Firstly, I’d like to thank Ayla (of Twisted Celluloid) for the idea of this week’s short, “Betty Boop in Snow-White”. The change over the past seventy-five years has been a big one, and it is very evident in this cartoon. In this short you will find some very out of the ordinary dancing and singing (featuring Cab Calloway), a brief mention of alcohol, and no morals to end on. Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Black and White
10. ARCHANGEL (1990)
“And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
—Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” (quote originally intended to introduce Archangel)
DIRECTED BY: Guy Maddin
FEATURING: Kyle McCulloch, Kathy Marykuca
PLOT: In 1919, one-legged Canadian airman Lt. John Boles finds his way to the Russian port of Archangel in the endless night of Arctic winter. There, he meets Veronkha, whom he believes to be the reincarnation of Iris, his dead love. Veronkha has problems of her own, in the form of an amnesiac husband who wakes up every day believing this is the day they are to be wed, but Boles tries to woo her nevertheless as Archangel’s ragtag militia battles the Germans and the Bolsheviks without realizing that both World War I and the Russian Revolution are over.
BACKGROUND:
- The city of Archangel was the port of entry for Allied soldiers during World War I; therefore, soldiers from America, Canada, and the European allies might very well have been found gathered there (although probably not East Indians and Congolese, as depicted in the film). Many Allied soldiers were sent to Russia, partially to help assist the Imperial (White) Russians against the Bolshevik Communist rebels (Reds).
- Some reports say that the version presented on the “Guy Maddin Collection” DVD is a different cut from the theatrical and original VHS version, with tinting and intertitles added. I haven’t been able to confirm whether differences exist.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: As his dying act, a lifelong coward strangles a bestial Bolshevik with a length of his own intestine (which is obviously a sausage link).
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The tale of an obsessive, grieving soldier who thinks he’s found the reincarnation of his lost love in a benighted Russian city where the citizens continue to fight a war that is over would be weird enough if told straight. Director Guy Maddin exaggerates the already dreamlike quality of this tale by clothing it in the archaic period dress of an early sound film, complete with intertitles describing the action, dubbed voices that are occasionally slightly out of sync, and casually disorienting jumps/glitches in the film. He pushes this inherently confusing story of terminally confused characters further into strange realms with deliberately surreal elements, such as women warriors going to the front dressed in elegant evening headwear, and even odder sights.
Short clip from Archangel (French subtitles not in original)
COMMENTS: The city of Archangel seems the perfect place to dream. Isolated from the Continue reading 10. ARCHANGEL (1990)
SHORT: THE HEART OF THE WORLD (2000)
DIRECTED BY: Guy Maddin
PLOT: “State scientist” Anna studies “the heart of the world” and learns it is in desperate shape, all while trying to chose between suitors: brothers Osip (a mortician) and Nicolai (an actor playing Christ in a passion play), along with “dark horse” industrialist Akmatov.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Maddin pulls out all the stops in this dreamlike, hyperkinetic tribute to silent films (especially Soviet Constructivist films such as Aelita, Queen of Mars).
COMMENTS: This six minute minor masterpiece was produced for the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000, where it became an immediate sensation and the hit of the festival. An incredible technical achievement, the film resurrects simple camera tricks such as multiple exposures, creative use of intertitles, expressionist shadows, and blaring lighting that creates auras or halos around the actors, techniques which were largely forgotten or abandoned when films moved from black and white to color. Add angular 1920s costumes and sets inspired by Metropolis and Aelita, a propulsive, minimalist theme from Soviet composer Georgi Sviridov, and a blazing fast editing style (it is said that the film averages two shots per second), and you have a film that is packed full of pure cinematic images, almost exhausting to watch, yet all too brief.
There is not time to develop much plot in this fabulous sprint. The Heart of the World is more an exhibition of virtuoso visual technique than a narrative film. Although the overwhelming emphasis is on visual style, Maddin does include boldly drawn, archetypal characters to help guide the viewer to the film’s triumphant end. Their presence begs an allegorical interpretation of the film, although I’m not sure anything coherent can be formulated. Osip the mortician seems to represent the body, and he is blatantly associated with sexuality (he’s seen dragging a knife across a naked woman’s torso, then later builds a phallic cannon to try to impress Anna). Nikolai represents the spirit (again rather obviously: the chap dresses like Jesus at the crucifixion). Anna must chose between the body and the spirit, though its not clear why. And it’s also not clear what Anna may represent: she begins as a scientist, and ends, presumably, as a self-sacrificing artist. And why does Akmatov, the capitalist antagonist, suddenly appear to seduce Anna away from the other two with money? And what does all of this have to do with saving the heart of the world, anyway?
