Never have I seen a more grisly and physically repulsive film than "Fires on the Plain."… So purposely putrid is it, so full of degradation and death as it recounts the harrowing experiences of a Japanese army straggler in Leyte toward the end of World War II, that I doubt if anyone can sit through it without becoming a little bit ill and losing appetite for the next meal. That's how horrible it is.

To note this is a tribute to its maker, for it is perfectly obvious to me that Kon Ichikawa, the director, intended it to be a brutally realistic contemplation of one aspect of war. Plainly he wanted the spectator not only to see but to feel the progressively worse degradation of a sick soldier cast off in an alien land, released from the discipline of a shattered unit, compelled to forage for himself, bereft...