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“The Flood” has been posted by the director on Vimeo, where it is available to watch for free.
DIRECTED BY: Jaap Drupsteen
FEATURING: Pauline Daniels, Julian Beusker, Sylvia Millecam, Rudi Van Vlaanderen, and the voices of Laurence Harvey, Sebastian Cabot, Elsa Lanchester
PLOT: Adam and Eve betray God by eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge, learning shame and being cast out of Eden; later, Noah builds an ark for his family as well as the animals of the Earth to survive the coming deluge.
COMMENTS: In relatively recent memory, opera was not only broadcast on American television, but was commissioned specifically to be shared with the masses. The most famous example is probably Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1951 holiday offering for NBC, Amahl and the Night Visitors, but other notable composers of note have been enlisted to tackle the medium, including Benjamin Britten, Norman Dello Joio, and Duke Ellington. Igor Stravinsky, the musical mind behind “The Rite of Spring,” a work so avant-garde it nearly sparked riots, is possibly the greatest composer to be tasked with bringing opera to TV. The commission for the opera we attend today came at a time when Stravinsky was looking forward and backward simultaneously: he was adopting 12-tone serial techniques in his composition while pursuing spiritual and scriptural themes in his subject matter. The piece he crafted for CBS Television’s Breck Golden Showcase was right in the sweet spot, a blend of opera, ballet (choreographed by George Balanchine), and spoken word narration and dialogue that tells two of the most familiar tales from the book of Genesis. In these days of traitors and real housewives, we should probably not expect this mindset to return anytime soon.
“The Flood” has not endured as one of the landmarks in Stravinsky’s catalogue, which makes it interesting that Dutch video artist Jaap Drupsteen excavated it some two decades later. One account suggests that he was inspired by the rising waters threatening his homeland (an interesting parallel to Stravinsky himself, who said that the idea for the piece came to him on a visit to Venice), but there’s not really an environmental or political message in his production of “The Flood.” This is a fairly straightforward retelling of the two parables, re-envisioned using the video tools then seen throughout the day on MTV. In fact, “The Flood” evokes the video art of Zbigniew Rybczynski, whose work was in regular rotation on the channel, and who further developed his vision in films such as “Imagine” and “Orchestra” piling layer upon layer of green-screened action like a funhouse mirror that stretches into infinity with only the slightest variation. The sound is Stravinsky; the look is The Art of Noise.
In some respects, “The Flood” is a bit of a stunt, repurposing old audio with new imagery like an episode of “Drunk History.” The modern cast lip-syncs to the original 1962 recording of the opera, particularly the spoken word segments, which means, for example, that the older gentleman in the neat black suit is mouthing the voice of Mr. French from “Family Affair.” The visuals, however, are so 1980s as to thoroughly redefine the work. Adam and Eve appear on a Tron-like grid, as though they had been generated in a computer, and their knowledge compels them to cover their nakedness with shiny party frocks that would have been at home at a happening nightclub (presaging their ultimate walk of shame). The city to be wiped out in the coming cataclysm is a Dali-esque keepsake box that vanishes into the horizon. Lucifer is an androgynous Ziggy Stardust-type figure who slinks around in spangled bodysuits and barely-there dance belts. Most notably, God spins overhead as a trio of baritones inside the finest spinning triangle a video toaster could generate.
There’s irony in the realization that the showiness and the high-tech-for-its-time trappings make “The Flood” more like its source material, the York and Chester miracle plays. These staged scriptures brought the tales of the Bible to the illiterate medieval masses, dramatizing the most compelling tales with pageantry and potency. So too does Drupsteen’s take on Stravinsky’s take on Genesis. What was prestige becomes fancifully odd, and the passage of time has made it even more charmingly peculiar. With this kind of approach, maybe opera could find its way to the small screen once more.
(This movie was nominated for review by Tyler. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
Bernice and Albert run a close second to Glenn Close in the obsession department (although we’re never sure why Bernice is bonkers about Greg), which opens the door for a scene that…. forget “Magical Mystery Tour,” or even Presley’s “Little Egypt” and “Big Boss Man” numbers from his 1968 comeback special for a moment and embrace one of the most awkward moments of surrealism ever committed to celluloid. With Albert crashed in the baby playpen next to him, Greg, in baby blue silk PJs, has a dream about his furry companion, who is now a guy in a wrinkled dog suit with a disturbingly long, wagging tongue. Albert, standing on two legs, pushes Greg through a red door (Hell?), leading to the musical number “The Edge Of Reality,” in which the Pelvis, after falling through something, lands somewhere (a psychedelic wonderland?) and barely shakes while dancing with shirt-skirted gals (each one an avatar for Bernice and her split personalities)—and Albert, of course. The 60s color palette is choreographed to lyrics that couldn’t be more apt: “On the edge of reality she sits there tormenting me, the girl with the nameless face, where she overpowers me with fears that I can’t explain. She drove me to the point of madness, the brink of misery.”
Although Thesiger practically walks away with thespian honors, Boris Karloff excels in his greatest performance. Karloff initially objected to the monster’s dialogue, which is understandable in light of his mastery of silent pantomime that rivaled both