In the end, all that’s clear is this: Maddin has taken the style of a Soviet propaganda film, and turned it into propaganda for the art of cinema.
The Heart of the World is available on the DVD, “The Guy Maddin Collection” (buy
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
5. EYES WITHOUT A FACE [LES YEUX SANS VISAGE] (1960)
AKA Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus [dubbed and edited version]
“I love images that make me dream, but I don’t like someone dreaming for me.” –Georges Franju
DIRECTED BY: Georges Franju
FEATURING: Edith Scob, Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli
PLOT: The face of the daughter of a brilliant plastic surgeon is horrifically scarred in an automobile accident. The doctor makes her pretend to be dead until she can be cured; she floats about his Gothic mansion wearing an expressionless face mask, accompanied by the howling of the dogs her father keeps in pens to perform skin grafting experiments on. When several pretty young girls go missing, the police and the girl’s fiancé start to suspect the doctor.
BACKGROUND:
- Eyes Without a Face was adapted for film by the famous screenwriting team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also co-wrote Les Diaboliques (1954) and Vertigo (1958), from a novel by Jean Redon.
- Director Georges Franju has stated that he was told to avoid blood (so as not to upset the French censors), animal cruelty (so as not to upset the English censors), and mad scientists (to avoid offending the German censors). Remarkably, all three of these elements appear in the final product, but the film did not run into censorship problems.
- The film did poorly on its initial release, partly because the surgical scene was so shocking and gruesome for its day. It was released in the US, in a dubbed and slightly edited version, as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, paired on a double bill with the strange but now nearly-forgotten exploitation flick The Manster.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: The mask itself, the heart of the film. There are several other worthy candidates, including the haunting final scene with Christiane surrounded by freed birds. Also noteworthy is the facial transplant scene, which is in some ways the centerpiece of this film (and comes almost exactly at the midpoint). An anesthetized woman’s face is peeled off like the skin of a grape, in surprisingly graphic detail.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: At least until the very final scene, Eyes Without a Face is not obviously weird at all–in fact, much of Franju’s accomplishment is in making the fabulous, far-fetched story seems coldly clinical and real. But what gives the movie it’s staying power and makes it get under your skin is the strength of the simple images, particularly Christiane’s blank mask, which hides everything: both the horrors of her past, now written on her face in scar tissue, and her current motivations. The imagery seems to reach far beyond the confines of the story and speak to something deeper–but what? For this reason, the most common critical adjective used in conjunction with the film has been “poetic,” and the director Franju is most often compared to is Jean Cocteau.
Original French trailer for Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face)
COMMENTS: Eyes without a Face is a sinister variation on the Frankenstein theme that Continue reading 5. EYES WITHOUT A FACE [LES YEUX SANS VISAGE] (1960)
CAPSULE: GRAVEYARD ALIVE: A ZOMBIE NURSE IN LOVE (2003)
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
PLOT: A dowdy nurse contracts an odd strain of the zombie virus which changes her into a flesh-eating sex maniac.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: There are plenty of weird elements in this low-budget B&W horror comedy, from slightly out-of-sync dubbing to deliberate overacting to Eraserhead-inspired dream sequences, but they seem forced and shallow, like an attempt by the filmmakers to distance themselves from the thin material they have to work with.
COMMENTS: One of the hardest things to do in the movie universe is to make deliberate camp. Yet, it’s a pitfall that beginning directors seem to fall into over and over. They want the audience to realize that they are too talented to be making a silly zombie nurse movie, when what the audience really wants is to not notice the direction and enjoy a silly zombie nurse movie. There is some talent on display here, especially in the black and white photography, but overall the humor is alternately too subtle and too broad to work. It’s obvious that the filmmakers and the crew and actors (who worked for free) enjoyed themselves tremendously, and that do-it-yourself enthusiasm comes across on screen and makes the movie seem less of a failure than it might otherwise have been.
Parts of the movie are obviously inspired by the look and feel of the films of fellow Canadian Guy Maddin. In fact, the movie was originally intended to be silent (which may help explain some of the mugging for the camera from the guy who played “handsome” doctor). The dubbing was added later by different voice actors, after the director and producers decided Graveyard Alive didn’t work as a modern silent.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: