The Naked Island

裸の島 The Naked Island
Directed by	Kaneto Shindō
Produced by	Kaneto Shindō Matsuura Eisaku
Written by	Kaneto Shindō
Starring	Nobuko Otowa Taiji Tonoyama Shinji Tanaka Masanori Horimoto
Music by	Hikaru Hayashi
Cinematography	Kiyomi Kuroda
Editing by	Toshio Enoki
Release date(s)	November 23, 1960 (1960-11-23)
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Japan

The Naked Island (Japanese: 裸の島 Hadaka no shima) is a 1960 art film directed by Kaneto Shindō. The film was made in black and white, and is notable for having no spoken dialogue.

Plot synopsis

The film Hadaka No Sima depicts a small Japanese family, struggling to get by on a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea. They are the island's only occupants, and survive by farming. They carry water for their plants and themselves in a row boat from a neighboring island.

While the parents are away from the island, the older son falls ill. The desperate father runs to find a doctor to come to treat his son, but when they arrive, the boy is already dead. After the boy's funeral, the family resumes their hard life, with very limited opportunity for grief.

Awards

In 1961, the film won the Grand Prix (in a tie with Grigori Chukhrai's Chistoye nebo) at the second Moscow International Film Festival, at which Luchino Visconti was a jury member.

In 1963 the film was nominated as best film from any source at the BAFTA Film Awards.

External links

• "裸の島 (Hadaka no shima)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1960/cj005440.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-13. 
• The Naked Island essay at the Masters of Cinema website
• The Naked Island trailer
• The Naked Island at the Internet Movie Database
• The Naked Island at AllRovi