Pitfall · reception & legacy
1962 · Hiroshi Teshigahara
How Pitfall has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
For decades it was the barely-seen debut lurking behind Woman in the Dunes, little known outside Japan; Criterion's 2007 'Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara' box set changed that, and it's since been reappraised as a startling first feature rather than a footnote.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile debate is whether this scrappy, stranger debut is secretly the equal of — or even preferable to — its canonised sibling Woman in the Dunes.
Its footprint
It lives on as the opening chapter of the celebrated Teshigahara–Kōbō Abe–Tōru Takemitsu collaboration, the trilogy completists work through, and its eerie ghost-witness imagery is a favourite talking point in reviews of the set.
Where it stands
A cult canon-climber: the 'underseen one' of the Teshigahara–Abe trilogy that Letterboxd reviewers love telling each other to start with.