Pitfall ("Otoshiana")

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Starring: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Kunie Tanaka
Year: 1962

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 is murdered by by a man in a white suit and white gloves. What follows is a story of bribery and intrigue, investigations, a frame-up, and a ghost who wants to know why, all of which meet in a story of realism and the surreal. Throughout all of this, the miner's child is a silent witness.

Comments: This film is hard to describe, but it features Teshigahara's intense, complex visuals, and somewhat surreal story telling. It predates Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes", which Steve and Zhanna watched again and found even more impressive than ever before. Also watched "The Face of Another" ("Tanin no Kao"), a later Teshigahara film about a man who gets a new face after suffering horrible disfigurement from an industrial accident. That film, and all its themes of identity and role of individuals in society, is particularly poignant given the recent advances in facial transplants. Still, if you have to see one film of Teshigahara's, or even one film at all, see 'Woman in the Dunes."

Highly Recommended.