The Highest Honour | |
---|---|
Directed by | Peter Maxwell Seiji Maruyama |
Written by | Lee Robinson Katsuya Susaki |
Based on | book by Yuzuru Shinozaki |
Produced by | Lee Robinson executive John McCallum |
Starring | John Howard Steve Bisley |
Cinematography | John McLean |
Music by | Eric Jupp |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Seven Network (AUS) Toho (Japan) Enterprise (UK) New World Pictures (US) [1] |
Release dates |
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Running time | 96 mins(US) 108 mins (AUS) 143 mins (Japan) |
Countries | Australia Japan |
Languages | English Japanese |
Budget | over A$5 million [2] |
The Highest Honour is a 1982 Australian/Japanese co-production [3] about Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau by Z Special Unit during World War II. [4]
The same story inspired the TV mini-series Heroes (1988) and Heroes II: The Return (1991).
During World War II, a team of Australian soldiers from Z Special Unit, including Ivan Lyon and Robert Page, successfully lead an expedition to destroy ships in Singapore harbour, Operation Jaywick. An attempt to duplicate this success, Operation Rimau, ends in disaster, with the team either killed or captured. These soldiers are interrogated by the Japanese in Singapore, with Page forming a friendship with Minoru Tamiya. Eventually all the Australians are convicted of war crimes and executed. [5]
Producers John McCallum and Lee Robinson had previously made a film about Z Special Unit, Attack Force Z (1981). Robinson said he was approached to make the film by a member of the Australian embassy in Tokyo in 1980. He says the official asked him if he was interested in making a movie about Jaywick and Rimau with a Japanese company. Robinson says he spent a year researching the story in Japanese and Australian archives. [2]
The film was originally shot under the title of Southern Cross. Production took place in 1982. It was financed by two dozen Australian businessmen and a Japanese production company, Shinihon Eija, who contributed $1.5 million in marketing and production costs. [2]
There were two versions of the film – Australian and Japanese. Robinson later said the two versions were intrinsically the same but the emphasis in the Japanese film was more towards the Japanese actors and vice versa. [2]
Robinson later said that "the film is a human story of how a friendship can develop among enemies and how human spirit rises above the atrocities of war. It is an anti-war film set in a period remembered for horrendous slayings of civilians." [6]
The film was never released theatrically in Australia [7] but did screen as a TV mini-series in 1989. [8] It did obtain a theatrical release in the US and UK and McCallum says the film sold widely to television. It was also known as Heroes of the Krait and Minami Jujisei . [9]
The widow of Bob Page and survivors of Z Force were furious with the film, claiming it was far too complimentary to the Japanese. Robinson admitted the film was "50 percent fiction" and that "there is no doubt that the whole picture is designed as an apology, but with facts as dramatic as these, why play around with it? What gives the film the impact is the constant reminder that this is true." [2]
Robinson admitted there was an occasion when the Japanese producers wanted the prison set to have pillows and sheets on the bed to make them look nicer, but he refused. A scene where a Japanese officer comes to Australia ten years after the war to make peace with one of the widows, Roma Greemish, was cut at the request of Ms Greemish. [2]
McCallum later said that "Stuart Wilson was very good in" the film but:
It got bogged down with too much Japanese dialogue, because they were co-producing, and put up half the money. They insisted on a lot of Japanese. I said, 'You're the villains in this, you beheaded the Australians.' But they thought they'd make a huge amount of money out of it; the man behind the film company was a millionaire. He took us up there, Robinson and myself and some of the actors, and we had a great jamboree of a week in Tokyo, where he had a huge launch of the damn thing in a huge cinema. He said 'We're releasing it tomorrow all over Japan. We expect to make three million.' I think they lost three million. [10]
In 1982 Thomas Keneally was reported as working on a script for another film based on Operation Rimau called Rimau for the South Australian Film Corporation to be made for $1 million, but no film eventuated. [2]
32 Battalion was an elite light infantry battalion of the South African Army founded in 1975, composed of black and white commissioned and enlisted personnel. It was disbanded on 26 March 1993.
Attack Force Z is a 1982 Australian-Taiwanese World War II film directed by Tim Burstall. It is loosely based on actual events and was filmed in Taiwan in 1979. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 1981.
Operation Jaywick was a special operation undertaken in World War II. In September 1943, 14 commandos and sailors from the Allied Z Special Unit raided Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour, sinking three ships and damaging three ships.
