Release date: May 31, 1955
Studio: Toho
Director: Senkichi Taniguchi
Cast: Takashi Shimura, Ryō Ikebe, Yōko Tsukasa, Akihiko Hirata, Akemi Negishi, Momoko Kōchi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Gen Shimizu, Senkichi Omura, Renji Ishibashi et al.
Availability: None outside of theater screenings and at least one television broadcast.
____
Today we're looking at a movie that, despite its lack of home media release, is not forgotten, and has a relative wealth of visual information as well as viewer impressions. It's also kind of a Christmas movie.
You will note that this movie's cast boasts three out of the four main players in Godzilla '54. This is something you take for granted if you're familiar with Toho films, but I need to stop writing under the assumption that everyone has intimate familiarity with the same things I do, so I will mention the "five-studio agreement": for several decades, the five major film studios in Japan had rosters of contracted actors who were exclusive to each studio. Freelance actors did exist, of course, but for actors who were not already famous enough that just their image could serve as an audience draw - this includes Hirata - and especially the kind of small-time actors who would show up as extras in the forefront of crowd scenes, for as long as the five-studio agreement existed (it fell apart in the early 1970s), they were with one studio or another and that was it.
This movie was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, who we have mentioned before since he was one of Toho's more prominent directors (and had the chance to direct Godzilla but passed it up). One can see Toho's general attitude towards films change by looking at Taniguchi's filmography: after the mid-1960s, the work he directed was less what we might call "arthouse" and more geared towards popular consumption; for example he directed the rollicking Lost World of Sinbad (Samurai Pirate), several of the International Secret Police entries, and even comedies like A Smell of Money (Idiots and Scissors). Were he asked to make Godzilla ten years later, it may not have seemed so antithetical to his work.
 |
| Taniguchi (in the white hat) on set of No Response from Car 33 |
The screenplay for No Response from Car 33 was co-written by Taniguchi and Keiichiro Ryū (who also wrote under the name Ichiro Ikeda). Between the two of them, Ryū was apparently the only one not allergic to science fiction - he managed to write one single episode of Mighty Jack!
No Response from Car 33 is a cop movie. Set on Christmas Eve, the plot follows officers Murakami (Ikebe) and Harada (Shimura) as they carry out their duties while driving patrol car #33. After warning a driver against speeding earlier in the night, they later discover the body of a murder victim with evidence surrounding it that connects back to the speeding incident. Their investigation into the murder leads them to the culprit: Asanuma (Hirata), a criminal wanted for killing a police officer, who is hiding out in the home of a local philanthropist along with his accomplice Yuri (Negishi). A struggle ensues, but as is usually the case, the cops win out and officer Murakami is able to return to his wife on Christmas.
Momoko Kōchi has what sounds like a very small role in the film. She plays a pregnant woman who car #33 escorts to the hospital along with her husband (played by Yoshio Tsuchiya). Another cast member I want to mention is Renji Ishibashi, who is still alive and still working. I know him from the yakuza movies he was in during the 1970s, but most people apparently know him from his more recent work, when he was much older. Here is a sort of not very good picture of him in Car 33. A few reviewers say "he still looks the same today".
Here's a grainy picture of Hirata dressed as a police officer, from a point in the film where his character had knocked out Shimura's character and stolen his uniform:
And here's another still of him with Akemi Negishi, so we can all pretend Noguchi from Farewell Rabaul got a happy ending (even if they did end up on the run from the cops):
The film has made the rounds in Japan's theaters that specialize in older films (Laputa Asagaya, Cinema Vera, etc) and so we have a few impressions from people who have seen the film. This is valuable information, since it tells us more about what the film is actually like than a simple plot synopsis which has been copied and pasted between sources for the past 70 years. From reviews, we gather that there's a distinct first half/second half structure to the film, with the first half containing mostly mundane police business and the second half focusing on the murder investigation and eventual apprehension of the culprit. The most recent screening was actually a matter of days ago as of the time of writing (although this post will go up much later), on June 29th, 2025. That gives me a feeling of gladness. You can read an example of one of the many reviews of the film here, and read a very detailed summary here (both in Japanese).
From Twitter we can also learn that in 2021 it was shown at Laputa Asagaya as part of a "vehicle film festival" along with a Truck Yaro movie and - wait, hang on, is that Makoto Satō's son saying this?
I'm really fond of the press sheets Toho would put out that include little portraits of the actors in whatever film they were promoting. These would be used the way ad copy was; newspapers or other media looking to promote the film could paste together ads using the image elements and logos provided by Toho. So that means we have these:
 |
| I wish I knew who Toho's in-house artist for these sketches was. I assume it's one person since the style is so consistent, but I suppose it could have been a team of artists trained to work in the same style. |
That is all for today, I will remain hopeful that I'll get to see this movie someday. While not the most well-known movie, it's nice that prints of this do exist, with a theater screening every couple of years (yes, this counts as "relatively un-obscure" around here).
No comments:
Post a Comment