Pitfall
Pitfall
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1h 37m
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara • 1962 • Japan
Starring Hisashi Igawa, Kunie Tanaka, Hideo Kanze
When a miner leaves his employers and treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean, white suit, and eventually coming face-to-face with his inescapable destiny. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s debut feature and first collaboration with novelist Kobo Abe, PITFALL is many things: a mysterious, unsettling ghost story, a portrait of human alienation, and a compellingly surreal critique of soulless industry, shot in elegant black and white.
Up Next in Pitfall
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PITFALL Video Essay
The following video essay about PITFALL, by James Quandt of the TIFF Cinematheque, was recorded in 2007.