So for Christmas I had requested Vampyr, expecting the Criterion DVD to be the first option on amazon anyway. I had also requested some BFI DVDs since I now have a non-regional player. It seems that my mother was still on the .co.uk website when she went looking for Vampyr and accidentally purchased the Masters of Cinema version instead. I was originally planning on just returning it to Amazon, but it seems this is apparently a pretty stellar version of Vampyr with more extras than the Criterion. The downside is that I will only be able to play it on one player. I was thinking it might be beneficial to get the Criterion just because its a great available version that I can play on multiple players (whereas the BFI DVDs I wanted were because there are no equally good versions available in the U.S. for all of Svankmajer’ shorts and Un Chien Andalou/L’Age d’Or).
So what does everyone suggest? Keep the MAC version or return it and get the Criterion?
You really need to see his short films. Unfortunately, the only comprehensive, restored collection is BFI’s 3-disc Complete Short Films of Jan Svankmajer. In the U.S. the three Kino collections – Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer Vol.1, vol. 2, and The Ossuary and Other Tales – collects a good bit of them, but a few are missing. The prints are also kind of dirty like the Alice DVD and don’t feature enough subtitles. Still, they are the best place to go if you don’t have a non-regional player and the shorts are still miraculous. Vol. 2 has the more accessible crowd-pleasers like “Dimensions of Dialogue” and “Food” as well as more narrative horror/surrealist stories like “Down to the Cellar” and his adaptation of the “The Pit and the Pendulum”
The big problem I have with his early feature lengths like Alice and Faust is that their types of meandering, scenic plots need some kind of rhytmic score to help hold them together or else they get tiresome at lengths beyond 20 minutes. Many of his shorts from the 60s into the ealry 80s have excellent music by Zdenek Liska, but after the composer died in 1982, he ceased using original scores altogether and only occasionally uses pre-recorded music that sounds purposely like it comes from a recorded source. He can get away with this in shorter films and in his feature lengths since 1996, but those two early features have such thin plots that its very hard for many to stay interested. I love them to death, though.
If you want to see some more accessible Svankmajer, though, chek out his films Little Otik and Lunacy. The former is about a man-eating tree root baby/monster from an old Czech fairy tale and the latter is deliciously Gothic film based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. I also highly recommend The Conspirators of Pleasure, a very Surrealist sex comedy, but that one is also not the most accessible, being mostly without dialogue and having multiple plots.
Just wondering because I own the 1999 DVD and wasn’t sure if it was worth upgrading. Of course the extras look awesome, but I’m perfectly content with owning the the old one so long as there aren’t any serious deficiencies. I heard the new one has improved subtitles.
What about Gothic? Probably his best 80s movie. IMO it’s the only one on par with The Devils in terms of off-the-wall black humour and imagery. Music Lovers comes close though.
Cocteau was not a surrealist, and, in fact, was despised by the Paris Surrealist Group and felt mutual disdain for them. Just because something is avant-garde or experimental doesn’t make it surrealist. Lynch has never participated in any kind of collective surrealist activity and wasn’t even really influenced by surrealist films for Eraserhead – admitting he never saw Un chien andalou until after making that film. Plus, Lynch’s own prouncements about surrealism tend to show that he doesn’t really understand it and his own sensibility, while certainly having some affinities, is markedly different in its ethos from surrealism, which never wants to submit life to art. To surrealists, works of art are merely documents of a daily process. Most contemporary surrealists tend to roll their eyes at the continued association with Lynch: http://londonsurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/a-hall-of-mirrors/
Surrealism’s influence on the art world may have spread far and wide, but directors like Deren and Lynch only borrow certain visual motifs. In fact, surrealism is much more than an art movement, but is a larger cultural movement incorporating philosophy, politics, and above all, poetry. There are still contemporary surrealist groups, most of which shun publicity and commercialism in keeping with their anti-capitalist stance. The most prominent surrealist today is probably Jan Svankmajer (perhaps my favorite filmmaker), the Czech director and animator known for his short films and feature lengths that feature unsettling stop-motion animation. He belongs to the Czech Surrealist Group that has been active since the 1930s.
On the case of Lynch, I would say the closest precursors to a film like Eraserhead (1976) are the very dark, more experimental films Ingmar Bergman made in the late 60s, particularly Persona (1966) (which Lynch has acknowledged as one of his favorites) and Hour of the Wolf (1968), both of which were developed from the same script. Both feature unsettling nightmare sequences that blur with reality, and the latter, which is more of a horror film, features some bizarre sinister creatures.
And although I balk at the categorizations of Lynch as a surrealist, you would do well to watch a few of Bunuel’s films, however you’ll notice a markedly different sensibility, one that is much more socio-politically oriented and full of a vicious black humor. Start with the early ones Un chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1930) and then go for his “return” to surrealist-style plots with films like The Exterminating Angel (1962), Simon of the Desert (1965), Belle du jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974). The last couple are actually a bit more Pythonesque than Lynchian.
You may also want to check out Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965).
