(aka 'Otoshiana' or 'Kashi to kodomo" or "The Pitfall')
directed by
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Japan 1962
Teshigahara's debut feature, Pitfall [Otoshiana], was the first of his
collaborations with novelist/playwright Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu.
Beautifully filmed in an abandoned, postwar coal-mining town in Western Japan,
it is part social-realist critique, part unsettling ghost fable. Examining
themes of alienation, workers' rights, and identity, Teshigahara and Abe's
exotically strange film evokes the cinema of Antonioni, Resnais, the writing of
Kafka, Beckett, Carroll, and the French existentialists.
A wandering miner, looking for work with his young son, is pursued by a
mysterious, silent assassin in a white suit and hat. As mistrust and killings
spread through the barely populated, rundown mining community, ghosts of the
dead appear, unheard by the living, yet imploring them for answers. Who is the
man in white and why does he sow confusion?
Teshigahara coined the term "documentary fantasy" for this study of the
powerless, impoverished worker in postwar Japan.
Excerpt from the Eureka Website
Theatrical Release: 1962 - Japan
DVD Review: Eureka (Master of Cinema series # 5) - Region 2 - PAL
| DVD Box Cover |
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| Distribution | Eureka (Master of Cinema Series # 5) - Region 2 - PAL | |
| Runtime | 1:33:03 | |
| Video | 1.33:1
Original Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: ? mb/s PAL 720x576 25.00 f/s |
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| Audio | Japanese (Dolby Digital 2.0 Dolby) | |
| Subtitles | English, None | |
| Features |
Release Information: Edition Details: • Exclusive
full-length audio commentary by Tony Rayns |
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| Comments: |
This is an amazingly sharp
dual layered disc- HD transferred, progressive - excellent contrast and
strong black levels
- well-appointed subtitles - Full-length Tony Rayns commentary! I don't know what else we can
ask for. It looks like Eureka have pulled out all the stop in this new
Masters of Cinema Series edition.
Looks like a
must-own for Japanese cinema fans. I am reminded of the
Criterion Onibaba.
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| Distribution | Eureka (Master of Cinema Series # 6) - Region 2 - PAL | |
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