I saw this film when I was 17years old.Brando was King,Paul Ford was Colonel Hall in Sgt Bilko and I was at the Savoy,Brighton with Vivienne Wyman whose dad had a paper shop near the youth club.She had beautiful wavy black hair,a flawless complexion and I was the envy of the boys in the "Coffee Lounge".Life could not get any better.In retrospect not such an unlikely possibility.The war against Japan had only been over 12 years and the "Americanisation" of the rest of the world was on schedule . American largesse had kept Britain afloat both during and after the war;it was by now widespread throughout the "conquered" countries. The Japanese people had been redeemed through defeat and the Americans were prepared to be magnanimous in victory.Military Officers became advisors and democracy was shipped out in bulk whether it was wanted or not.No reasonable person could doubt their good intentions,but imposing an alien culture on the indigenous one is not a seamless process......and the "conquered" people may not be as conquered as you think..... That,in a nutshell,is the premise of "The Teahouse of the August Moon". The Americans poke gentle fun at themselves,Paul Ford does his good-natured bumbler schtick and Marlon Brando has great fun with those actor's friends the funny accent and make - up.There is some cod Japanese philosophy and the average American's ignorance of the rest of the world is lampooned. It was a time when in England we still spoke about "good Germans" (Rommel was a "good German" - Heydrich was not).By the same token,Sakini was a "good" Japanese man.We could not understand the Bushido code,therefore it was "bad".Sakini was cute looking and smiled a lot.You couldn't imagine him starving British P.O.W.s to death. At 17 I thought Brando's portrayal of a Japanese interpreter was brilliant and hilarious.Nearly fifty years later and I can't think of any other European/American actor who could have pulled it off. He was a young man at the height of his powers;rather like a juggler throwing more and more clubs into the air,there seemed to be nothing he could not do. Glenn Ford gets a rare chance to do comedy and reminds us of his versatility.Used to playing men with a past,here he plays a man without much future,at least not in the U.S.Army. Henry Morgan as usual makes every second of his screen time count.A major part in the long-running "M.A.S.H." was just reward for years of playing cops and noncoms in movies. It is pointless to call "The Teahouse of the August Moon" racist because the concept of racism as it exists now did not exist then.And by extension of course Marlon Brando must be racist - a quite ridiculous assertion. It is probably not a film for today;it may well be rediscovered in a more gentle age when the thought police are no longer trying to apply 21st century sensibilities on fifty year old movies. Strangely enough Vivienne didn't find it very funny - perhaps it was a bloke thing.I never got a date with her again.
Review of The Teahouse of the August Moon
