An amateur entomologist (Eiji Okada, Hiroshima Mon Amour) loses track of time hunting bugs in the sand dunes and misses the last bus home. So when a local offers to arrange a bed for the night in the nearest hamlet, he gratefully accepts. The home turns out to be a wooden shack at the bottom of a vertiginous sandpit, and despite the friendly ministrations of the attractive widow who lives there (Kyoko Kishida), the man dimly begins to realize he’s been set up… But for what?
Suspenseful and loaded with allegorical import, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s movie of Kōbō Abe’s novel (Abe wrote the screenplay) is vividly strange, erotic and disturbing. Teshigahara’s carnal, granular imagery ensnares us in the story’s existential prison, a man trap where sustenance can only be bought through hard labour, shoveling the sands of time ad infinitum.
A sensation in its day, the film even garnered Teshigahara an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The movie’s secret weapon is the disconcerting, inspired, very modern score by Toru Takemitsu.
Sunday’s Pantheon screening will feature a 20-minute introduction and talkback.
Oct 19: Intro by Dr. Su-Anne Yeo, who teaches in the Department of Theatre & Film and the Department of Asian Studies at UBC
An unforgettable cinematic experience… The film is one of unearthly power, telling the story of an entomologist trapped by villagers and forced to live with a woman in a house hemmed in by sand dunes… It comes across as a bizarre nightmare.
The Rough Guide to Film
A tour de force of visual style and a knockout as an unusually cruel thriller… the erotic attraction between the man and the woman, filmed with a palpable physicality, remains extraordinary.
Tony Rayns, Time Out
Presented by
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida
Japan
1964
In Japanese with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Cinematography
Hiroshi Segawa
Editor
Fusako Shuzui
Original Music
Toru Takemitsu
Art Director
Totetsu Hirakawa, Masao Yamazaki
Also in This Series
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
I Am Cuba
Infused with a palpable love for the country and a righteous anger at the injustices of the Batista era, I Am Cuba features some of the jaw-dropping camerawork ever filmed. A euphoric celebration of Cuba, the Revolution, and revolutionary cinema.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940