Question re 1940 Toho Musical Film Extravaganza

[Faith Bach]

Michael, thanks for the link to this wonderful film clip!!  The chap  
here with Ri, however, is not Enoken, but the excellent Kishii Akira  
岸井明 (1910-65), who did such wonderful character work in the 30s  
thru 50s.  Great to see him in this rare scene.  Cheers!  Faith


On Jun 8, 2009, at 7:18 AM, <mccaskem at georgetown.edu> wrote:

> There's a 1940 film, Enoken no Songoku エノケンの孫悟空   
> (Enoken as Song
> Wukong the Monkey King), directed by Yamamoto Kajiro, starring Enomoto
> Ken'ichi and Rikoran (Yamaguchi Yoshiko). Yamamoto also wrote the  
> script.
>
> There's a suggestion that somehow this film may have been some sort  
> of early
> experiment in color film in Japan.
>
> But my references list the film as B&W.
>
> There's an interesting clip of a song-and-dance number from this  
> film, in good
> condition, with Rikoran and Enoken, at
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr2FFfBeUe8
>
> It's definitely in black and white. There may have been a DVD of  
> the film a few
> years ago, but if so it doesn't seem to be available now.
>
> I also found a still photo from the film at
>
> http://blog.u-ai.shop-pro.jp/images/SANY0034.2.3.jpg
>
> which seems to be in B&W, but may possibly be color-enhanced,  
> though I don't
> think so.
>
> I'm basically interested in ruling the idea of color film out for  
> this 1940 Toho
> extravaganza, as well as ruling out the possibility that a few  
> minutes, or one
> scene in the film, may have been in color.
>
> If anyone has expertise in this period and can help with this, I'd  
> be most
> grateful. I also thought the film might be historically interesting  
> to someone in
> any case. With its Chinese cultural elements, it also may possibly  
> have been part
> of some Greater East Asia propaganda film effort.
>
> Michael McCaskey
> Georgetown Univ.
>
>