Blood on the Sun

Released in 1945, only a couple of years after the Pearl Harbor attack, Blood on the Sun is one of a few films made in this era that was distinctly anti-Japanese. As a whole, they are represented by malicious and shifty looking characters, and it seems the film is intent on making the whole country look like a great evil. Aside from the obvious racist theme running throughout, this film is actually a somewhat skilfully crafted thriller.

It is very loosely based on actual events that took place in the early 1930s, where Nick Condon (James Cagney) is a reporter for a newspaper called the Tokyo Chronicle. He has suspicions that the Japanese government have secret plans to invade China and bomb the USA. He becomes even more suspicious when an article that he printed describing Premier Tanaka of having aspirations for world conquest garners an overreaction from the Imperial Police.

When a friend and fellow reporter for his newspaper, Ollie Miller (Wallace Ford), decides to leave the country in a snap decision, and seems to have become rather more wealthy, Condon knows something is wrong. He investigates, and finds that Miller and his wife Edith have been murdered, with the Imperial Police trying to cover it up. Condon receives an envelope from the dying Miller which turns out to be a copy of the Tanaka Plan, describing the Japanese’s ambitions for world conquest. The secret police are onto the fact that he now has the plan, and they send in a beautiful agent named Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sidney). It soon becomes clear to Condon that he must leave the country with the plan, or die trying.

James Cagney is the main (and really only) drawcard that the cast offers. He did all of his own stunts in this film, which back in the mid 1940s was a very rare thing indeed. He undertook a great deal of training for the martial arts sequences, and whilst they do look pretty tame by today’s standards, they were very innovative back then. This is one of the very first Hollywood produced films that contained a lot of oriental martial arts. As was the style at the time, all of the Japanese characters were played by Caucasian actors with makeup (and at times not very convincing makeup).

For a film that was made in the mid 1940s, the restoration that has been performed for this transfer has really done wonders. It is presented in a ratio of 1.33:1, which is its original aspect ratio. For a film of this vintage it would be expected that there would be bucket loads of film artefacts and bursts of grain throughout, however thankfully this is not the case. Whilst there seem to be good areas and bad areas, the good areas are almost totally clean of any dirt or scratches, which I think is a very good effort. There are some let downs though, and a few scenes where there seems to be a relentless onslaught of grain.

Shadow detail is somewhat of a problem also, but again for a film of this era it is still probably above average. The sharpness level is definitely better than average, and the image is generally quite clear. There are a few losses of focus that pop up here and there, but nothing to get too excited over. There are no subtitles included. The disc is single sided and single layered.

There is one soundtrack available on the disc, and it is Dolby Digital mono. The sound transfer is not up to the standard of the video, but is still of quite good quality considering the vintage of the film. There is a lot of background hiss throughout the movie, sometimes hardly audible but sometimes very prominent. The dialogue is clear and is generally easy to understand, with a few hisses and pops from the background noise making a few words difficult to comprehend here and there, and thare are no significant audio synch problems.

The score is set by the legendary Miklos Rozsa, who has a plethora of Oscar nominations to his name and was responsible for the score behind Ben-Hur. It has a suitably dark and melancholic feel to it, with a dash of oriental influence.

There is only one extra included, a Cast Biography which consists of only two pages of text on James Cagney.

Once you get past the blatant racist slander of the time, which I suppose is forgivable given the very short space between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the making of this film, this is quite an enjoyable movie. James Cagney shines above the rest of the cast as the tough no-nonsense newspaper reporter, and he makes the film a lot more enjoyable for his presence. The transfer is quite good, particularly the video aspect, and is definitely above average for a film of this era. Overall a competent, if somewhat forgettable suspense offering. If you enjoy the classics, then you should make an effort to see this.