The Pitfall
1962 ‘Otoshiana’ Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Synopsis
A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.
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This was the first collaboration between director Hiroshi Teshigahara and writer Kôbô Abe who would later work together on the brilliant Women in the Dunes and The Face of Another. Whilst Pitfall might not quite reach the heights of their later work together it is still an incredible film and arguably one of the greatest feature debuts of all time.
It is a hard film to categorise let alone explain - It flits between social realism, crime drama, supernatural thriller and black comedy and never settles down for the audience to get a firm grasp of what is really going on. In fact Teshigahara himself probably says it best by calling it a documentary-fantasy with its themes of lower class…
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I'm certainly not sure what this was all about. In its core it's a simple crime story. Then again, not at all. Because I wasn't able to pick up on a clear motif for the murders being committed and who the murderer really was and where he came from. We understand that there is a conflict between two labor unions, but that it would lead to murder? And what could be gained from that I'm not able to decipher.
But this is not all. A case of mistaken identity leads to the wrong man being murdered, apparently because he looks so much like the union leader in one of the two local mines. But who set him up? The other…
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I clearly watched the three Teshigahara collaborations in the wrong order. Woman In The Dunes and The Face Of Another are incredible whereas Pitfall is a taste of things to come. It is a good film but nowhere near as meticulously crafted as the aforementioned. I watched the video documentary by James Quandt afterwards which certainly added layers of depth and justify a rewatch.
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Teshigahara directed this unusual movie about miners in a small town getting killed by a mysterious man in white. This movie is extremely Japanese - especially in how it deals with the afterlife. My favorite movie from Teshigahara remains The Woman in the Dunes, but this one is equally atmospheric, and with a little more political resonance.
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Social issue drama? Ghost movie? Thriller? It's everything and none of those things. You never know what's going to happen next, but the film is never weird or random just for the sake of it. There's a cruel logic at work here, and an inevitable ending that's tragically perfect.
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Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
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ghost story
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I clearly watched the three Teshigahara collaborations in the wrong order. Woman In The Dunes and The Face Of Another are incredible whereas Pitfall is a taste of things to come. It is a good film but nowhere near as meticulously crafted as the aforementioned. I watched the video documentary by James Quandt afterwards which certainly added layers of depth and justify a rewatch.
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I'm certainly not sure what this was all about. In its core it's a simple crime story. Then again, not at all. Because I wasn't able to pick up on a clear motif for the murders being committed and who the murderer really was and where he came from. We understand that there is a conflict between two labor unions, but that it would lead to murder? And what could be gained from that I'm not able to decipher.
But this is not all. A case of mistaken identity leads to the wrong man being murdered, apparently because he looks so much like the union leader in one of the two local mines. But who set him up? The other…
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A really interesting depiction of the absurdity of human industry. Teshigahara is a shamefully neglected filmmaker outside of the more erudite film community. He deserves a place in the mainstream alongside Bresson, Bunuel, Resnais...
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Teshigahara directed this unusual movie about miners in a small town getting killed by a mysterious man in white. This movie is extremely Japanese - especially in how it deals with the afterlife. My favorite movie from Teshigahara remains The Woman in the Dunes, but this one is equally atmospheric, and with a little more political resonance.
-
This was the first collaboration between director Hiroshi Teshigahara and writer Kôbô Abe who would later work together on the brilliant Women in the Dunes and The Face of Another. Whilst Pitfall might not quite reach the heights of their later work together it is still an incredible film and arguably one of the greatest feature debuts of all time.
It is a hard film to categorise let alone explain - It flits between social realism, crime drama, supernatural thriller and black comedy and never settles down for the audience to get a firm grasp of what is really going on. In fact Teshigahara himself probably says it best by calling it a documentary-fantasy with its themes of lower class…