Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna)

Released 1964
Stars Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara

This is one of those rare films able to combine realism with a parable about life. A woman is trapped in a sand pit which fills nightly, and she is forced to shovel out every day. This is a modern version of the myth of Sisyphus, the man condemned by the gods to spend eternity rolling a boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it roll back down. 20 years after seeing it the first time, I found it as radical, hard-edged and challenging as the first time. Unlike some parables that are powerful the first time but merely pious when revisited, "Woman in the Dunes'' retains its power because it is a perfect union of subject, style and idea. A man and a woman share a common task. They cannot escape it. On them depends the community--and, by extension, the world.

Summary by Roger Ebert