What's Up, Tiger Lily?
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? |
| Original title | What's Up, Tiger Lily? |
| Country of production | Japan , USA |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1966 |
| length | Cinema version: 87 minutes VHS PAL: 79 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Senkichi Taniguchi , Woody Allen (US re- dubbing ) |
| script | Woody Allen, Julie Bennett , Louise Lasser , Len Maxwell , Mickey Rose , Frank Buxton , Bryan Wilson |
| production | Charles Joffe |
| music |
Jack Lewis , The Lovin 'Spoonful , Fred Weinberg |
| camera | Kazuo Yamada |
| cut | Richard Krown |
| occupation | |
| |
What's Up, Tiger Lily? [ Wʌts ʌp ˌtaɪgər lɪli ] is a comedy film from 1966, with the Woody Allen his debut as a director was. The film consists of newly composed scenes from the film Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi No Kagi, made by the Japanese director Senkichi Taniguchi . Allen was the first director to use this method of editing and changing the film and provided the plot with parodic elements through a new text. In the resulting crime comedy, an agent is tasked with procuring a secret egg salad recipe , the owner of which gains control over the entire planet . When carrying out the order, however, the agent is confronted with numerous adversaries.
action
At the beginning of the film, the viewer sees some battle scenes of the unchanged original material. Then you learn personally from director Woody Allen how a new film was created from these scenes. This will be played after the introduction:
The secret agent Phil Moskowitz is sent on a mission to save the world. He must find the secret recipe for an egg salad upon whose possession rulership of the world depends. However, there is a curse on the recipe, whoever prepares the egg salad and then eats it will die suddenly.
Many problems and adversaries arise on Phil Moskowitz's journey, plus his own awkwardness, which makes the search for the recipe difficult. His opponents include the attractive Suki Yaki, who initially tries to fail the agent's job with her seductive skills. After a change of heart, however, she and Phil Moskowitz set out to find the secret recipe. Suki's sister Teri Yaki comes to the aid of the two, as does the gangster Wing Fat. Later it turns out that Fat wants to keep the recipe himself in order to abuse it for his own purposes. The search eventually leads the group to Shepherd Wong, a famous and dangerous gang boss who owns the recipe for the best egg salad in the world.
After endless jokes about Asian stereotypes and puns , the farce finally ends with playmate China Lee stripping for Woody Allen while he is lying on a couch and noisily eating an apple. The film's unusual ending has nothing in common with what has happened so far. Everyone who slips back into his role as narrator explains to the audience that he has promised beauty a role in the film.
Finally, Woody Allen allowed himself a little joke with the audience. During the striptease the credits are running on the right half of the picture. At the end the following sentence can be read:
"If you read this, instead of watching the girl, you should either see an optician or talk to a psychiatrist."
"If you are reading this text instead of watching the girl, you should either go to your optician or speak to a psychiatrist."
Background and origin
Buying the rights
The Japanese agent film Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi No Kagi ( Eng . Key of the key ) was one of the numerous productions that were made in the 1960s in the wake of the successful James Bond films. Toho created an English dubbed version for the US market. The involuntarily funny Japanese film failed in test screenings in front of an American audience; so Saperstein looked for a solution to save his investment after all. After his previous success as a screenwriter and actor in What's New, Pussy? Woody Allen was made aware of the film by producer Henry G. Saperstein . Saperstein had previously bought the rights to the second-rate Japanese agent film from director Senkichi Taniguchi for $ 75,000.
Allen spent another $ 9,000 on editing the film to polish up his parody with TohoColor and Tohoscope.
Change of material
Together with his then wife Louise Lasser and some New York friends and colleagues, Allen completely rearranged the existing film by cutting it apart and putting the individual scenes back together in a different order. The working title of the project was Death is a Bread, Danger is My Butter . With some re-shot scenes, Allen made himself part of the action as host and moderator. For the synchronization, he wrote a text that was independent of the original plot. The Japanese crime film with James Bond character was turned into an American comedy based on Clive Donner's What’s New Pussycat? the title What's Up, Tiger Lily? received. In the opinion of Glenn Erickson, Woody Allen was probably inspired by Hans Conried for the subsequent synchronization . He had revised some of the silent films in a similar way by later adding ridiculous dialogues .
