The provocative title is just one of many wild things about this prime early Ichikawa, made when he was under the spell of American cinema. The influence of Wilder, Capra, and particularly Hawks is readily apparent in this screwball tale of a suspected "lady thief" and the detective who is on her trail, following her from Osaka to her home village, where she is going to hold a memorial service for her father. (Ichikawa, ever dark and daring in the comic mode, emphasizes that the father committed suicide during the war because he was wrongly accused of being a spy.) Of course, the detective falls in love with his prey. Blithely erotic, The Woman Who Touched Legs opens with a wild musical number that segues into a montage of leg fetishism, and with a Hawksian heroine who just can't stop talking, it established a new standard for Japanese comedy.-James QuandtNote: Ichikawa's film is a remake of a 1926 comedy by his mentor Yutaka Abe; the Ichikawa/Wada script was in turn remade by Ichikawa's most famous pupil, Yasuzo Masumura, in 1960. That film, The Lady Pickpocket, premiered here at the grand opening of the new PFA Theater in 1999.substitution: A Lady Pickpocket by Yasuzo Masumura (Japan, 1960)