Furyo

Furyo (戦場のメリークリスマス with the Japan and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with the the United States) is a Film anglo - Japan board carried out by Nagisa Oshima in 1983.

The scenario is based on the autobiographical book of Laurens van der Post The Seed and the Sower (1963).

Synopsis

In a prison camp in Java in 1942 pile up several hundreds of soldiers English, Australian, New Zealand and Dutch fallen to the hands from the Japanese. The person in charge of the camp is the Yonoi captain, one graded fears and hated by its subordinates.

Intransigent, it imposes on a whole a discipline iron. The tension between the two communities is accentuated with the arrival of a new prisoner, the major Jack Storerooms: refusing to subject itself, this one will return blow for blow to its geôliers… The film is centered on the discovery and the fear which these two men taken with the trap of the war test, in a closed place, the camp, clean with the blossoming of any feeling.

Data sheet

Title: Furyo (戦場のメリークリスマス: Senjou No Merii Kurisumasu in the original version)
Realization: Nagisa Oshima
Scenario: Paul Mayersberg, Nagisa Oshima (Laurens van der Post for the novel The Seed and the Sower )
Photography: Toichiro Narushima
Production: Jeremy Thomas
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Assembly: Tomoyo Oshima
Decorations: Shigemasa Toda, Andrew Sanders
Coming out date: 1983
Nationality: Japan/Great Britain
Kind: drama
Lasted: 124 minutes

Distribution

David Bowie: Jack " Strafer" Storerooms
Tom Conti: John Lawrence
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Yonoi
Takeshi Kitano : Gengo Hara
Jack Thompson: Hicksley
Johnny Okura : Kanemoto
Alistair Browning: De Jong

Around film

Furyo revealed with the international public the actor and realizer Takeshi Kitano like Ryuichi Sakamoto, actor and type-setter of the original soundtrack.
In Stupor and tremors film adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Amélie Nothomb, the narrator makes an allusion to a scene of Furyo

Legal controversy

Furyo was the object of a famous stop of the Court of justice of the European Communities (CJCE) when the National federation of the French cinema (FNCF), pursuant to the French law, obtained Court of Bankruptcy of Paris the seizure of vidécoassettes of film. The Cinéthèque company wished to distribute Furyo in the form of video-cassette before the expiry of the 12 months period following the exit of film as a cinema envisaged by the French law. The CJCE confirmed that the French law was in conformity with the EEC Treaty but, by doing this, ruled that even when a national law does not aim the imports and imposes only methods of sale applying indifferently to the imported products and the national products, this law can nevertheless in theory constitute an attack with free movement of the goods and, thus, contravene the Treaty.

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