Pitfall

Hiroshi Teshigahara
1962

This is my least favorite of the Teshigahara films released by Criterion, but that's not much of a statement considering all three (I'm not counting the Antonio Gaudi doc) are top notch examples of Japanese avant-garde cinema, high on psychodrama and alienation. "Pitfall" follows an unemployed migrant miner both in life and the afterlife when his likeness to a local union leader causes his accidental(?) murder. Thrown into the mix are the aforementioned union leader and his rival, a woman selling candy in a ghost town, a white-gloved moped-riding assassin, and the miner's son who bears witness to it all. The film is nothing if not strange, with the world of ghosts existing freely alongside the living, and a near-martian landscape of slag heaps, sumps, and abandoned houses providing a stage for the drama. On the surface the events seem horribly grim with terrible accidents and twists of fate befalling decent folk, but while it's clear that Teshigaraha's is a Godless world there's also a subtly amusing element of capriciousness in the proceedings - dark humor for sure, but humor nonetheless. The sharp photography and minimalist score are also strongly reminiscent of Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1942), with a similarity in style and tone that is quite striking. My favorite of the three Teshigahara films I've seen to date remains "Woman in the Dunes" (1964).