Hiroshima-based drama, this film provides some valuable visual testimony of an important city in the process of being reborn after being laid waste by an atom bomb blast of terrifying magnitude, effectively showing the process of westernisation that would radically transform Japanese society in the1950s.  The casting of Keiko Kishi in the role of the tragically fated heroine Noriko is the film's most inspired touch.  Not only was she stunningly beautiful, Kishi was also one of the most gifted actresses in post-war Japanese cinema, her talents put to great use by two of the country's most renowned cineastes - Yasujiro Ozu (Early Spring, 1956) and Mikio Narusa (Untamed, 1957).

Keiko Kishi and her equally charismatic co-star Danielle Darrieux perfectly encapsulate the difference between Oriental and Western cultures at this time, the artificial glamour of the latter rendered tawdry and vapid in comparison with the richer, more authentic charms of the former.  Darrieux's character intentionally epitomises Western vanity and self-interest and her malignant impact on a nascent romance seems to be a crude but apt metaphor for the West's far from benign influence on the East.  Meanwhile, Kishi's more virtuous and modestly reflective Noriko serves as an apt symbol for a conquered nation struggling to reconcile age-old traditions with a sudden inrush of crass but seductive modernisation.

As the drama unfolds, the apparent moral and cultural gulf between the two female protagonists diminishes and we see them in a new light - as a pair of headstrong women driven to assert themselves in a male-dominated society that still regards them as the inferior sex.  Darrieux's character clearly has the advantage, through her success as a career writer but, for her, personal happiness is just as hard to obtain as it is for Noriko, whose only real assets are her youth and beauty.  Both women are rendered as helpless and pathetic as a contemporary audience would expect them to be when the titular typhoon breaks and forces them into the role of Pearl White's pitifully defenceless heroine from The Perils of Pauline, dependent on the superior prowess of the spunky Alpha Male - as if nothing had changed in the forty year interrim.  The sobering realities of the dawdling pace of female emancipation in both East and West since the war provide an interesting sub-strand that should perhaps have been developed more fully if it were to make a more than superficial impact.

Henri Alekan's lush colour photography lends Typhon sur Nagasaki an exotic splendour that was virtually unknown in French cinema at the time, and along with Roger Vadim's equally sumptuous Et Dieu... créa la femme (1956) the film heralds a dramatic shift towards the kind of expansive visual extravaganza that had served to redefine and re-energise Hollywood by the mid-1950s.   Not only is the film a treat for the eyes with its stunning panoramic shots and glorious use of colour, it offers some revealing insights into Japanese culture and in this respect bears a fair comparison with many Japanese films of this era.  A large measure of the credit for this goes to an intelligent, carefully researched script provided by two screenwriters of some renown, Annette Wademant and Jean-Charles Tacchella.

Wademant's distinctive feminist imprint is noticeable on most of the films she scripted, including two of Max Ophüls's masterpieces - Madame de (1953) and Lola Montès (1955) and several of Jacques Becker's later films (notably Casque d'or, 1951).  Tacchella was just as mould-breaking with his portrayal of male-female relationships.  After working with Ciampi on the brooding noir classic Les Héros sont fatigués (1955), he ruffled more than a few feathers with his taboo-breaking screen offerings, most famously his 1975 film Cousin, cousine, which garnered international acclaim and three Oscar nominations, in spite of its controversial subject matter.

Typhon sur Nagasaki and Hiroshima, mon amour are two remarkable, highly pertinent films that achieve similar ends in radically different ways - the one an unashamed crowd-pleasing super-production shot in glorious Technicolor, the other an understated auteur piece rendered in grainy black and white.  The cool intellectualism of Resnais's more contemplative film makes Ciampi's offering appear brash and vulgar, but both have a tremendous impact, each providing a worthy commentary on how the West and Far East viewed each other in the early years of post-war détente. The French New Wave had yet to arrive in force but already the contrast between these two similarly themed films shows the dramatic schism that was about to open up in French cinema in the late 1950s, early 1960s as a new, more politically conscious and culturally heterodox generation fully embraced the age of the auteur filmmaker.

Film Synopsis

Pierre Marsac is a French engineer working for a large oil company in Nagasaki, a Japanese city that was mostly devastated by an atomic bomb at the end of WWII.  Pierre is busily engaged overseeing engineering work when he meets Noriko Sakurai, a young local woman who runs a small shop selling silks and kimonos with her sister Saeko.  It isn't long before Pierre and Noriko become aware of a strong mutual attraction and a whirlwind romance quickly ensues.  Their marriage plans are suddenly thrown into jeopardy by the unexpected arrival of an old flame of Pierre, Françoise Fabre.  A successful journalist, Françoise has come to the region to compile a report on the effect of the atom bombs on Japan.

When Pierre renews his acquaintance with his former lover it soon becomes clear that Françoise still has amorous designs on him, much to the distress of Noriko, who begins to have cold feet about marrying the Frenchman.  At this crucial moment, an even greater disaster strikes, in the form of a massive typhoon which threatens to wreak havoc across the region.  The opportunity of reporting on a real natural disaster is a temptation that Françoise cannot resist, but in venturing out in the raging winds she risks her own life.  Pierre comes to her rescue, but Noriko is less fortunate.  Unable to escape as her shop collapses on her, the unfortunate Japanese woman is crushed to death before Pierre can come to her aid.  Realising that her affair with her ex-lover is well and truly over, Françoise heads back to France, leaving Pierre to rebuild his shattered life in the storm-damaged city that is his new home.