This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Really Surprised!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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.

The film is daring, not only narratively, but technically, employing many styles: using real documentary footage, using reverse emotion photography, and numerous other technical feats that all serve the story- there is no ostentation, only utility (unlike, say, the films of Jean Cocteau). And this makes one wonder why so many films are so straightforward and dull, visually, when the very usage of such techniques actually complexes a rather simple narrative quite dramatically. Some critics have carped that the film is not that realistic in its depiction sof its characters; especially the dueling union heads who end up killing each other. But, as someone who has spent decades in such labors, the film is depressingly accurate in its portrayal of how easily a dastardly company can pit labor interests against one another. In fact, I would say, that in the less philosophic aspects of the tale, the film is amongst the most realistic portrayals of unionism going; in many ways more so than even a film like Norma Rae. And the portrayal of the company-hired assassin recalls that other great corporate malfeasance film, Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, while the ironic bleakness recalls Kon Ichikawa's Fires On The Plain.The DVD package, from The Criterion Collection, Three Films By Hiroshi Teshigahara, comes with a fourth disk of supplements, the main feature of which is a documentary about Teshigahara and his Kobo Abe's lives and collaborations. There are also four short early documentaries by Teshigahara, none of which presage his fictive films. They are: Hokusai, Ikebana, Tokyo 1958, and Ako. The actual disk with Pitfall on it contains the theatrical trailer and a video essay by film critic James Quandt on it. Overall, it is a solid video package- with a few early blemishes, shown in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, although the lack of an English language dubbed track would have been a great help because the white subtitles blanche out against many of the ultra-white shots of the film. The booklet features a career overview by Peter Grilli, an interview with the director, and essays on the films. Hiroshi Segawa's cinematography is very daring, and the scoring, by Toru Takemitsu, is always apropos to the scene, underscoring emotions, never exaggerating them, and often adding to the scenes with an askewness to what is seen, which throws a viewer into a different state of mind, aiding the feeling of alienation many of the characters feel.This alienation is at its greatest when one realizes that the first two murders of the miner and the candy saleswoman are incidental to the real 'meat' of the film. And, in this way, Teshigahara is offering up his version of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, wherein the character the viewer presumes is the film's main character, is not. He is merely a plot device, whose raison d'etre is left hanging. The same cannot be said for his son, who witnesses four murders and the brutal sex between the cop and the candy saleswoman. In this way, the film also neatly sunders the convention of a close father and on the road, as portrayed in such films as The Bicycle Thief and Il Grido. That both of those films were influenced by documentary forms, as was Teshigahara's work is no coincidence; as is Teshigahara's will to break with the tried and true.Pitfall is a film that is great because it is daring, it does not bite off more than it can chew, it provides a strong narrative, but leaves enough mystery for the viewer to cogitate on through multiple viewings, is technically strong, in all areas, and provides solid enough acting (never great) that its just mentioned framework of excellence never frays. It provides a narrative for those drawn to plot first films, yet also has a philosophic heft that works on many levels- from the existential to the ethical, and touches upon identity, the layers of the self, and what is and is not private and is and is not evil. It may be a bit less daring than Teshigahara's later The Face Of Another, as well as lacking in as much razzle-dazzle and narrative complications, but it is also less flawed, and this latter quality is why it stands taller as a great work of art than the later film. However, both films evince an undeniable fact- Hiroshi Teshigahara was a force of great talent and achievement in Japanese and world cinema, and the world of art, and that at large, is poorer for his absence, and the absence of his creative descendants. Hence, sometimes less really, and only, is less.

If you're familiar with Hiroshi Teshigahara's work, especially the notorious "Woman In The Dunes", you will understand the starkness, the harsh reality, the irony of this film. Ostensibly about a miner who is stalked by a man in a white suit and who then is killed for reasons that do not become apparent until nearly the end of the film, the film is, like "Dunes", an uncompromising look at life. The film is technically superb on the DVD box available, and it is highly recommended. This film is not for everyone, it is for people who are interested in serious Japanese cinema. There are nuances in this film that show the mark of a great director, though. Again, be prepared: This is not happy go lucky. It triumphs mostly because of its persistence of vision. That is an endorsement for any filmmaker.

