1966 - What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Hi there!

I've been watching lots of good and bad movies since last time I wrote here, but I've been studying a lot also. I've watched The Plague of Zombies (1966), The Other (1972), Diabolique (1955), House of Usher (1960), Curse of Demon (1957), Scream of Fear (1961), Peeping Tom (1960), Village of the Dammed (1960) Burn witch Burn (1962), City of the Living Dead (1980), House by the River (1950) and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). I think the only deception was Peeping Tom, because lots of friends told me the movie was very good and I didn't like it much.

But I'm not here to talk about all of these horror movies that I love watching, I'm here to talk about What's Up, Tiger Lily? which is the second/first movie made by Woody Allen. Why am I saying this? Because the first one, from 1965, had his script but not his direction, and now well, this movie is not directed by him in the very sense of it, but it's his movie. Art is crazy, isn't it?

Let me tell you, but I think you already know about it: This is a Japanese spy movie, Woody Allen bought it and invented new speeches; he also paid actors to dub the whole movie and what we see is a kind of mash-up, the difference is that he says it's the first movie made like this. Oh no, Woody says Gone with the Wind was made using this technology too.

The plot of the movie is pretty simple, secret spies are trying to catch the best egg salad recipe, because this will help people to conquer the world. But the thing is: the original movie is kind of senseless; it's almost impossible to understand the original plot because the new one makes sense regarding the movie scenes. The characters are weird, ugly, people are exaggerated and funny. 

I think the most interesting thing about this movie is... No, there are many interesting things about this movie. The first one I'll say regards the Reception Theory by Iser (1974). Iser said that what brings us meaning does not reside in the text itself, but in the merging between what the author implied via the text and that the reader understands about it, as having her/his historic and social reality as background. So, let's think about the first movie, the original one made in Japanese, called Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi or Key of Keys (1965); despite of knowing it's a Japanese movie about espionage, we don't know much about it, what we do know is that it was filmed in Japan with Japanese actors and that Woody Allen bought it, so what we see is what Woody Allen got of the movie, his own interpretation of the scenes, his own reading about it. Moreover, the result of this rereading is a new one, made by the audience. 

Now, we know all the background of the movie because at the beginning of it, Woody Allen himself tells us about it, and what is funny, is that we follow the plot very carefully, as if it were a normal movie. Even if it's not a normal movie with a plot and characters organized very methodically, we watch it as if it was, because that's the way we see a movie/a story: we have to follow something and to create meaning out of it. Reading/watching a story is to actively interpret and solution the disjunctions of the narrative, as the plot goes on. 

That's why in the middle of the movie I was so puzzled trying to understand and to make sense out of the original one, saying things like "I don't know what could make more sense in this movie than this Allen's version". I was not supposed to catch everything about the original movie, but surely I should be able to understand a little bit about it, because of the images and everything, nevertheless, it was not possible to detach the meaning that Woody Allen gave to it, the movie was finally Allen's work. Out of the work of Woody Allen in the movie, I can't find any meaning.

And because of that, even a senseless plot like "trying to catch the best egg salad recipe" makes sense after all, because I'm making sense out of it, I'm providing the explanations for this while feeling the gaps Woody provided me to. Amazingly, it's a delicious work and imaginative people will get crazy. Think about it: a work  of creation gave life to a Japanese flick, so a creative director created a new version with new lines, and now the audience - you - can finish the work of art with your participation: that's amazing, that's freedom, that's really all about Reception Theory.

All I have to say is: a very good movie. Very funny, non-sense, out of what is expected.

References: ISER, Wolfgang, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974)