Václav Svankmajer – Page 2

Don Juan, a film by Jan Svankmajer

I’ve been reading Thomas Ligotti for the past week so here’s something Ligottian: a short film performed by life-size wooden puppets. Svankmajer’s production from 1969 conveys the Don Juan legend with actors masquerading as traditional Czech marionettes, the proceedings being scored by music from the great Zdenek Liska. No English subtitles on this one so if you don’t speak Czech or Russian you can either relish the mystery or take it as a prompt to buy a DVD. While we’re on the subject of Ligotti, the new Penguin edition of Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe is published next week. I recommend it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
• Two sides of Liska
• The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer

The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope

The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope (1983) is the third and best of three Gothic shorts made by Jan Svankmajer, the two earlier works being Castle of Otranto (1973–79) and The Fall of the House of Usher (1980). Svankmajer combines Poe’s famous tale of Inquistion torment with A Torture by Hope by Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, and unlike Corman and co. reduces the story to a stark and wordless first-person ordeal in the face of clanking, fire-breathing engines of destruction. Poe’s story lets the narrator off the hook with a deus ex machina intervention, something Svankmajer evidently felt unable to swallow, hence the Villiers coda.

All the above works, and much more besides, can be found on the BFI’s collection of Svankmajer’s short films. Another short adaptation of the Poe story, The Pit (1962) by Edward Abraham, will appear next month as an extra on the eagerly-awaited DVD/BR debut of Schalcken the Painter.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Two sides of Liska
• The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello

This animated short by Anthony Lucas isn’t exactly obscure but I’ve only just noticed that the distributor has the whole film available for viewing on YouTube. The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello blends silhouetted characters and decor with elaborate steam-powered machinery in a manner that looks like the kind of thing Lotte Reiniger might have produced if she’d exchanged her fairy tales for Jules Verne. Impossible to watch Lucas’s film now without thinking “steampunk” but Jasper Morello was made in 2005 and so pre-dates the ongoing explosion of interest in Victoriana, dirigibles and coal-powered contraptions. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on two new steampunk projects which is what brought this to mind. More about those projects later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Three Fragments of a Lost Tale
• Brothers Quay scarcities
• Achilles by Barry JC Purves
• The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer

Three Fragments of a Lost Tale

I hadn’t come across sculptor John Frame’s animated work before so my thanks to John Burridge for the recommendation. Three Fragments of a Lost Tale is part of a larger project, The Tale of The Crippled Boy, which is described at Frame’s website. Being a collection of fragments, this film is necessarily mysterious although I seldom worry about that. One quality of animation I’ve always enjoyed is its ability to convey the disjunctions and strange atmospheres of dream states, something it often does more effectively than anything else.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Brothers Quay scarcities
• Achilles by Barry JC Purves
• The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer

Achilles by Barry JC Purves

I wondered how to focus on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus without the others getting in the way. This intense physical relationship developed into the focus of the film, rather than any more Harryhausenesque aspects of the Greek myths. Intimacy had not really been treated seriously with puppets…

Barry JC Purves

Several people seemed to appreciate the link a week or so ago to The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer so here’s another animated short about helmeted warriors, albeit with a very different tone. Barry JC Purves is a British animator and theatre director who produced Achilles, an 11-minute puppet animation, in 1995, back when the UK’s Channel 4 was still regularly financing animated films. Derek Jacobi narrates an exploration in the style of Ancient Greek theatre of the relationship between Achilles and his alleged lover, Patroclus. (Whether or not the pair were lovers is still a subject of dispute.) It’s rare to find any overt sexuality in the world of puppet animation unless the directors are the Brothers Quay; it’s even more rare for that sexuality to have a homoerotic aspect which is what Purves depicts. A groundbreaking piece of work, then, which can be viewed in full here. The director’s website has more about the creation of the film, and a collection of stills from the production.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Torchbearer by Václav Svankmajer