Hacker Cinema
Woman in the Dunes
砂の女
1964 · Film · 147 min
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
7 positive1 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
Japanese films are notoriously bad. You found a few gems. They are rare. This topic comes up often in Japanese learning groups.
There's also just personal takes. I had to shut off Memories of Matsuko. Maybe the end saves it but it was way too over the top and not in a good way.
Some good older Japanese though
Kurasawa: Ikiru (1955)
Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes (1964)
These are 2 movies you won't forget.
Conversely, even though I enjoyed Shoplifters I remember nothing about it except the guy celebrating he had sex and the girl burping. Similarly with After Life. I just watched it 2 months ago and had to go look it up to remember what it was about. It was interesting because of the premise but not because of the movie itself.
I recently saw "Woman in the Dunes" ("Suna no Onna", 1964) and it felt like a close cousin of "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle". Weird movie.
You can find the whole thing on YouTube (U.S. region anyway).
Trailer: https://youtu.be/7kX4h_sEBiI
Different strokes for different folks. I watch a lot of old films. My letterboxd watchlist currently contains 365 films which can be streamed thusly:
69 are available on Criterion. 61 are on HBO. 22 are on Amazon Prime. 17 are on Netflix. 15 are on Hulu. 6 are on Disney+.
240 are available as rentals on on iTunes.
(And I have no idea who Larry Wright is or why I should give any credence to his snarky remark where he picked two films that are not at all representative of the full Criterion catalog and neither of those films are currently on Criterion in any case. To pick a random selection of 5 on Criterion from my watchlist: Story of Women, White Material, Woman in the Dunes, Piccadilly, The Thin Blue Line.)
Morricone himself addresses this in an old interview (https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2016/12/11/morricone-interview-cinema-papers/)
Your first big film success was A Fist Full of Dollars, whose score is very different from that of the Hollywood Westerns. Your cultural perspective is obviously different. What were the stimuli?
The stimulus was the film itself. Leone had made an ironic and, in a certain sense, a grotesque film in that it was funny, a caricature. It was necessary to respect the clarity that Leone wanted for his characters. Besides, I was not, and am not, a specialist in American folk music, so what sense was there in my treating the characters like Americans? If that is required, use an American composer. So, I treated Leone’s characters by attempting to re-invent, in my way, American folk, bearing in mind certain musical and technical data. And then the caricatured treatment of the characters encouraged me to introduce strange sounds into the score so that the character would have the charisma Leone wanted.
Not that I know much about it, but I find music in some old japanese movies very interesting, like Woman In The Dunes (https://youtu.be/UFbJ9iDeZgg) or Kwaidan (https://youtu.be/v_OFoOwzPZY)
In addition to “Woman in the Dunes”, I'd also nominate “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew”. And, in fact, “It's a Wonderful Life” for those who haven't seen it (it's a much more grown up and dark film than you may have been led to believe).
I'm surprised not to see more people adding their favorite movies. Just sticking to things semi-related. I may have to go watch "My Man Godfrey" again but at least for me "The Thin Man" and its 5 sequels stuck with me where as though I watched "My Man Godfrey" years ago but I don't remember any details of it. (same lead actor and he pretty much always plays the same type of person)
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a good movie but if you want some other westerns starting James Stewart I can recommend "Destry Rides Again" which is not super serious but I found it throughly entertaining. Also "Broken Arrow" (1950), (not the 90s John Woo movie which is a fun popcorn movie).
Seeing "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on the list I recently saw "The Outlaw Josey Wales" which I enjoyed (also a Western with Clint Eastwood)
Of the movies on that list I've seen the one I'd recommend the most is "Women in the Dunes". I don't want to over hype it I've seen most of the movies on the list and they are all great stories but "Woman in the Dunes" might give you something new to think about where as the others are mostly just great entertainment.
The movie for Woman in the Dunes is really great too!
"The Woman in the Dunes" is an excellent film as well.