Svankmajer, who I mentioned above, had also already made a significant number of short films (mostly featuring stop-motion animation) by the 1970s. The ones that would probably chime most with your Lynchian quest are The Garden (1968), The Flat (1968), and A Quiet Week in the House (1969). As with Bunuel, note the differences in sensibility between this director, who is a participant in the international surrealist movement, and Lynch, who has a muse independent of that sensibility.
Blasphemy! Vampyr is excellent. On second thought, I think it was probably a stretch to call it “Lynchian,” but I was milling about examples of films that remind me of his work. The OP is actually best off exploring the films of directors Lynch himself cites as an influence, such as the aforementioned Bergman and Fellini.
I’ve been really interested in films with captivating urban photography and cinematography lately, especially if it’s night photography/cinematography. Gaspar Noe’s films in particular give me a delirious feeling of the city as a gothic maze.
So, of course, I also really love films noir with captivating urban backdrops and I’m looking for more that have that dark dream feel or just any good city imagery.
To give you an idea, here are some of the films that have really captivated me in this area: Killer’s Kiss (the mannequin scene is brilliant), Kiss Me Deadly, Night and the City, The Third Man, & Elevator to the Gallows.
Surprisingly, The Naked City didn’t fulfill me in that way. It had some nice shots, but it really didn’t achieve the same kind of resonance for me.
Just wondering if any other films have made extensive use of the kind of disorienting camera movements found in Irreversible, Enter the Void and Noe’s short films.
I never really found the film hard to understand at all, not if you approach it after reading a lot of surrealist texts. It’s essentially just a tribute to fetishism and imaginative play, two hearty surrealist buzzwords. You can see a list of the principle influences in the list of names of “technical consultants” in the ending credits.
I recently saw the Pusher trilogy and Bleeder by Nicolas Winding Refn and thought those films had some similarities to Noe’s work. There’s even a camera sequence in Bleeder that is all topsy-turvy, although it is in a rather non-threatening video store. These films are also depict very gritty and extremely violent worlds of urban decay.
Dreyer's Vampyr: Masters of Cinema DVD vs. Criterion DVD over 3 years ago
So for Christmas I had requested Vampyr, expecting the Criterion DVD to be the first option on amazon anyway. I had also requested some BFI DVDs since I now have a non-regional player. It seems that my mother was still on the .co.uk website when she went looking for Vampyr and accidentally purchased the Masters of Cinema version instead. I was originally planning on just returning it to Amazon, but it seems this is apparently a pretty stellar version of Vampyr with more extras than the Criterion. The downside is that I will only be able to play it on one player. I was thinking it might be beneficial to get the Criterion just because its a great available version that I can play on multiple players (whereas the BFI DVDs I wanted were because there are no equally good versions available in the U.S. for all of Svankmajer’ shorts and Un Chien Andalou/L’Age d’Or).
So what does everyone suggest? Keep the MAC version or return it and get the Criterion?
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Dreyer's Vampyr: Masters of Cinema DVD vs. Criterion DVD over 3 years ago
Cool. On that note, if I’m looking for the best version of Nosferatu, should I go with MAC or the Kino version with the restored score?
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Alice over 3 years ago
You really need to see his short films. Unfortunately, the only comprehensive, restored collection is BFI’s 3-disc Complete Short Films of Jan Svankmajer. In the U.S. the three Kino collections – Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer Vol.1, vol. 2, and The Ossuary and Other Tales – collects a good bit of them, but a few are missing. The prints are also kind of dirty like the Alice DVD and don’t feature enough subtitles. Still, they are the best place to go if you don’t have a non-regional player and the shorts are still miraculous. Vol. 2 has the more accessible crowd-pleasers like “Dimensions of Dialogue” and “Food” as well as more narrative horror/surrealist stories like “Down to the Cellar” and his adaptation of the “The Pit and the Pendulum”
The big problem I have with his early feature lengths like Alice and Faust is that their types of meandering, scenic plots need some kind of rhytmic score to help hold them together or else they get tiresome at lengths beyond 20 minutes. Many of his shorts from the 60s into the ealry 80s have excellent music by Zdenek Liska, but after the composer died in 1982, he ceased using original scores altogether and only occasionally uses pre-recorded music that sounds purposely like it comes from a recorded source. He can get away with this in shorter films and in his feature lengths since 1996, but those two early features have such thin plots that its very hard for many to stay interested. I love them to death, though.
If you want to see some more accessible Svankmajer, though, chek out his films Little Otik and Lunacy. The former is about a man-eating tree root baby/monster from an old Czech fairy tale and the latter is deliciously Gothic film based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. I also highly recommend The Conspirators of Pleasure, a very Surrealist sex comedy, but that one is also not the most accessible, being mostly without dialogue and having multiple plots.
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How different is the new Criterion DVD of The Seventh Seal (just the film, not the extras) almost 3 years ago
Just wondering because I own the 1999 DVD and wasn’t sure if it was worth upgrading. Of course the extras look awesome, but I’m perfectly content with owning the the old one so long as there aren’t any serious deficiencies. I heard the new one has improved subtitles.
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Ken Russell for Criterion release almost 3 years ago
What about Gothic? Probably his best 80s movie. IMO it’s the only one on par with The Devils in terms of off-the-wall black humour and imagery. Music Lovers comes close though.
