Asian

Oh Joy! Criterion to release The Face of Another and Woman in the Dunes!

Oh wow. This is super cool. If you read this site you know that Kobo Abe is my favorite author. Well, Criterion is set to release a box set of Hiroshi Teshigahara films featuring not one, but three Kobo Abe adaptations: Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, and The Face of Another. Now, Woman in the Dunes you most likely have heard about (it’s easily one of the most haunting and beautiful Japanese films of the 1960’s). It was released previously on DVD by Image, but has been long out of print. However, this set marks the DVD debut of The Face of Another (possibly my favorite Abe book), and Pitfall (an adaptation of an Abe short story, which I have not yet read). Now, being that I’ve already written up synopses of two of these stories in previous articles, I’ll just direct you to them: Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another. The synopsis of Pitfall, from the Criterion website, is thus:

When a miner leaves his employers and treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean white suit, and eventually coming face to face with his inescapable destiny. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s debut feature and first collaboration with novelist Kobo Abe, Pitfall is many things: a mysterious, unsettling ghost story, a portrait of human alienation, and a compellingly surreal critique of soulless industry, shot in elegant black-and-white.

If they just added The Ruined Map (starring none other than Shintaro Katsu), the full Kobo Abe dream set would be complete.

The Hiroshi Teshigahara three DVD set is scheduled to release July 10, 2007. Mark your calendars! You can read more about the set here. The cover art for the set is featured below.

One last thing. Criterion’s recently changed their domain from Criterionco.com to Criterion.com. If you’ve linked them previously, make sure to update the link