"Divide et impera" is an old game used by those with power against their subalterns. In "Pitfall", an employer who owns two mines has had to deal with one big union in the past. So, the employer conjures up a plan to divide his mine workers. He lays off some from one mine and doesn't layoff any at the other. The members of the one big union are supposed to come to each other's aid in solidarity when trouble with the employer erupts and this is one such occasion. However, when the miners of mine number one ask miners of mine number two for class solidarity in their strike to get lost jobs back, the miners of mine number two refuse and keep working as the employer has told them that they will not suffer layoffs. Bingo! The miners in one his mines have been pitted against the miners of his other mine, competing for what they think are a limited number of positions. The consequence is that the one big union splits into two competing unions. It's much easier for the boss to make deals with two small unions for they are weaker than one big union. Message to the employing class: divide and rule. Lesson for workers:unity.What happens though when the employer wants to get rid of even those two unions, weakened by distrust, one for the other? The answer to this question is large part of what director Hiroshi Teshigahara's "Pitfall" is about. Teshigahara wasn't alone in creating this film. To be sure, "Pitfall" was also the work of author Kôbô Abe. In fact, "Pitfall" was originally a stage play by Abe. One must keep in mind when watching this film that both men were leftists, influenced by surrealism and it shows in the direction, screenplay, choice of music and cinematography. Both men saw how the social relations of capitalist class rule kept the producers weak, poor and in wage-slavery. Both also saw the existential theme of alienation between people which is part and parcel of the the system of wage-labor. But neither of them was about to produce a piece of nihilist fiction, which is what many reviewers of this film seem to think "Pitfall" is about. Teshigahara and Abe are depicting life under the rule of Capital and showing how it works to keep workers at each others' throats. As the film opens, a father and his young boy wander a stark landscape in Kyushu, industrially pockmarked by mines and the scattered, wild remnants of a supremely indifferent Nature. This is an environment like our own, one which has suffered from the neglect of civilization's modern rulers. The father is a rootless proletarian in search of an employer and on the run because he has 'deserted'. The film's audience is never told what he has deserted from; but whatever it was, there are other workers who have deserted from it too. We know this because the father is being accompanied through part of the film by a fellow mine worker who is also on the run, a self-proclaimed 'deserter'. We also know because in one scene from a mine work-site a man is fallen upon by two other men, authorities who take him away after a scuffle. The miners who view this in a stunned, atomized silence agree: the man must have been a 'deserter'. The father's young son has been brought up as witness to the fact that authority can never be trusted. He has seen too many ordinary working people hurt in some way by people who wear the clothes and uniforms of officialdom. When he spies a man in a pristine white suit riding through the mining town on a motor scooter, the only motor vehicle around which isn't a truck, he hides.The father, his son and their companion, the other mine worker, leave one job secretly in the night and go on the road to look for another. They fear discovery as 'deserters' as their employer seems like he might be catching on. No chances can be taken. Both land a job at another mine site some distance away and it looks to be a good job too. The father has always dreamed of working for a union mine and of the better, more comfortable and secure life this would mean. This one's not bad; but one of his supervisors tells him that a new boss awaits him at another mine with an even better job and so he and his son take off on foot with a simply sketched map in hand.However, the new mine doesn't seem to exist. Instead, the father is led by the written map given to him by his former supervisor to an abandoned mining town where only one person lives, a woman who owns a candy/trinket store. The woman is as isolated and lonely as the father. She too is waiting for something, a letter from her ex-lover, a summons to a better place. In the course of their conversation, we find out that the ghost town has been abandoned because of all the mining accidents which have happened. Unsafe working conditions have their consequences. Still, the father wonders what went wrong with the directions he got from his old supervisor. He's sure that he's in the right place, the one given to him on a piece of paper by foreman of the mine he just left. The candy store owning woman suggests that he might be looking for another mine, just over the hill.Be prepared for ghosts, doubles and dastardly planned murders most foul. Be prepared to see and even hear (in a jangling musical score) a movie which will intrigue and surprise and may cause you thereafter to continually question the motives of your rulers: divide et impera.