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Woman in the Dunes

Suna no onna

Japan

1964

147 Min

Black and White

1.33:1

Japanese

Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
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PROD Kiichi Ichikawa, Tadashi Ôno

CAST Eiji Okada, Kyôko Kishida, Hiroko Itô, Kôji Mitsui, Sen Yano, Ginzô Sekiguchi, Kiyohiko Ichiha, Hideo Kanze, Hiroyuki Nishimoto, Tamotsu Tamura

PROD DES Tôtetsu Hirakawa, Masao Yamazaki

SOUND Ichirô Katô, Keizo Mori, Shigenosuke Okuyama

Cannes (In Competition): Jury Special Prize, New York

Synopsis

One of the sixties’ great international art-house sensations, Woman in the Dunes was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal, idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara. Eija Okada plays an amateur entomologist who has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert; when he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kiyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema’s most bristling, unnerving, and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Hiroshi Teshigahara (勅使河原宏, Teshigahara Hiroshi?, January 28, 1927 – April 14, 2001) was an avant-garde Japanese filmmaker.

He was born in Tokyo, son of Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the the Sogetsu School of ikebana. He graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and directed his first film, Pitfall (1962), in collaboration with author Kōbō Abe and musician Tōru Takemitsu. The film won the NHK New Director’s award, and throughout the 1960s, he continued to collaborate on films with Abe and Takemitsu while simultaneously pursuing his interest in ikebana and sculpture on a professional level.

In 1965, the Teshigahara/Abe film Woman in the Dunes (1964) was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1972, he worked with Japanese researcher and translator John Nathan to make the movie Summer Soldiers, a film set during the Vietnam War about American deserters living on the fringe… read more

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VENIMOS LOS JODIMOS Y NOS FUIMOS

25Mar12

Un profesor, apasionado de la entomología, busca nuevas especies en la arena de una playa. Al percatarse de la hora, no logra alcanzar el autobús que lo llevaría de vuelta a la ciudad. Un anciano le ofrece buscarle un refugio donde pasar la noche a lo que el profesor, agradecido, accede; al llegar al lugar, desciende confiadamente por una escalera de cuerda donde le espera una solitaria mujer. A la mañana siguiente, el hombre se percata que la escalera de cuerda ha desaparecido, convirtiéndose a partir de ese momento en prisionero de la misteriosa mujer, en un espacio claustrofóbico y opresivo, el cual se halla invadido en todo momento por las interminables oleadas de arena que se cuelan por doquier. Algo de terrorifico y fascinante se hace presente en este insólito trabajo del director Hiroshi Teshigahara; de atmosferas opresivas y pesadillescas con claras reminiscencias kafkianas en el que el realizador, con la mirada propia de un entomólogo, escruta en la psique de sus personajes, quienes atrapados en un espacio aislado del mundo exterior, comparten una situación extrema por la supervivencia, una lucha diaria en la cual, terminan haciendo de la renuncia una forma de conocimiento, en uno de los filmes más desconcertantes, bizarros y atractivos de los años sesenta.

Daniela

25Mar12

Man, THIS FILM! I think the only thing I don't like is its representations of females . . . but, man, THIS FILM. Stylistically it's a masterpiece! And it picked up soo much during the second half! I'll never look at sand the same way again.

Alexander Robino

4Jan12

Blew me away a little - always nice these days. Could return to this film many times.

Daniela and JP. Schmidt like this

PoutingBear

21Dec11

I'm aware that a certain amount of length is needed to make this a claustrophobic and disconcerting watch (on account of the subject matter), but I felt that this, much like the book it is based on, was just too long. Also, unlike Kafka's characters, Abe's protagonists are not at all likeable; both in this and in The Face of Another I found myself feeling that they deserved their fates. That said, it was enthralling.

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Does He Want To Go Back?

By Jonathan A. on January 5, 2011

Woman in the Dunes is a classic Japanese film from 1964 that explores themes of society, alienation and human nature from a very offbeat point of view. It has become a film who’s images and meanings… read review