Pitfall is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel

Pitfall (1962)Crime, FantasyRating 60/100

When a miner leaves his employers and treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean, white suit, and eventually coming face-to-face with his inescapable destiny. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s debut feature and first collaboration with novelist Kobo Abe, PITFALL is many things: a mysterious, unsettling ghost story, a portrait of human alienation, and a compellingly surreal critique of soulless industry, shot in elegant black and white.

Cast: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Sen Yano, Hideo Kanze, Kunie Tanaka, Kei Satō, Kazuo Miyahara

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara