Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Hitchcoc As the ghosts of two of the victims of the man in the white suit chase his Vespa, they yell, "You can't kill someone for no reason." Whatever that reason is, it is never shared with us. It's sad enough that the characters in this movie are so lost, but that someone would care enough about them to seek them out and kill them. The man in the white suit has a book and after carrying out his hit, or setting one up, he quietly writes things in that book. Is he the grim reaper? Does he represent organized crime? Is he a solo player? He is magical in a Satanic sense. He comes between two warring labor unions, creating enough distrust to destroy what they fight for and them also. One of the strangest characters is a little boy, the son of the first victim, who seems only intent on eating throughout the movie. At one point, he catches a frog, smashes it on the rocks, and then pulls off its skin. He seems immune to emotion and we only know that he is a little eating machine. This is a film that you will think about for a long time if you can find it. It is unsatisfying on the one hand and highly provocative on the other.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD. Cinematography = nine (9) stars; exterior set design = eight (8) stars. In his feature-film maiden voyage, Director Hiroshi Teshigahara demonstrates that he can be a master of the provocative (provocative extraordinary)---when he closes to be--with films that are filled (actually packed in this case) with incidents and shots that evoke as many interpretations as there are viewers (and likely even more with re-viewing!). What you think you see is, well, your unsettling take away. The film elicits a vague sense of dread right from the opening scenes which does not seem to go completely away! Teshigahara's principal tome is about the nastiness of capitalism (coal mine owners (who are never seen)) and the it's exploitation/enslavement of laborers (coal miners). But he also has a lot more on his mind such as: the exploitation of young itinerant coal miners by older former miners; miners who have run away only to be hunted down and captured (like military deserters); mine-owner benefits from inducing conflicts between/within miners' unions; murder mysteries involving contract killings of union leaders; ghosts (both human and canine (the latter may have been eaten by the former)); land rape by coal mining companies (represented by the bleak landscape of abandoned coal fields in Northern Kyūshū); deadly misidentification which isn't what it seems to be; how the dead might confront and try to solve the mystery of their own murders; symbolic use of white; etc. Acting is OK except for: outdoor death scenes which go on and on (and on); and the somnambulism of actress Sumie Sasaki. Exterior locations (depressing landscapes and a river with quick-sand like mud shores) and set design (a ghost town you may have seen in other films) are outstanding. Cinematography (narrow screen, black and white) uses an antique format, but nonetheless is excellent with many elaborate tracking shots and the extensive use of the deep focus photographic process. Lighting is very good except for early on when some scenes are under lit. "Music" (mostly banging on pots and pans with unusual extractions from a harpsichord?) inter grades with sound effects. The former is always cacophonous and jarring, but is quite effective as a scene booster, and, intimately, becomes rather enjoyable. Subtitles are missing for the young juvenile (who only speaks during the early scenes); but the names of all the players who have speaking parts seem to have been translated along with production department leads. Worth watching several times if only to experience ongoing changes in your perspective. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

MARIO GAUCI Teshigahara called his first feature film "a documentary fantasy" and it is indeed a strange amalgam of social realism, political thriller and ghost story.People in a mining community are being bumped off by a mysterious white-suited hit-man and the two warring unions are blaming the murders on one another. There is no reason why the victims come back from the dead as ghosts but this mining community is a veritable ghost town. The fate of the main character in the film, a common mine worker who shifts from town to town with his young boy in search of better working conditions, is sealed when he is mistaken by the hit-man (posing as an innocuous photographer) for the secretary of one of the unions and ends up face down on a beach before the eyes of his own passive son.The other notable inhabitant of the ghost town is a female candy-store owner who is perennially waiting for news from her far-away lover. To make ends meet, she agrees to act as a witness to the murder of the mine worker but, after being raped by a sleazy police officer, she ends up on the hit-man's list as well lest she decides to sing about her involvement in the murders. Ironically, she is killed just moments before the postman indolently delivers the longed-for letter from her lover and the sequence when her failure to clutch the letter with her fingers brings about her realization that she is in fact dead is a moving highlight. The mine worker seems resigned to his fate of suffering eternal hunger (since he died on an empty stomach!) but the woman can't accept the fact that she was taken away from this world just as her life was about to take a turn for the better; her incessant questioning and screaming after the hit-man riding away on his motorcycle is not easily shaken off.The second half of the movie deals in more detail with the machinations of the two miners' unions which are being pitted one against the other by some unknown force. Towards the end of the film, there is a lengthy, impressive sequence of a clandestine meeting between the two secretaries (one of whom suspects the other of having hired the hit-man to terminate him) which turns into a gritty fist-fight between the two and ends with their two ghosts haunting the sea-side spot were earlier on the mine worker met his doom. This time, however, the miner's son is moved to tears by what he witnesses and, bewildered and alone, runs off aimlessly in a stunning, fluid camera move which ends the film on a high note.The occasionally elliptical narrative may be explained by the fact that we see the events unfolding before us through the eyes of the child and the film's most arresting image is that of the boy's eye peering through a crack in the wall of the wooden shack spying on the woman being raped. PITFALL's subject matter and lack of major stars may limit its appeal but, for adventurous film fans, it's a satisfyingly existentialist and Kafkaesque journey.

xhari_nairx This film is very difficult to find in the West. It's not on video and you'd probably have to be lucky and find it at a film festival or a revival house. It's the first collaboration between director Teshigahara, writer Kodo Abe, and composer Toru Takemitsu, who went on to make the more widely available WOMAN IN THE DUNES and FACE OF ANOTHER. It's not quite as strong as WitD but is on par with FoA. This is a satire about a deserted town who's inhabitants are ghosts swallowed up by corruption. Teshigahara's direction is solid and Takemitsu comes up with another appropriately dissonant score balancing tension and humor. It's worth seeing for anyone interested in the three principal collaborators, particularly since opportunities to see it are rare. Takemitsu in particular could almost single handedly make a movie worth watching.