Hiroshi Teshigahara: Three Masterpieces, etc.
Tuesday (July 10) sees the release of a collection of films by my favorite Japanese filmmaker, Hiroshi Teshigahara. Responsible for one of the 1960’s more well-known “art house” hits, Woman in the Dunes, he also made six other features, a few documentaries and several shorts. None of this work - save Woman in the Dunes, Rikyu and Antonio Gaudi - has been available in the US until today. The latter two films are now long out of print (we do have Gaudi on tape); Woman in the Dunes was also released on disc many years ago, but in an abbreviated version and from a wretched print — at any rate that disc is also OOP.
The Criterion Co.’s new set includes three films and a fourth disc of bonus features and shorts. Pitfall is Teshigahara’s first film, an Antonioni-esque existential mystery about an enigmatic and ominous stranger who visits a small industrial village. Woman in the Dunes follows the predicament of an entomologist unwittingly trapped as a “partner” for a woman who herself seems a prisoner in a rotting hut amidst cascading sand dunes. It’s been fully restored and now runs its proper original length. (Those of you who saw and enjoyed the recent Brazilian film House of Sand may want to watch this, its antecedent and obvious inspiration). Face of Another is one of the great “horror” films about identity, recalling Frankenstein, Eyes Without A Face, Seconds and certain work of John Woo. Like those, it examines the juncture where physical transformation and the formation of consciousness meet (or don’t meet).
All three films in the set were based on stories by renowned Japanese author Kobo Abe, and were scored by the brilliant Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara, Abe and Takemitsu’s collaborations (they later made a fourth movie together called Man Without a Map) are uncanny integrations of idea and image — they seem the product of one mind, not three. Teshigahara also practiced Ikebana - the art of flower arranging - as well as making sculpture and installations, and his relatively few films share with those arts a carefully measured sense of space and spare beauty. Films like these are perfect examples of why classic Japanese cinema is held in such high regard even today.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
I can’t wait to see the previously unavailable films! Woman in the Dunes is truly amazing. I hope you liked Face of Anotehr better than Face Off… I know how you adore John Woo.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Just watched Face of Another, and I must say it was quite good. It always surprises me when what I hope happens next in a film actually does, and this was no exception. Gosh, still thinking about it. I am really stoked to see Woman in the Dunes next, although I have to say, it will be tough to top this one. I can only wonder when/how this will be adapted here in the U.S. as it undoubtedly will…
October 25th, 2007 at 2:23 am
[…] Face of Another — My favorite Japanese director is Hiroshi Teshigahara, and of the handful of films he made, only this one could be even loosely labelled a horror film, though it’s as much a science-fiction film, like Frankenstein. Psychedelic, absurd, terribly sad. More here and here. […]