Satsuo Yamamoto

15.07.1910, Kagoshima, Japan - 11.08.1983

 

Director
Japanese director, active between the second half of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1980s. He started his career as a theatre actor during his studies at the Waseda University. In 1933, he gave it all up to join the film studio Shochiku where he started working as assistant to director Miki Naruse and others. Four years later he directed his first film for Toho film studio. He attracted international interest with his TV film based on the French novel La Symphonie pastorale by André Gide, titled Den'en kôkyôgaku (1938). As a member of the Japanese Communist Party, he made a few propaganda films during World War II. After the War, he rebelled against Toho during workers' strike in 1948. As a consequence he got fired. He became a well known director in the 1950s with his independent films. He was making left-wing films, militant and socially aware, most famous one among them Hakone fûunroku (1952). In 1960s, he started making more serious films based on literary works such as Shiroi Kyotou (The Great White Tower, 1966), Karei-naru ichizoku (The Family, 1974), Kôtei no inai hachigatsu (1978) and war trilogies Senso to ningen (Men and War), which consists of Senso to ningen: Unmei no jokyoku (1970), Senso to ningen II: Ai to kanashimino sanga (1971) and Senso to ningen III: Kanketsuhen (1973).

Filmography


Films by this director

Ninja, a Band of Assassins

(Shinobi no mono, 1962.)

Directed by: Satsuo Yamamoto
PHOTOGRAPHY: Yasukazu Takemura
Synopsis:

Ishikawa Goemon is a young samurai training to become a ninja. He loses his honor due to an affair with his trainer's wife, and in order to redeem himself and restore his honor, he must go on a difficult mission. His task is to kill the most dangerous man in Japan, samurai Oda Nobunaga, who wants to unite Japanese territories and thus has made all clans his enemies. Although nobody envies Ishikawa for his task, other clans don't want to pass up on the prestigious opportunity to be the ones to ki...

35 mm, color, 104 min
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