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pre david lynch lynch over 2 years ago
Cocteau was not a surrealist, and, in fact, was despised by the Paris Surrealist Group and felt mutual disdain for them. Just because something is avant-garde or experimental doesn’t make it surrealist. Lynch has never participated in any kind of collective surrealist activity and wasn’t even really influenced by surrealist films for Eraserhead – admitting he never saw Un chien andalou until after making that film. Plus, Lynch’s own prouncements about surrealism tend to show that he doesn’t really understand it and his own sensibility, while certainly having some affinities, is markedly different in its ethos from surrealism, which never wants to submit life to art. To surrealists, works of art are merely documents of a daily process. Most contemporary surrealists tend to roll their eyes at the continued association with Lynch: http://londonsurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/a-hall-of-mirrors/
Surrealism’s influence on the art world may have spread far and wide, but directors like Deren and Lynch only borrow certain visual motifs. In fact, surrealism is much more than an art movement, but is a larger cultural movement incorporating philosophy, politics, and above all, poetry. There are still contemporary surrealist groups, most of which shun publicity and commercialism in keeping with their anti-capitalist stance. The most prominent surrealist today is probably Jan Svankmajer (perhaps my favorite filmmaker), the Czech director and animator known for his short films and feature lengths that feature unsettling stop-motion animation. He belongs to the Czech Surrealist Group that has been active since the 1930s.
On the case of Lynch, I would say the closest precursors to a film like Eraserhead (1976) are the very dark, more experimental films Ingmar Bergman made in the late 60s, particularly Persona (1966) (which Lynch has acknowledged as one of his favorites) and Hour of the Wolf (1968), both of which were developed from the same script. Both feature unsettling nightmare sequences that blur with reality, and the latter, which is more of a horror film, features some bizarre sinister creatures.
And although I balk at the categorizations of Lynch as a surrealist, you would do well to watch a few of Bunuel’s films, however you’ll notice a markedly different sensibility, one that is much more socio-politically oriented and full of a vicious black humor. Start with the early ones Un chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1930) and then go for his “return” to surrealist-style plots with films like The Exterminating Angel (1962), Simon of the Desert (1965), Belle du jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974). The last couple are actually a bit more Pythonesque than Lynchian.
You may also want to check out Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965).
Svankmajer, who I mentioned above, had also already made a significant number of short films (mostly featuring stop-motion animation) by the 1970s. The ones that would probably chime most with your Lynchian quest are The Garden (1968), The Flat (1968), and A Quiet Week in the House (1969). As with Bunuel, note the differences in sensibility between this director, who is a participant in the international surrealist movement, and Lynch, who has a muse independent of that sensibility.
Go to Comment
pre david lynch lynch over 2 years ago
Blasphemy! Vampyr is excellent. On second thought, I think it was probably a stretch to call it “Lynchian,” but I was milling about examples of films that remind me of his work. The OP is actually best off exploring the films of directors Lynch himself cites as an influence, such as the aforementioned Bergman and Fellini.
Go to Comment
Recommend me some more films noir with good urban cinematography over 2 years ago
I’ve been really interested in films with captivating urban photography and cinematography lately, especially if it’s night photography/cinematography. Gaspar Noe’s films in particular give me a delirious feeling of the city as a gothic maze.
So, of course, I also really love films noir with captivating urban backdrops and I’m looking for more that have that dark dream feel or just any good city imagery.
To give you an idea, here are some of the films that have really captivated me in this area: Killer’s Kiss (the mannequin scene is brilliant), Kiss Me Deadly, Night and the City, The Third Man, & Elevator to the Gallows.
Surprisingly, The Naked City didn’t fulfill me in that way. It had some nice shots, but it really didn’t achieve the same kind of resonance for me.
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Recommend me some more films noir with good urban cinematography over 2 years ago
Oh, I forgot to add Scarlett Street.
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Cinematography similar to Gaspar Noe's films over 2 years ago
Just wondering if any other films have made extensive use of the kind of disorienting camera movements found in Irreversible, Enter the Void and Noe’s short films.
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Cinematography similar to Gaspar Noe's films over 2 years ago
Yeah, I’ve been wanting to see Angst, but I have no idea how to find it.
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DIRECTORS' CUP: FILM ANALYSIS - SPIKLENCI SLASTI (CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE) by JAN SVANKMAJER over 2 years ago
I never really found the film hard to understand at all, not if you approach it after reading a lot of surrealist texts. It’s essentially just a tribute to fetishism and imaginative play, two hearty surrealist buzzwords. You can see a list of the principle influences in the list of names of “technical consultants” in the ending credits.
Go to Comment
Cinematography similar to Gaspar Noe's films over 1 year ago
I recently saw the Pusher trilogy and Bleeder by Nicolas Winding Refn and thought those films had some similarities to Noe’s work. There’s even a camera sequence in Bleeder that is all topsy-turvy, although it is in a rather non-threatening video store. These films are also depict very gritty and extremely violent worlds of urban decay.
Go to Comment