Z Special Unit was a joint Allied special forces unit formed during the Second World War to operate behind Japanese lines in South East Asia. Predominantly Australian, Z Special Unit was a specialist clandestine operation, direct action, long-range penetration, sabotage, and special reconnaissance unit that included British, Dutch, New Zealand, Timorese and Indonesian members, predominantly operating on Borneo and the islands of the former Dutch East Indies.
Operation Rimau was an attack on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour, carried out by an Allied commando unit Z Special Unit, during World War II using Australian built Hoehn military MKIII folboats. It was a follow-up to the successful Operation Jaywick which had taken place in September 1943, and was again led by Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Lyon of the Gordon Highlanders, an infantry regiment of the British Army.
Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Lyon, was a British soldier and military intelligence agent during the Second World War. As a member of Z Special Unit Lyon took part in a number of commando operations against the Japanese and was killed during Operation Rimau while attempting to infiltrate Singapore harbour and destroy Japanese shipping there in 1944.
The MV Krait is a wooden-hulled vessel famous for its use during World War II by the Z Special Unit of Australia during the raid against Japanese ships anchored in Singapore Harbour. The raid was known as Operation Jaywick.
The Motorised Submersible Canoe (MSC), nicknamed Sleeping Beauty, was an underwater vehicle built by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. It was designed to enable a single frogman to sabotage enemy ships, though it would also be used for short-range reconnaissance. They were replaced by the diver propulsion vehicle after the end of the war.
Screaming Eagles is a 1956 American historical war film directed by Charles F. Haasd starring Tom Tryon, Jan Merlin and, in her film debut, French Miss Universe 1954 runner-up Jacqueline Beer. It was released by Allied Artists.
The Heroes is a 1989 British/Australian mini-series on Operation Jaywick, a World War II special forces raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore harbour by the Australian Z Special Unit, based on Ronald McKie's 1960 book The Heroes.
Heroes II: the Return is a 1991 British/Australian mini-series about Operation Rimau during World War II. It was a sequel to the 1989 mini-series The Heroes.
Robert Charles Page, DSO was an Australian soldier who was a member of Z Special Unit during the Second World War. He took part in Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau, in which he was captured and executed by the Japanese. He was the nephew of Australian prime minister Sir Earle Page, and the son of Harold Page, who died as a Japanese prisoner of war in 1942. Page was played by John Howard in the film The Highest Honor (1983) and Chris Morsley in The Heroes (1989) and Heroes II: The Return (1991).
Thunderbirds is a 1952 war film directed by John H. Auer and starring John Derek, John Drew Barrymore, Mona Freeman, Gene Evans, Eileen Christy and Ward Bond. It features the exploits of the 45th Infantry Division in the Italian campaign of World War II. The film was made by Republic Pictures with sequences filmed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Coronation Island, also known as Garlinju, is located off the Kimberley coast of Western Australia. It encompasses an area of 3,817 hectares. It is located off Port Nelson in the Bonaparte Archipelago, as a part of the group of islands known as the Coronation Islands, which were named by Philip Parker King, the first European to visit the islands in 1820, after the anniversary of the coronation of George III, who had died in January of that year.
Operation Scorpion was a proposed operation in World War II by Australia's Z Special Unit.
Operation Hornbill was a proposed commando operation by Australian forces during World War II. The operation was proposed by Ivan Lyon following the success of Operation Jaywick.
Operation Opossum was a World War II raid undertaken by Australia's Z Special Unit in 1945 on the island of Ternate near Borneo to rescue the Sultan of Ternate, Muhammad Jabir Syah.
Operation Lagarto was an Australian military operation in Timor during World War II in 1943. It was run by the Services Reconnaissance Department. The Naval component of the mission was named Operation Mosquito. The operation was ambushed and captured. Japanese intelligence used information from the mission to lure other Australian commandos to Timor where they were captured and killed, notably Operation Cobra (Timor), Operation Sunlag and Operation Suncob.
The 1916 Birthday Honours were appointments by King George V to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the British Empire. The appointments were made to celebrate the official birthday of The King, and were published in The London Gazette and in The Times on 3 June 1916.
Operation Sunbaker was a military operation by the Services Reconnaissance Department of Australian Army in Timor in May 1945. The aim was to insert a team of operatives behind enemy lines. A B-24 Liberator A72-159 of 200 Flight RAAF taking the team was shot down on 17 May near Dili with the loss of all on board.