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.
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.