The character Tiger Lily was originally an Indian princess in the version of Peter Pan filmed by Herbert Brenon in 1924 . The role was then played by the actress Anna May Wong .
music
The background music for the film was provided by the group "The Lovin 'Spoonful" around front singer John Sebastian , who landed their first number one hit in the USA in August 1966 with Summer in the City and were currently very popular. Woody Allen himself no longer had any influence on the choice of music, as it was only inserted during post-production . In addition, video recordings of the band were added later. Director Allen was not very enthusiastic about it, as he attaches great importance to the music in his films. Because of this experience, he made sure to keep control of the entire production in his subsequent projects, with Woody Allen being one of the few US directors who have the rights to the final cut of their films themselves, which is what What's Up, Tiger Lily does ? was not yet the case.
The music of the Lovin 'Spoonfuls was released along with another film soundtrack by the band on the album What’s Up, Tiger Lily / You're A Big Boy Now .
analysis
That What's up, Tiger Lily? has only a loose narrative structure, interpreted Gerhold in such a way that Allen was still strongly influenced by his work as a stage comedian and was still unsure of the film medium. In contrast, Janssen does not emphasize what is missing, but rather interprets the structure of the film as a conscious objection by Allen to the formal conventions of the genre. He draws humor from the alienating discrepancy between the serious visual plot and the sought-after silly dialogues.
The plot has similar satirical approaches as Bananas or The Last Night of Boris Grushenko , with which Allen has created further parodies. He mainly uses language jokes and word games that reach into the absurd. This style stems from his previous work as a copywriter for stand-up comedies and late night shows . In spite of this, or perhaps precisely because of this, according to Dan Heaton, the audience is made to laugh with a lot of humor and slapstick . An example of this is the scene in which one of the spies points to a city map and says: “The guy lives here”, whereupon his colleague replies, “On this little piece of paper?”. The choice of names also plays a major role. For everyone, the sound is the most important factor. Obvious examples are the names of the sisters Suki Yaki and Teri Yaki , which the director borrowed from Japanese cuisine , more precisely from a stew called sukiyaki and a popular marinade called teriyaki . Other stylistic devices that are responsible for the effect of the film include the often very fast cuts and the depiction of the immensely exaggerated senselessness of a MacGuffin , which takes the form of egg salad with which one can rule the world.
Allen generally targets the dubbing of foreign films with his work . When adapting to the respective domestic market, dialogues often lose some of their wit; not infrequently even the meaning changes. The director puts this in What's Up, Tiger Lily? quite openly and on a large scale, while with standard synchronization changes often go unnoticed.
Another target is the growing popularity of crime and agent films in the 1960s. Just like the parodied James Bond , Phil Moskowitz is also not lacking in women at his feet. The director makes fun of the machinery of the film industry by briefly touching on the cliché that castings often run over the bedside at the end with the striptease.
reception
At the time of the cinema premiere on November 2, 1966, the critics were divided. It was criticized negatively that the gags and punch lines would quickly flatten and lose their aftereffect due to the confused synchronization. Joseph Morgenstern noticed that the editing was not consistent enough in one direction and that the film did not fully exploit its potential as a parody or as a denigration of the anti-spy nonsense.
“And in the final analysis,“ What's Up, Tiger Lily? ”Is perhaps nothing more than an exaggerated second rate gag. However, these can be very funny. "
The film was also not well received by the general public. Only in the US student scene did it become an insider tip and a small fan base built up in the midnight cinema. After the processing technique used by Woody Allen was also used by other directors in the 1970s and the following years, viewers rediscovered Allen’s first work and it developed into a cult film . The director's success with his later work was helpful. Woody Allen himself says of his work that it was a mistake and a complete waste of time.
It turned out that Allen was way ahead of his time. His method of lending a new, often comedic plot to a foreign film by means of dubbing, has since been copied by many of his colleagues. Examples include: Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters from Troma Entertainment , René Viénet's highly criticized film La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? , who used the method much more radically in 1973, or the 2002 film Kung Pow: Enter the Fist by Steve Oedekerk , who managed to integrate himself as the main actor into the plot using new technical means. Some performers also see comedy as a role model for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 . In German cinemas was What's Up, Tiger Lily? only shown over 15 years later. In the early 1980s, however, the German audience was still not enthusiastic about the unusual directorial debut and the film flopped.
