#394: TESHIGAHARA, Hiroshi: Woman In The Dunes (1964)

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THREE FILMS BY HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA {Spine #392} OOP

TESHIGAHARA, Hiroshi (Japan)
Woman In The Dunes [1964]
Spine #394
DVD


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. Eiji 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 (Kyoko 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 everday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.

148 minutes
Black & White
Monaural
in Japanese
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2007
Director/Writer


Story from the novel by Kôbô Abe.
Hiroshi Teshigahara was 37 when he directed Woman in the Dunes.

Other Teshigahara films in the Collection:

#393: Pitfall (1962)
#395: The Face Of Another (1966)
#425: Antonio Gaudi (1984)

The Film

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Sixty-eight page booklet featuring essays by Peter Grilli and Audie Bock, and an interview Teshigahara by Max Tessier.

Commentary

None.

Video essay

On the film by critic and festival programmer James Quandt.
Theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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