Pitfall (1962)

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.

Director:

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Writers:

Kôbô Abe (screenplay), Kôbô Abe (story)

Stars:

Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Sen Yano

Cast

Cast overview:
Hisashi Igawa	...	Miner / Otsuka
Sumie Sasaki	...	Shopkeeper
Sen Yano	...	Toyama
Hideo Kanze	...	Policeman
Kunie Tanaka	...	Man in white suit
Kei Satô	...	Reporter
Kazuo Miyahara	...	The miner's son
Akemi Nara
Tadashi Fukuro	...	Second union member
Kikuo Kaneuchi	...	Photographer
Kanichi Ômiya	...	Second miner
Shigeru Matsuo	...	Farmer
Ton Shimada	...	Dead miner
Sanpei Asakura
Heiguro Matsumoto

Storyline

A documentary fantasy. Penniless miners talk in passing about labor unions. A miner and his young son go to a village in Kyushu where the miner has been told he'll find work, but it's a ghost town, save for one woman. The miner leaves and is followed by a man in a white suit and white gloves. A murder takes place: faked footprints, bribery and intrigue, investigations, a frame-up, and a ghost who wants to know why meet in a story of realism and the surreal. A child mutely witnesses all. Does the truth count for anything in this world or in the next? Can everything be manipulated?

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Plot Keywords:

workers' rights | miner | ghost | union | surrealism | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Fantasy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

1 July 1962 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Pitfall

Company Credits

Production Co:

Teshigahara Productions, Toho Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #393.

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Connections

Featured in Music for the Movies: Tôru Takemitsu (1994)

User Reviews

Geometry of a discordant axis - an early Teshigahara masterpiece

Although structurally and aesthetically experimental cinema, Teshigahara's debut proper already carries all the trademarks of an assured author and although a bit rough around the edges here and there it shows a director experimenting with his craft even as he perfects it. Japanese new-wave ferried to its logical conclusion even as it takes its first baby steps.

Based on a story by Kôbô Abe, PITFALL explores the myriad possibilities that emerge from the space where life and death overlap, as a poor miner is murdered under mysterious circumstances in the marshes near an old ghost town. His murderer, an alluring white-clad figure, buys off the silence of the one witness, a woman operating a candy store in the ghost town district, and disappears as mysteriously as he appeared. In the mean time the murdered man wakes up next to his corpse only to discover he's now a ghost.

While THE SIXTH SENSE milked a very similar idea for maximum mainstream appeal, shock twists and shallow thrills, Teshigahara is wise to allow his material to breathe. Even though a very pragmatic subplot about two rival labour unions introduced in the end of act two detracts from the existential nature of the story, like all great storytellers Teshigahara never settles for the convenient and tidy, refuses to explain what the viewer most needs explained. Personal interpretation is very important in any work and particularly in something as haunting as this. Who is the killer? Why is he doing it? Questions left open, the character cleverly typed as a seriocomic grim reaper of sorts riding around in his moped, a manifestation that invokes notions of fate by the very nature of his acts. Is there not meaning when one is not aware of it?

Teshigahara pits the dead against the dead, the living against the living and everybody against each other, ghosts quizically examining their corpses and wondering the reason of their deaths, the living deaf to their protestations and too busy being suspicious of each other. A world revolving around a discordant axis, thrown off balance and left for us to explore its geometry.

Teshigahara's direction reflecting the uncertainty and disorientation of the plot as much as Toru Takemitsu's dissonant score. A POV shot of a child introduced only for the child to walk inside its own POV shot. Jarring jump cuts that send characters jumping through space. Construction works photographed in all their derelict, abandonded glory, a ghost world for the dead to haunt. Notions of hell on earth. The ghost of the murdered man complaining he's hungry as winds rise in the soundtrack. A pack of dogs ascending a steep slope like other Sissyphi. Very precise, very geometric, the work of an assured visual director.