PITFALL (Japan/1962)

Hiroshi Teshigahara's feature debut is an adaptation of a novel by Kobo Abe deemed experimental at the time. It's the saga of an itinerant miner lured to a remote, abandoned town by a mystery man in white. The miner is murdered. The mystery man bribes the candy seller who witnesses the crime. There's an investigation, an innocent is framed for the murder, the miner's son hides while the ghost of his father searches for reasons why he was targeted. He encounters the ghosts of others who met a similar fate. Pitfall is an indictment of capitalism and post-war industrialization in Japan (It goes beyond being an expose of exploitation in the mining industry, implying that the repression affected a whole class) . Pitfall is just a notch below Teshigahara's masterpiece: Woman in the Dunes, which was released two years later. Toru Takemitsu's jazz-inflected modernist score makes quite an impression. It helps create the ominous mood that pervades the film.