Kokko Eigyo

Pilot Mitarai Ken is mistaken for a murder suspect after a dying man leaves his name. Sent to fly to Taipei with journalist Xiang-lan, he discovers a corpse on board and killers waiting at Songshan Airport. Co-produced by Ninjin Productions and Taiwan's Kuo Kuang Motion Picture Company, the film turns planes, cars, streets, and nightclubs into the machinery of a transregional thriller. Bai Lan shifts from her familiar tragic persona to an active reporter in a Japanese–Taiwanese genre production.

This film was mainly shot in the Japanese skiing resort Hokkaido in 1937-38 and was intended to create support for the coming winter olympics of 1940 in Japan which however were cancelled because of the Japanese-Chinese war. A Japanese production, it was nevertheless made with German involvement in the form of skiing champion Sepp Rist and celebrated cinematographer Richard Angst (who also contributed to the script). Both had regularly worked with the inventor of the mountain film genre, Dr. Arnold Fanck, who had helmed the German-Japanese co-production "Die Tochter des Samurai", also shot by Angst, the year before. Angst apparently stayed in Japan until mid-1939 when he returned to Germany, carrying this film with him. Angst submitted it to the German censors later that year, but for reasons unknown to me it took three more years before the film was finally shown in Germany under the name "Das heilige Ziel" (The Holy Aim). (Karargara)