Flight from Ashiya (1964) ***

A post-WW2 operation to save a handful of Japanese adrift at sea in a storm is endangered when three members of the U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service confront conflicts from their past. Despite tense rescue action, this is basically a three-hander about guilt and how men deal – or fail to deal – with emotions. Extended flashbacks illuminate the tangled relationships between Sgt Takashima (Yul Brynner), Lt Col Stevenson (Richard Widmark) and Second Lieut Gregg (George Chakiris). Unusually, for the period, tough guys actually emote.

So really it’s like one of those portmanteau films that are occasionally popular – like Trio (1950) made up of Somerset Maugham short stories or similar to something like the Oscar-winning  Crash (2004) where characters interconnect after an accident. While each of the episodes stands up in its own right, the thrust of the narrative revolves around actions taken in the past having a direct bearing on the present situation.

Gregg is haunted by causing an avalanche after flying his helicopter too close to a mountain and, as a result, by having to leave behind many of the victims, due to restricted capacity on board, and now he is terrified of flying solo.  As a consequence Stevenson has no faith in abilities as a pilot.

Stevenson also has an abiding hatred of Japanese – colleague Takashima of Japanese ancestry also bears his wrath – because his ill wife Caroline (Shirley Knight) and child died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp because medical supplies were reserved only for the Japanese. Faced with rescuing Japanese, he is enraged.

For his part, Takashima, a paratrooper during the war, inadvertently caused  the death of his Algerian girlfriend Leila (Daniele Gaubert). It’s not so much an examination of tough guys under pressure as about their inability to deal with the consequences of action. There’s certainly a sense that the only way men like these have of dealing with trauma is to throw themselves into dangerous action.

Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) gives a more thoughtful performance than you might expect while Richard Widmark (The Secret Ways, 1961), himself dabbling in production elsewhere, was good value. Goerge Chakiris (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967) was a weaker link. The presence of Suzy Parker (Circle of Deception, 1960) and especially Daniele Gaubert (The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl, 1968) strengthen the film.

Unusually, at a time when product was in short supply and for a film boasting a strong cast, the picture was shelved for two years after completion. Presumably explained by the demise of Harold Hecht’s production company after he split with Burt Lancaster. Michael Anderson (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) directed from a screenplay by Waldo Salt (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) based on the novel by Elliot Arnold (Kings of the Sun, 1963).

The title’s a bit of a misnomer, suggesting someone is trying to escape from Ashiya when, in fact, that is just the name of the air base where the rescue team are located.

Critics complained it was neither one thing nor the other, but in fact I found it a perfectly satisfactory combination of action and drama, especially as it dealt with rarely-recognized male emotions.

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