Very well executed

Very best movie i ever watch

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Blistering performances.

Absolutely unique and bizarre movie in the best sense. It starts as an almost Kafakaesque eerie horror, then becomes a comic ghost story and then an almost Ken Loachian tale of labor struggle. Ultimately it's a cosmic black comedy. That's a lot of narrative tones for one film to cover, but this manages it all with grace and eloquence.

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.

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.

Opening with two men and a boy fleeing in the darkness from some unseen threat, with an ominous silence punctured by wolves barking, it is clear that the film will be unpredictable in both style and content. Moving on from this we follow the man (a miner) and his son as he tries to find work, until eventually he is set up in a complex murder plot. Stalked by an unnerving, immaculately suited assassin he is soon slain brutally and left for dead, in a move reminiscent of Psycho and its quick dispatching of the main character.Following this, the character we thought dead rises up from the ground to a standing position. The simple technique of playing a shot backwards recalls another early 60's Japanese film, Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, while there it was used as a slight character moment, here it completely reinvents the film's narrative – melting away all we've seen and reforming into something much more ambitious.Pitfall contains elements of social realism, surrealist experimentation, crime procedural, conspiracy thriller, and fantasy-tragedy. Teshigahara's roots in documentary film-making and strong leftist political view provide reason for his sympathies with the struggles of miners, shown through the exploitation of the miner and his son and the two union's confrontation. Selfishness pervades the film, the individual selfishness of the exploitative old man hiring the men to do a mining job, the boy taking a candy from his dead father's corpse, and the political selfishness, as seen in the confrontation between the two unions.Duplicity and division are chief devices in Pitfall. Cinematographically we see this through the sensual distance of Teshigahara's camera, at once close, tracking, exploring the personal space and frame of mind of the characters, other times distanced and merely observing, displacing the individual as they get lost in the harsh world around them. The lack of structure in the films cinematography is a benefit, sumptuous compositions, guerrilla hand-held movements, deep-focused long shots, erratic zooms and pans, the assortment of shots is astounding; the film is simply a visual treat. The welding of extreme social realism (at one point real documentary footage of impoverished miners is inserted) and the surrealist imagery of ghosts left in the town, carrying on their lowly routines with no effect, and of the many dead characters inspecting their own corpses, quizzically studying the circumstances of their deaths and often probing the living, creates a fusion of misery – both in life, and forever in death. In ghost form the miner laments his hunger – something he no doubt would've done often in life.Despite all these many seemingly contradictory modes and random story-strands, Pitfall holds together well. As Teshigahara's first feature film, this as a major outlet for his artistic visions, and consequently the film is slightly untidy, structurally the film lacks a successful linking of the many elements at play, they seem to pop-up randomly, sometimes without reason. For example the conspiracy hints littered throughout the murder-mystery plot seem to go nowhere. Rough around the edges it may be, Pitfall is a genuinely fascinating, thrilling, involving picture from beginning to end, possessing the visual tenacity and narrative complexity of a first-time director finding his feet and unleashing his cinematic imagination.