The Barbarian and the Geisha

At once sublime and ridiculous, John Wayne stars as Townsend Harris, dispatched to Japan as U.S. Ambassador in the 1850s by President Franklin Pierce. Upon arrival, he finds fervid anti-American sentiment as well as the affection of a young geisha (Eiko Ando), which endures an outbreak of cholera and various diplomatic hurdles. The New York Times called the film “just about as lovely to look at as any we’ve ever seen,” comparing Charles G. Clarke’s color cinematography to that of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell, released five years earlier—an aesthetic that Huston sought quite deliberately to achieve.