Olde Oddities
Pre-1960 pioneers and experimental movies. Many shorts are included but only the more famous or unusually strange, excluding the scores of early film-makers and later avant-garde artists and formalists that merely experimented with cinematography, structure, time, lighting, perspective and other technical aspects of film.
See also Hans Richter, Luis Buñuel,
Jean Cocteau, Maya Deren,
Sidney Peterson, Kenneth Anger,
Stan Brakhage, James Broughton.
A classic, pioneering, plotless experimental short with a barrage of rhythmic imagery: Spinning objects, pumping machinery, clockwork, a kaleidoscope of mechanical parts, and in the middle of all this there are people, rapidly changing faces, repetitive marching, smiling and walking, and geometrical figures. An industrial ballet of cinematography.
Hilarious short spoof on Surrealism about a group of amateur film-makers that want to enter a film competition and after much head-scratching, try to make a surreal piece. Film-making humor, plus the actual short ('Afternoon of a Rubberband') containing random weirdness for its own sake and a funny spoof on Richter and Un Chien Andalou.
Although this was made in 1967, it is based on a 1929 visual book by Dadaist Max Ernst which contains a collage of surreal paintings with a short legend or comment. This 20 minute movie attemnpts to bring the collage to life with living paintings, giving each scene a few seconds as the subjects move or float and the painting clicks into place, before rapidly cutting to the next scene. Think of this as a more fast-moving and dense Chien Andalou with less shock-value and more static imagery. Of course it doesn't really have a narrative even though it is left to the viewer to assemble the images in his head, and besides this, its only flaw is that some images require more time to sink in.
A 1953 children's surreal musical by Dr. Seuss, not 'surreal' in the usual way of children's fantasy movies and musicals, but actually bizarre using childlike psychological dream-logic. Bart is terrified of his strict piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker, who also happens to be wooing his newly single mother. But he much prefers the cool plumber who doesn't think highly of the piano teacher. When Bart dozes off, his world becomes a huge castle with bizarre sets and rooms, ladders that go nowhere and absurdly useless signs, all straight out of Dr Seuss's colorful-Caligari-esque imagination. Dr. T employs many minions, led by a duo on skates and joined beards. He plans to hypnotize 500 children to play on a massive piano (in an actual huge set) so that he can have them all play his silly song with 5000 fingers. Any players of other instruments besides piano are sent to a hellish dungeon where they perform a dance number that involves more amd more bizarre instruments. Will the plumber help Bart escape from Dr. T and foil his plans?
Fritz Lang's masterpiece of expressionistic sci-fi visually pioneered the way for most futuristic movies like Blade Runner and Brazil. This world is separated into thinkers, who live comfortably on the top-side megapolis which they designed, and the workers, who live in a dark underground city and run the massive machinery under intensive labor. Both have no clue how the other world runs, the workers growing increasingly agitated, but inspired by an underground preacher, Maria, and awaiting the coming of the Heart, a mediator between both worlds. Joh plots to replace Maria with a robot while his son visits the underworld, in shock of what he sees. This movie doesn't just use melodramatic expressionism, it encapsulates it in its bigger, overwhelming, dark imagery of the cities, catacombs, and masses of people, and backs it all with grand, dramatic, symphonic music. Mixed with the science-fiction are some surreal dreams involving a huge machine turning into a man-eating Moloch, and statues of the seven sins and death coming alive cut together with an astounding sequence of an erotic dance of a robotic woman contorting and gyrating her body to a mass of hungry, insane eyeballs. Unforgettable classic that needs to be seen once by everyone despite its 'silly' and melodramatic approach, not only because it's a pioneer, but because it's still a unique, magical and astonishing experience today. Scenes are still missing, but the restored version has both the grander music, and intertitles that fill in the missing plot elements.
The works of Buster Keaton and the forgotten Charles Bowers frequently throw logic out the window in favor of inventive and striking sight gags. But this short by Bowers takes this approach to an extreme of madcap and strange insanity. A strange Fuzz-Faced Phantom is haunting the Frisbie home, causing pants to dance, objects to disappear, floating through their living room and energetically setting up one strange occurrence after another that usually involves a mixture of practical joke, surprising inventiveness and scare. They call Scotland Yard for help (an actual yard with Scots) who sends Bowers and his weird bug-in-a-matchbox assistant to do battle with the bearded apparition. Endless inventiveness.
Crazy surreal comedy with unique and startling special effects and costumes about a musician who is forced to write commercial jazz to pay his bills, and who is then married to a wealthy heiress whose father pressures him into an industrial job. With his art in danger of being sold out, he develops nightmares that become more and more surreal, reflecting his real life in outrageous ways. Frogs play music at his wedding, bouquets become dollar bills, trains yell at him, chairs get rubbery legs in a funny sight gag, and more.
2-hour experimental romp from 1923 featuring scenes of surrealism, avant-garde cinema, and fun creativity. A married couple is in trouble. The woman is spoiled, lives in a palace full of gadgets and servants that cater to her whims, loves living in Paris, is constantly in doubt about her husband, and dreams of the celebrity detective-Z. The husband wants to move to South America, hates Paris, constantly imagines an army of suitors seducing his wife, and follows her around in worry, hiring detective Z to win her back. The detective gets involved in arguments over the marriage contract, some nifty psychological work, and dangerous seductions. Features a strikingly nightmarish and flowing surreal sequence where a woman is chased and hounded in several places including hell and a cathedral, some amusing gadgets and props, a funhouse palace with moving and revolving floors, walls, furniture, and a troupe of aggressive odd men who help with lost wives, a wild dance marathon, and random visualizations of the couple's fantasies.
