Kagi No Kagi

[Alexander Jacoby]

It's not strictly an answer to the question, but I'd like to put in a word in favour of Taniguchi, the director of Kagi no Kagi (still alive today, incidentally, at the age of 95). I think it's a bit unfair that his reputation in the West rests on what Woody Allen did to one of his minor films, plus video releases of a few other second-rate movies. The three early (pre-1955) Taniguchi films that I've seen, Snow Trail (Ginrei no hate), Escape to Tomorrow (Akatsuki no dasso) and the Mishima adaptation The Sound of the Waves (Shiosai) are all very well-made, and the first two, in particular, are very gripping. I think Taniguchi's reputation has suffered not only from the lesser interest of his sixties work, but also from the fact that Kurosawa scripted his best movies, so that people can ascribe responsibilty for their quality to Kurosawa not Taniguchi. The humanist themes of the films may be Kurosawa-influenced, but the style of Taniguchi's films is less baroque and more
 classical than Kurosawa's, and this assists in giving them a very fast pace and terse mood not unlike such classical Hollywood action movies as, say, Raoul Walsh's White Heat. For the record, I think that Escape to Tomorrow is one of the most purely exciting films ever made in Japan, as well as being a morally responsible portrayal of warfare. These films ought to be better known.
   
  ALEX
  

Aaron Gerow <gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  
> I'm looking for a 1964 Japanese James Bond film, Kagi No Kag (Key of 
> Keys), which was redubbed and re-edited by Woody Allen into What's Up, 
> Tiger Lilly?

The film is actually Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi from 1965 
which stars Mihashi Tatsuya (the gang boss in Kitano's Dolls) and is 
directed by Taniguchi Senkichi. If I remember correctly, however, 
Allen's film actually uses two of the Kokusai himutsu keisatsu films 
(there were five of them): Kagi no kagi for the main story, and Kayaku 
no taru for the opening sequence. These were Toho productions, and is 
typical of Toho, have not come out on DVD in Japan.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu



 		
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