Favorite Forgotten Films

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Theo Van de Sande, ASC

 

During the 25 years that I have been working in this profession, I have, in moments of despair, often asked myself the question: "How did I get into this?" What made me decide to spend my entire life searching for the perfect combination of shadow and light, the deepest blacks and the most fragile highlights, for the ultimate frame and the strongest perspective to tell an often not-so-perfect story? Why did I choose to study Film at the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam, rather than following a more predictable path in biochemistry at the University in the more protected South of Holland?

Every time I ask myself this question my thoughts go back to my last years in high school when my brother organized a Film Liga, and where I first saw the films of Bergman, Buñuel, Fellini, Antonioni, etc., etc. Already obsessed by still photography, I was taken away by these Masters of Cinema. For me their films were magic, but they didn't make me decide to put everything aside and go into films myself.

The one and only film that really had a profound influence on my decision was Suna No Onna (Woman in the Dunes), 1964, from the Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara. A film so powerful and, at the same time, so simple. An abstract story so intense that its extraordinary B&W photography can still affect you physically.

No wonder it won the Special Jury Prize in Cannes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1964. The only reason that it didn't get the Grand Prize in Cannes and the Academy Award was — in my opinion — because the film was far ahead of its time, but at the same time, so incredibly powerful that it couldn't be ignored.

Since that first time that I saw Woman in the Dunes in my brother's Film Liga, I never saw it again. But for all this time, its sensation has stayed with me, as I hoped — just once — to find a project as good as this masterpiece. It kept me going for a long time.

This year the film was re-released. I was very excited and went to see it, hoping that the film wouldn't appear dated. I was not disappointed. For me, Woman in the Dunes was as powerful, as intense, as erotic and emotional an experience as it had been in 1965. A sensual, stunning allegory of poetry and power. The B&W photography of Hiroshi Segawa is as modern as I felt it was then. The score of Toru Takemitsu did more than serving the story. On April 13, 1997 critic Chris Chang wrote the following critique after he had seen the re-release.

It's often said that a film cannot change a person's perception, but in my case, Suna No Onna had a profound effect on my decision about what to do next in my life.