The Big Wave (1961)

Wissenswertes

The Big Wave is a 1961 melodrama film based on the 1948 novel by Pearl S. Buck. The film was directed and produced by Tad Danielewski from a screenplay co-written with Buck, and stars Sessue Hayakawa, Mickey Curtis, Koji Shitara, and Hiroyuki Ota. The story follows two boys, Yukio and Toru, growing up in a coastal village that is often threatened by natural disasters. Their friendship is strained when both develop feelings for the same ama girl, Haruko.

Production

While working at NBC in the mid-1950s, Tad Danielewski suggested to author Pearl S. Buck a televised adaptation of her 1948 novel The Big Wave, with Buck writing the script. Her script was ultimately adapted for an episode of the anthology television series The Alcoa Hour. Shot in color under the direction of Norman Felton, the episode starred Rip Torn and Robert Morse as the two Japanese village boys, and Hume Cronyn as the Wise Gentleman.

In 1957, Buck and Danielewski founded the independent production company Stratton Productions named after Stratton Mountain. The company initially worked on stage productions before transitioning to film. After several unsuccessful plays, Danielewski proposed adapting The Big Wave into a film in early 1960, and insisted on filming it in Japan to reflect the story authentically.

Buck visited Tokyo on May 24 where she held the first meeting for the film's production; the Associated Press noted that it occurred on the same day as the tsunami resulted from the 1960 Valdivia earthquake that hit Northern Japan. She traveled back to the United States that June after being informed that her husband, Richard J. Walsh, had died during her absence.

"The book, of course, had to be put into new form. The Big Wave is a simple story but its subject is huge. It deals with life and death and life again through a handful of human beings in a remote fishing village on the southern tip of the lovely island of Kyushu, in the south of Japan. The book has always had a vigorous life of its own.

The script of The Big Wave, co-written by Buck and Danielewski, was predominantly faithful to the novel. The pair expanded largely on the dialogue between the two protagonists Yukio and Toru, who in the original novel were named Kino and Jiya respectively. Setsu was, in the novel, depicted as more mischievous than her emotionally fragile counterpart in the film.

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