The film follows an amateur entomologist (Okada) who is led to settle in the house of a lonely widow (Kishida) at the bottom of a sand dune in a rural coastal village. He soon realizes that the villagers have trapped him there and expect him to work for them.
Plot
Schoolteacher and amateur entomologist Niki Junpei leaves Tokyo on an expedition to a rural coastal village to collect tiger beetles and other insects that live in sandy soil. After a long day of searching, he misses the last bus ride back to the city. A village elder and some of the other locals suggest that he stay the night at their village. Junpei agrees and is guided down a rope ladder to a hut at the bottom of a sand dune, the home of a young woman. He learns that she lost her husband and daughter in a sandstorm a year ago and now lives alone; their bodies are said to be buried under the sand somewhere near the hut. After dinner, the woman goes outside to shovel the sand into buckets, which the villagers reel in from the top of the dune. Junpei offers to help, but she refuses, telling him that he is a guest and there is no need for him to help on the first day.
The next morning, Junpei gets ready to leave but finds that the rope ladder has been pulled up. Unable to escape, as the sand surrounding the hut is too steep and does not give him enough grip to climb, he quickly realises that he is trapped and expected to live with the woman and assist her in digging the sand, which is sold to cement manufacturers on the black market. He begrudgingly accepts this role, which the woman has long accepted without question.
Junpei becomes the widow's lover but hopes to escape. One evening, he climbs out of the pit with an improvised grappling hook and runs away, with the villagers in pursuit. Unfamiliar with the geography of the area, he becomes trapped in quicksand. The villagers free him and return him to the hut.
Junpei eventually resigns himself to his situation but requests time each day to see the nearby sea; the villagers agree on the condition that he has sex with the woman while they watch. Junpei agrees, but she refuses and fends him off. Through his persistent efforts to trap a crow as a messenger, he discovers a way to draw water from the damp sand at night by capillary action and becomes absorbed in perfecting the technique. When the woman becomes ill from an ectopic pregnancy, the villagers take her to a doctor; they leave the rope ladder down, but Junpei chooses to stay, telling himself that he can still escape after showing the villagers his method of water production.
The film's final shot is of a police report stating that Junpei has been missing for seven years.
Cast
Eiji Okada as Niki Junpei, an amateur entomologist and schoolteacher from Tokyo. Okada was cast in various Japanese films in the 1950s, but it was not until he appeared in Hiroshima mon amour in 1959 that he gained a worldwide reputation.[2]
Kyōko Kishida as the widow in the dunes. Kishida was a Japanese actress, voice performer, and writer of children's books. In addition to Woman in the Dunes, in the West she is best known for The Face of Another (1966, also directed by Teshigahara) and Yasujirō Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon (1962). She was a founding member of the theater group Engeki Shudan En, which was formed in 1975.
Kōji Mitsui as the village elder who lures the entomologist to the widow's home. He was billed above the film's title on the original Woman in the Dunes film poster, alongside Okada and Kishida, with the studio-era convention of appending his name with small characters indicating that Toho had borrowed the contracted player from Shochiku.[3]
Production
Development
Prior to the production of Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara directed Pitfall (おとし穴, Otoshiana), a.k.a. The Pitfall and Kashi To Kodomo, which was written by Kōbō Abe. Pitfall was Teshigahara's first feature, and the first of his four film collaborations with Abe and Takemitsu.
Technical details
With a run time of 123 minutes / 147 minutes (director's cut), the film was shot in 35 mm negative format by Hiroshi Segawa, the director of photography.
The roadshow version of Woman in the Dunes was released in Japan on February 15, 1964 where it was distributed by Toho.[1] The general release for Woman in the Dunes in Japan was April 18, 1964; the film was cut to 127 minutes.[6]
The film was released in the United States by Pathe Contemporary Films with English subtitles on September 17, 1964.[1] The film ran at 127 minutes.[1] The film was also featured in the New York Film Festival on September 16, 1964.
The film was also featured in several other film festivals across the world such as the Cannes Film Festival in France,[7]Adelaide Film Festival in Australia, and Clasicos del Cine Japones in Argentina on November 21, 2000.[citation needed]
The Criterion Collection released a DVD box set collecting Woman in the Dunes in its original length along with Teshigahara's Pitfall and The Face of Another in 2007. This release is now out of print.[8] In August 2016, Criterion released the film as a stand-alone Blu-ray with a brand new high definition transfer.[9]
Critical reception
The film has a rating of 100% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10.[10] It was one of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's ten favorite movies.[11]
Roger Ebert inducted Woman in the Dunes into his Great Movies list in 1998. Viewing the work as a retelling of the Sisyphus myth, he wrote: "There has never been sand photography like this (no, not even in "Lawrence of Arabia"), and by anchoring the story so firmly in this tangible physical reality, the cinematographer, Hiroshi Segawa, helps the director pull off the difficult feat of telling a parable as if it is really happening."[12] Strictly Film School describes it as "a spare and haunting allegory for human existence".[13] According to Max Tessier, the main theme of the film is the desire to escape from society.[14][15]
The film's composer, Toru Takemitsu, was praised. Nathaniel Thompson wrote, "[Takemitsu's] often jarring, experimental music here is almost a character unto itself, insinuating itself into the fabric of the celluloid as imperceptibly as the sand."[16] Ebert also stated that the score "doesn't underline the action but mocks it, with high, plaintive notes, harsh, like a metallic wind."[12]