The opinion of the critics changed over the years and what still aroused their displeasure in the mid-1960s is seen more positively in later reviews. With his directorial debut, Allen would have created a new genre that only found attention and imitators over time.
“This direct form of pastiche (which to a certain extent no longer differentiates between original and pastiche) was possibly ahead of its time; in a more refined form, it was only successful in 1981/82, for example with Carl Reiner's " Tote Do Not Wear Checks " . "
In the reviews of the release on video and DVD , positive voices highlight Allen's creativity and sense of humor, and attest to the director that the film was misunderstood by the audience due to its originality and unusual genesis. On the other hand, in the opinion of the critic Todd Frye, the film seems a bit out of date because it was made over forty years ago. Woody Allen had enjoyed great success after his first work and had only developed his unmistakable style, which the public today associates with his name, over the years. How does the viewer experience What's Up, Tiger Lily? a disappointment for what would be expected of a typical Woody Allen movie. The inserted scenes with the band The Lovin 'Spoonfull and their soundtrack seem a bit out of place, according to Chris Barsanti, but they don't detract from the fun.
The lexicon of international films praises the wit of the original film, but particularly criticizes the German dubbing:
“Woody Allen's curious adaptation of the second-rate Japanese agent film Kagi No Kagi (Key of the Keys) , which he converted into an agent film parody with a few added scenes and a new dialogue, in which crooks and spies are involved in an absurd hunt for a recipe for egg salad are. In the German-language version, however, the film loses most of its wit due to the synchronization of the synchronization. "
publication
At the German premiere in 1981, the title of the film on the cinema posters was extended. For example, a comic illustration by Woody Allen and China Lee read Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily? , the caption read Woody Allen Makes Us Laugh Again . From 1985 onwards, the film was first available on video in America. In this version, however, some scenes were cut out so that instead of the original 87 minutes, only 79 minutes can be seen. On February 2, 2004, a DVD was released, also in the shortened version and only with the original sound without German synchronization. You won't find any additional material or background information on the DVD, only a selection of scenes was provided.
At the first Zurich Film Festival from October 5 to 9, 2005, What's Up, Tiger Lily? presented to the public for the first time under the heading “Debut Classics”.
literature
- Michel Lebrun: Woody Allen. His films, his life. Heyne, Munich 1980, ISBN 978-3-453-86023-0 .
- Gerhard Pisek: The great illusion: Problems and possibilities of film synchronization. Portrayed at Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Manhattan and Hannah and her Sisters . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier WVT, Trier 1994, ISBN 978-3-88476-082-6 (dissertation University Innsbruck 1992).
- Stephan Reimertz: Woody Allen, A Biography . Rowohlt Tb., 2000, ISBN 978-3-499-61145-2 .
- Woody Allen: Everything from Allen: stories, scenes, parodies . Rowohlt Tb, Reinbek near Hamburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-499-23437-8 .
- Vittorio Hösle: Woody Allen. Try over the funny . dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-423-34254-4 .
Trivia
According to the indictment in the 2014 court-negotiated bribery affair of the Austrian banknote and security printing company OeBS, the 100% subsidiary of the National Bank used a contact woman who stated "Tigerlilly" on her business card for the purpose of money transfers.
Web links
- What's Up, Tiger Lily? in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- What's Up, Tiger Lily? in the lexicon of international film
- Film reviews ( Memento from November 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ^ Judge Bryan Byun: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: DVD Verdict Review. HipClick Designs LLC, November 4, 2003, accessed March 1, 2009 : “At first, you wonder if you put in the wrong disc, or if someone at the DVD manufacturing plant screwed up. Instead of a Woody Allen movie , what's on screen is some kind of Japanese spy movie. In Japanese. Just as you're about to press STOP and take a second look at the DVD case, the film stops and Woody appears to clear up the mystery "
- ^ A b Angelika Janssen: Deconstructing Woody Allen. Peter Lang European Publishing House of Science, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-631-38587-0 , pp. 32–34.
