The earthiest of Japanese New Wave directors, Shohei Imamura goes fascinatingly meta in this 1967 hybrid of investigative tract and ruminative experiment.
A Man Vanishes(人間蒸発)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 1967
2h 10m
Director Shōhei Imamura
Starring Yoshie Hayakawa, Shōhei Imamura, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi
Genre Documentary, Drama
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There are thousands of missing-persons cases in Japan each year. This documentary follows the case of Tadashi, a businessman who has vanished into thin air. The investigation by the documentary crew begins to cast shadows of doubt over the man’s relationship with his fiancée and her sister, and even the documentary director himself.
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What are critics saying?
Remains a primo example that cinema actually traffics in truthiness 24 frames per second.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Seemingly banal in its conceit, wildly startling in its execution, it tracks a film crew that, like a detective squad, investigates what became of an ordinary man.
Imamura's square-framed, black-and-white imagery, in all its various stylistic incarnations, proves as compelling through the docu's myriad detours as in any of his better-known psychological thrillers.
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