Behind the Rising Sun (RKO) is an 88-minute jag of ferocious anti-Japanese propaganda. Based on facts reported in U.S. Correspondent James R. Young's book of the same name (TIME, May 5, 1941), the picture's somewhat redundant purpose is to make Americans madder at the Japs than they are anyhow. But just as human endurance has its limits, so does human credulity: the picture defeats its own purpose. Its grueling patchwork of cinematrocities is likely to make most cinemaddicts as mad at the film as at the Japanese.

The story tells how an upper-class Japanese family is affected by Japan's war on China and the U.S. By the time Cornell-educated Taro Seki (Tom Neal) returns to Japan from the U.S., he has become waywardly democratic. He has forgotten that Japs take off their shoes before entering their homes, and like to take their baths in the company of girls. Taro's father, wealthy Publisher Ryo Seki (J. Carroll Naish), shows him the error of his Western ways by explaining that Japan's eventual domination of the world is all that really counts, and that Taro should join the Army. But Taro wants to join his U.S. friend, Engineer Clancy O'Hara (Don Douglas), marry his secretary, Tama (Margo), help his country by building public works. Taro is drafted anyhow. In China, Taro suddenly acquires a taste for torture, begins to believe that father was right. But by the time Taro gets home on leave, his father has done a remarkable turnabout, is now convinced that Japan is headed for ruin.

High spot of the film is the result of a party at which a U.S. newspaperwoman suggests that to amuse the guests Taro should have his men bayonet a baby or two. Insulted, Taro picks a quarrel with his old U.S. friend O'Hara. But because Taro's father is now Minister of Propaganda, the two men are not allowed to fight. Instead they choose deputies to fight for them. O'Hara's lean boxer is Lefty (Robert Ryan). Taro's fighter is a King Konglike jujitsu expert (Mike Mazurki). Their boxer-wrestler battle symbolizes the U.S.-Jap war. It is as savage as anything in the history of screen roughhouse. But as symbol, the result is rather ominous. Ryan finally punches the Jap to the floor, is last seen dying from the effects of indescribable Japanese torture. Taro is shot down in flames by U.S. planes; his father atones for his political errors by calmly committing harakiri.

Behind the Rising Sun's greatest fault: its refusal to leave anything in the nature of nightmare to the imagination.

Bill Jack v. Adolf Hitler (MARCH OF TIME). Ohio's war contractor William S. Jack (TIME, Dec. 14) of Jack & Heintz, Inc. is a man who has achieved the almost inconceivable. He has made 7,500 factory hands ("associates") work twelve hours a day seven days a week--and like it. Just why they like it, why Bill Jack is so popular with his "associates," so unpopular with rival contractors, is the subject of this short but impressive documentary of a day in the Jack & Heintz factory (automatic pilots and airplane starters).

Bill Jack's plant is not a place where a pin could be heard to drop. It has been described as "a blueprint for bedlam." In the movie, when Jack & Heintz workers arrive on the job, a voice announces over a loudspeaker: "All aboard! Next stop Berlin!" Promptly workers grab their tools, create a strangely realistic din which represents a train leaving a station, putting on steam, finally roaring along at breakneck speed. When workers get down to work, they do so to the crash of jazz-band disks. Girls keep time by wiggling their hips on their stools, somehow manage to control their machines. Jack & Heintz associates are also permitted to smoke, receive a dole of free doughnuts. They get one free hot meal per shift, unlimited free vitamins. They even have free vacations, which are apparently spent dancing the hula-hula in straw skirts on a sun-drenched isle off Florida.

One shot in this film shows Bill Jack getting mauled by the factory masseur. Groans Jack between pinches: "What people want is sympathetic attention." Jack gives his people attention by sympathetic personal chats ending with a pat on the back. There are no pats for absentees or latecomers. Jack & Heintz has no time clocks. Late workers are given a hell-raising reception, have to run the gantlet of their fellow workers' resounding wolf call. Result: workers are almost always on time, almost never absentees.

Jack & Heintz also has an eye to the future. When the war is won, any serviceman who has worked six months in the plant will get his job back, plus $50 a month which has been accumulating in his absence. Women workers have already sworn that after the war they will go home, become good wives and mothers. Just what Jack & Heintz's detailed postwar plans are, the film does not reveal: they are a secret. But this film is a pretty convincing argument in favor of Bill Jack's wartime formula: close cooperation between labor and management.

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