kaujot wrote:Pitall is good, sometimes very good, but it's very clearly the lesser of the other two. There are some really great moments in the film, but it doesn't mesh into a complete, whole film.
I don't agree with that at all-- I'm not clear why youthink it doesn't mesh into a whole film.
Pitfall is of course a different species from the more blatantly, highly stylized
Face of Another &
Woman of the Dunes.. yet what it doesn't convey with openly avant visuals it successfully manages to trigger in mind the fully engaged viewer. It's a hugely original, yet magically subtle film filled with loaded, haunted silences, with lots of inhabitable breathing room not typically resident in the subsequent two high volume titles. I don't see this a Teshigihara "on the road to"
Woman of the Dunes and/or
Face of Another (both of which I think, vs one another, are two entirely different films stylistically)-- it's Teshigi
in a completely different place vs the other two. As a matter of fact I could see this film
following -- rather than preceding--the other two, as a refinement, a paring down of the louder style of the other two.
In a side note, I wonder whether Teshigi was at all influenced-- or simply saw-- a noirish 1941 melodrama film by Robert Florey.. a B programmer from Columbia called
The Face Behind The Mask. In it Peter Lorre plays a skilled tradesman who immigrates to NYC/America from Hungary; not long after arriving, his SRO hotel goes up in flames & burns to the ground due to the carelessness of a guy, another hotel occupant, cooking with a hotplate in his room. Lorre's character Janusz, sleeping in his bed when the place goes up, is burnt horribly about his face and body. This formerly wide-eyed, hyper-enthusiastic character, eager to blend in and start working and become a productive Good American so he can bring his wife over, is discharged from the hospital with a face so badly disfigured that most people simply cannot bear to look him square on. His hunt for work is immediately stymied as folks pretty much grow instantly uncomfortable via his presence and make their excuses and discharge themselves before squealing in terror or puking.
After a period of gloomy, unsuccessful wanderings in search of not only a job but normal human contact of any kind, Janusz is ready to nix himself, unable to bear it any longer. He goes over to the East River prepared to jump in; a middle aged gent comes up to him and asks him the time just before Lorre's character is to go over the ledge-- Janusz raises his face to the man who instantly receives a jolt of awful horror by the sight.. and flees, not realizing he's dropped his wallet in his rattled wake.
Out from a pile of shipping crates pops a lowlife petty criminal nicknamed Dinky to both snatch the wallet and stop Lorre who is now on his way over the fence into the drink. He speaks to Lorre square on, and tells him he's been watching him and waiting for him to go over.. asks him why he wants to do it-- when Lorre raises his countenance for the inevitable reaction of horror and explains that nobody can stand to look at his face, Dinky says "
I'm lookin' atcha, aint I?"
Lorre's personality undergoes a number of transformations within the film, all based on the effect on him of the world's response to his morphing appearance. Lorre falls in with this low thief, and his group of cohorts-- the only people who will have him without suffering weak hearts-- employing his tradesman's skill with his hands and superior intelligence to nail down big scores for the crew. With the money the group brings in from the robberies they commit-- all conceived by Lorre--Lorre goes to see a plastic surgeon about the possibility of getting his face repaired. I won't give away further plot details, but suffice to say that, as a perhaps interim solution, about 1/4 of the way into the film, Lorre's character gives the doctor a photograph of himself, which the doctor uses to construct a stretchy thin latex-type mask that Lorre then pulls daily over his face to try and appear less hideous to people, where they can at least look him in the eye without retching. To improve the quality of his life.
First of all there is
an actual mask of Lorre's face that the art dept actually had created, and its amazing how much it looks like Lorre. You see him hold it in his hand, see it sitting stationary, etc, and it's an incredible job. When Lorre's character 'wears' his mask however, a makeup job is employed to make it look like he's wearing a mask of his own face. Lorre's of course not actually wearing the mask (the same way Nakadai isn't actually wearing a mask in the Teshigi, or the old 1930's Wax Museum, etc), but his face is made slightly lopsided and built up in some areas as if sagging, made to look wrinkled & folded over in others, his hairline is changed and he wears a hairpiece slightly "off" from his own hair-- it's a brilliant effect.
It's not an entirely successful film-- certainly not on the level of
The Face of Another-- but in many ways it's very good, considering its quickie B-film pedigree (I'm also a sucker for many of these polished looking Columbia B pictures, particularly from Nick Grinde.. just acquired a copy of
The Man With Nine Lives with Karloff-- the Mad Doctor Series-- as well as early Stanwyck in
Shopworn, and another Lorre quickie called
The Insland of Doomed Men). And in it lay many of the seeds that Teshigihara explored later on in his film-- the effect of ones countenance on the quality of ones own life... the effect of one's countenance on others within the intimate orbit and even those on the superficial circumference of one's life.. and the interior agony cultivated by facing up to the fact that it simply is not possible to modulate the interior self to match the changes wrought upon the exterior so that smooth Dealing With, and easy contention, is possible. A challenge faced every day by the prospect of aging.
