A Man Vanishes

Japanese director Shohei Imamura's (1926–2006) riveting 1967 documentary (or, more properly, quasi-documentary) follows the investigation of the disappearance of a salesman named Tadashi Oshima shortly before his planned marriage. Tadashi's fiancée, Yoshie Hayakawa, joins the search, and over the course of the film—which includes interviews with co-workers, relatives, and chance witnesses—Yoshie not only becomes attracted to the head investigator but also comes to suspect that her sister was having an affair with Tadashi (and might have killed him). The unsettling character of the narrative is enhanced by grainy images, overlapping sound that is often at odds with the visuals, and periodic cuts to a psychic whom Tadashi's mother consults for news of her son. In one astonishing sequence, Yoshie breaks the fourth wall by turning to Imamura himself, who not only admits that he doesn't know how or why Tadashi disappeared, but abruptly orders the set on which the scene is being filmed to be struck. A work of stunning originality, A Man Vanishes marked the beginning of Imamura's embrace of nonfiction film, and this set includes five examples of his later works: In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand and In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia (both from 1971), The Pirates of Bubuan (1972), Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home (1973), and Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute (1975). An essential set for any foreign cinema collection, this is highly recommended. (F. Swietek)