In the late 1960s and early 1970s Toho Studios began toying with some of its genre offerings by slipping some social or political references into the narratives while adding additional cinematic influences. A prime example of this is the 1970 Japanese film Jaga Wa Hashitta (English title: The Creature Called Man), an offbeat actioner about rival hit men with obvious references to the James Bond spy series as well as American crime thrillers.
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A young Japanese butterfly collector sees a rare species in his part of Japan in Silence Has No Wings (aka Tobenai Chinmoku, 1966), directed by Kazuo Kuroki.
What happens when you take an idea for a nature documentary short about a specific type of butterfly like the Nagasaki Swallowtail (papilla memnon) and expand it into an experimental narrative feature incorporating stylistic influences of the French New Wave with allegorical and sociological overtones? The result is Silence Has No Wings (aka Tobenai Chinmoku, 1966), a visually astonishing and rarely seen film by Japanese director Kazuo Kuroki, who began his career as an assistant director before helming several public relations and documentary shorts like Electric Rolling Stock of Toshiba (aka Toshiba Sharyo, 1958) and The Seawall (aka Kaiheki, 1959). Continue reading
Cinema Sojourns 