- ↑ Todd Frye: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: Pop-cult.com. 2007, accessed on February 15, 2009 (English): “[T] est screenings in the States showed that Americans didn't like the film, and what's worse, tended to make fun of it. AIP head Henry Saperstein came up with a way to salvage his investment: [...] "
- ↑ Olaf von Hoff: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: woody-allen.de. Retrieved February 6, 2009 : "Woody put a total of $ 9,000 into editing the old material in TohoColor and Tohoscope, with his old pal Mickey Rose, actress Julie Bennett and his wife Louise Lasser helping him."
- ↑ Björn Last: What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). In: OFDb. KI Media GbR, accessed on March 1, 2009 : "It is supposed to be Hollywood's ultimate spy thriller, with the name 'Death is my bread, danger is my butter'."
- ↑ Glenn Erickson: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: DVD Savant Review. Internet Brands, Inc., July 11, 2003, accessed on March 1, 2009 : "Possibly getting his cue from television's Fractured Flickers, where Hans Conreid mocked silent pictures with silly voices and added verbal jokes"
- ↑ Woody Allen described his special relationship to music in his films with the words: Music is like sport, it speaks to you directly and spontaneously. see. Woody Allen Lexicon by Berndt Schulz.
- ↑ Berndt Schulz: Woody Allen Lexicon . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-276-8 , F, pp. 118 .
- ↑ Hans Gerhold: Woody's Worlds . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 16.
- ↑ Dan Heaton: What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). In: Muze, Inc. October 6, 2003, accessed on February 6, 2009 : “While looking at a map, one of the spies points at the building depicted and says the guy lives there. His colleague then asks if he lives 'on that small piece of paper?' "
- ↑ Berndt Schulz: Woody Allen Lexicon . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-276-8 , N, p. 231 .
- ↑ Berndt Schulz: Woody Allen Lexicon . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-276-8 , M, S. 204 .
- ↑ Glenn Erickson: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: DVD Savant Review. Internet Brands, Inc., July 11, 2003, accessed March 1, 2009 : "the two femme leads (the same pair of Toho beauties from You Only Live Twice)"
- ↑ Berndt Schulz: Woody Allen Lexicon . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-276-8 , B, pp. 37 .
- ↑ WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? In: BOX OFFICE MOJO. IMDb.com, Inc., accessed March 1, 2009 .
- ^ Joseph Morgenstern: Newsweek . October 10, 1966, ISSN 0028-9604 , p. 115–116 (English): “Eventually the joke wears thin, even though the whole picture runs its crazy course in 80 minutes. This one is neither a fully realized put-down nor a send-up of the spy genre, as it may have intended to be; any points of reference for sustained lampoon get lost in the freely associated folds of Allen's dubbery. "
- ↑ Original text: And in the final analysis “What's Up, Tiger Lily?” is probably nothing more than an overextended sophomoric stunt. But sophmores can be very funny people.
- ↑ a b Berndt Schulz: Woody Allen Lexicon . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-276-8 , W, p. 337 .
- ↑ Todd Frye: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: Pop-cult.com. 2007, accessed on February 15, 2009 (English): "While much of the humor is random and downright silly, a lot of it is, as Allen himself admits, 'stupid and juvenile'."
- ↑ Chris Barsanti: What's Up, Tiger Lily? (No longer available online.) In: Filmcritic.com. 2003, archived from the original on November 3, 2015 ; accessed on February 15, 2009 (English): "It's hard to imagine where the guys at Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be without this movie." Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ What's Up, Tiger Lily? ( Memento from April 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) in the Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon
- ↑ Todd Frye: What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: Pop-cult.com. 2007, accessed on February 15, 2009 (English): "While much of the humor is random and downright silly, a lot of it is, as Allen himself admits, 'stupid and juvenile'."
- ↑ Chris Barsanti: What's Up, Tiger Lily? (No longer available online.) In: Filmcritic.com. 2003, archived from the original on November 3, 2015 ; Retrieved on February 15, 2009 (English): "There is the unfortunate addition of a soundtrack by that timeless gaggle of hippies, The Lovin 'Spoonful (footage of whom is actually spliced into the original film), but even that can't ruin this utterly silly, throwaway movie. “ Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ What's Up, Tiger Lily? In: kinoplakate.de. Retrieved March 5, 2009 .
- ^ Debut Classics. In: Zurich Film Festival. 2005, archived from the original on May 11, 2008 ; Retrieved March 5, 2009 .
- ↑ orf.at Markiges und Innschuldsbeteuerungen, ORF.at of February 17, 2014
