User Reviews

The movie's title, "The Wind Cannot Read," supposedly comes from an old Japanese proverb: "The sign says, 'Do not pick these blossoms,' but the wind cannot read." I'll buy it.

The blossom here is the ingratiating Yoko Tani, the picker is Dirk Bogarde, the wind is love, and the sign is Tani's increasingly severe headaches.

The film sticks pretty closely to a formula that seemed popular during the 1950s -- "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing," "Sayonara," "South Pacific." A Westerner, usually a service man, and a local Oriental girl fall in love and eventually, usually, something separates them. Well, as Ernest Hemingway observed, every love story is a tragedy if followed long enough because one of the lovers dies.

Depending on what distracting additional ingredient are added to the formula, it's also known as "soap opera." In this instance, Dirk Bogarde and a couple of friends are RAF officers during World War II, assigned to a school in Delhi where they will learn Japanese while they recuperate from their efforts in combat. The senior officer, also a student, is a little stuffy but that has nothing to do with the plot. I kind of enjoyed the scenes in the classroom where an expressionless instructor has them repeat phrases over and over, until the far more demure, expressive, and colorful Yoko Tani joins the faculty. It reminded me of the classes I took in Mandarin Chinese, until I saw the handwriting on the wall and it was in English.

The development of the love affair between Bogarde and Tani is achingly familiar. They visit the Taj Mahal, wander through the local market, giggle while they sample food from street vendors, and stand around watching blind local musicians play tunes in the middle of the street. That's when Yoko Tani first complains that the music is giving her a headache. If you can't divine where that headache is headed -- well, I feel sorry for you. You need to watch more weepers.

There are some scenes tacked on penultimately in which Bogarde and the stuffy senior officer are captured and interrogated by the Japanese but they're not very interesting nor well integrated. The fact that both officers know Japanese isn't even worked into the plot.

The Brits turned out some superlative war movies during the 1950s. This isn't one of them. It's a generally formulaic love story of two star-crossed and rather alien figures.

Handsome Dirk Bogarde is a British officer in India preparing for war against the Japanese. He falls in love with the china-doll like Yoko Tani, a Japanese girl who left her homeland with her father in order to save his life after he rebelled against Emperor Hirohito's regime. She is the bashful teacher hired to tutor Bogarde and his colleagues in Japanese, and returns his feelings. Tani is hiding a secret illness and begs Bogarde to let her go, but he refuses. They are married but soon afterwords he goes off to battle and ends up a tortured prisoner of the Japanese. Knowing something is wrong with her, he fights desperately to be freed and get back before it is too late.

This variation (and combination) of several tearjerkers seems alright when it comes to the basic storyline, but what destroys it ultimately is the painfully slow pacing and a profound disbelief over the whole situation. The innocent Tani is certainly beautiful, but is far too flower-like in her psyche, so gentle that you fear any hurt would cause all of her metaphoric peddles to fall apart. The Japanese classroom add the only humor as the British officers each ask Tani a question about Japan and she giggles very youth-like at the inquiry and some of the responses. But the pacing proves the saying that "silence is deafening" and can sometimes cause a painfully induced desperation to stay awake.

This movie is based on a novel by British author Richard Mason, who also wrote "The World of Suzie Wong." In "The Wind Cannot Read," Mason weaves a story that seems to be based on several of his personal experiences in WWII. He studied Japanese and served in the RAF in the Far East, where he interrogated Japanese prisoners.

This movie is a rather unique war film. It's one of a small number of WWII movies about the war in and concerning the Far East, especially India. It covers the training of military personnel to speak, read and write Japanese. Is there another film that does that? And, it covers interrogation of Japanese prisoners – something rare in WWII films. These aspects give this film historical value. For that reason, and the very good acting by everyone in the film, I rate it eight stars.

The plot and script of the movie are disjointed, and the film in three or four places jumps from one place and situation to another rather abruptly. The core of the movie is a love story that is more believable than most romances in war flicks. The location, encounter and time in the film lend well to the possibility of a meaningful romance.

One military situation in the film stands out for its absurdity. That is toward the end when the three officers who are expert Japanese interpreters and interrogators run into the enemy. What were they doing traveling together in a war zone? A single ambush, land mine, air strafing or tossed grenade could wipe out all of the British Japanese linguists in the Far East at once.

Under no circumstances would those three men be in a lead jeep driving miles ahead of a convoy. Under no circumstances would they be scouting to set up a new interrogation base in an area that wasn't already secured by their own forces. Under no circumstances would they set out without knowing where they were going and where the enemy was. Yet in this movie, they do all of those things and drive right into the enemy's hands.

This was a combat-experienced Brigadier at the head of the group. In real combat, something like this would never have taken place. So, it begs several questions. Was this incident, as portrayed, true to the book? If so, was it meant as a black eye to the British for military incompetence at times? And, if it was not intended as such, why in the world did the filmmakers not change it?

They could easily have written another short scenario for Bogarde's injury and then return to his love. But that this scene remains as it is in the film seems to be a jab at the British military for its incompetence at times. And, it shows the serious consequences from such incompetence. Surely, the killing or capture of three highly trained officers as Japanese interrogators would be a huge loss at the Far East war front.

This was one of the colour films made on location by Rank in the late fifties to get people back into the cinemas.With films like this such a move was bound to fail.The story is risible.Bogarde plays a decorated flying officer,who for no given reason is selected to learn Japanese.This despite having no declared linguistic skills.This school is held in Delhi,not the safest of places in 1943.He falls in love with teacher Yoko Tani who plays the role as if sleepwalkng.He is subsequently sent up to the front,when he is more likely to have been sent home.The ending is clearly aimed at the four hanky brigade.No wonder the Roxy closed after showing this.It died of shame.