Sean Aitchison explains how Japan s love of the mystery genre and manzai comedy made for the perfect environment for Peter Falk s Columbo to take root.
Whenever you take a foreign cinema class at film school, you’ll be show the lofty titles that once played the fanciest of art houses in major cities. These are noble productions that made audiences feel like they needed to dress up for a screening. They expected to feel illuminated by deep meaningful productions about the human factor. They wanted real butter on their popcorn because nothing would be artificial on the silver screen as they read subtitles. When it came to the selection from Japan, your professor would make the hard choice of which Akira Kurosawa film would be put on the syllabus. Odds are it would be