A classic and cult-favorite of the silent era. The plot is cheesy horror by today's standards involving a strange Dr. Caligari who keeps a somnambulist (according to this movie this is someone who sleeps for years and can be awakened with hypnosis) as a pet and shows him off at the fair. When people ask the somnambulist about their future, they get a doomsday prediction and they die soon after. Police investigate and there is a plot twist. The drama is typical expressionistic over-acting but the star of this one is the bizarre set design: Strange angles, bizarre furniture, warped houses, artistically painted sets, dark shadows, twisted walls and doors... all add to the dark nightmarish tale of the insane.
Very early, symbolic and abstract short conceptually reminiscent of a Maya Deren work depicting a woman's search for a man vs. her individuality as seen through a fortune teller, Jungian and alchemist concepts. As the woman climbs the stairs to her fortune teller, we see juxtaposed and morphing cards, flowers, seashells, stone, water, etc and the emergence of people out of the ocean.
A short chaotic montage of strange images in the vein of Chien Andalou only more absurd than shocking. A dancing cannon and leaping people, a view of a bearded ballerina from below her skirt, chess in the rain, super-impositions, a funeral led by a camel and leaping people followed by a frantic chase after the coffin, and more. In your face Dada art.
A symbolic short by Man Ray seemingly about woman and desire. Intercut with scenes of a woman flirting, undressing and dating through distorted, dreamlike glass is various imagery that includes the mysterious starfish and its limbs, a crevice opening and closing, flickering fire, walls, a man chasing pieces of a newspaper in the wind, etc. all creating the effect of a difficult and obscure object of desire.
Overshadowed by a French interpretation from the same year, this strange short opts for the expressionistic and avant-garde approach. Poe's story is somewhat lost amidst the cinematography tricks but the horror and gothic mood is delivered. Superimpositions, Caligari sets, prisms, split screens, shadows and more are used to disorient, darken and stage a nightmare of senses heightened and murky.
One of the oldest cult classics about people in circus freakshows depicted using real 'freaks' (pinheads, amputees, human skeletons, bearded ladies, hermaphrodites, midgets, etc). This in itself disturbs many people deeply and the movie was condemned as exploitative by some, but the goal of the movie is to depict the freaks as sympathetic regular people and the 'normal' people as freaks. There are scenes that make you feel like a voyeur though and the scary ending of the freaks' revenge seems to undo the message and turn this into mere exploitative entertainment.
A documentary with dramatized scenes and slide-shows on witchcraft, some silly, some bizarre, some entertaining. Witches cast spells, perform rituals, frighten people or are tortured, nudity and evil tempting is involved, and highlights include flying on broomsticks and kissing the devil's arse. Unique.
A young Orson Welles tries a surreal short with experimental cinematography. An old lady sits on top of a bell while her black servant rings it. Death (Welles) arrives, bows, takes a few lives and plays piano. Random symbolism, grainy film, humorous experimentation.
Playful, avant-garde, naughty and blasphemous 35 minute short from 1960 that cinematicaly juxtaposes sex and religion in playful ways. A young man reading a sex magazine is accosted by a priest and given a bible. From then on he goes on a quest to find a large cross, with several distractions along the way. Most the movie consists of various visual games: People pose like Jesus, there's a commercial shop of crosses in various forms with a provactive seller, there's a philosophical, cross-wearing prostitute who finds deep meaning in her trade, a man carrying a cross meets a man carrying a ladder, Freudian, sexual and Christian symbols intermix, the bible is juxtaposed with the kama sutra, small crosses with money, etc.
Short, humorous and surreal short about a man who comes to Hollywood with dreams, gets the number 9413 stamped on his forehead, and suffers in Hollywood-extra hell, then goes to heaven. Shadow puppet dream-sequences and lots of creative, avant-garde cinematography for its time. The director Slavko Vorkapich also made some incredibly creative and striking montages for various other movies.
The biblical story of Lot as told in avant-garde vision and a few embellishments. No dialogue, and every cinematography trick in the book including kaleidoscopic images, super-imposition, extreme lighting, cheesy effects and melodrama, all used in a tightly edited short with lots of nudity (mostly male) which makes for a very artsy, but indulgent experiment.
Expressionistic melodrama short with exaggerated Caligari sets featuring furniture, windows and doors at all conceivable warped angles, huge flowers, tiny buildings, books with scribbles, etc, also using cinematic tricks like prisms and split screens to convey the emotions. Zero falls in love with a woman using pantomime gestures involving a plastic heart and playing her a trombone from a high chair. When she is forced to leave and he is laughed at by another woman, his world falls apart into a nightmare. An interesting visual experiment.
A strange, dark short about a group of peasants and an abused housemaid and some drama that occurs between them. This combines expressionistic drama, some Caligari visuals and strange surreal hallucinations involving men in strange makeup and sets.
If you thought the 60s and 70s were the peak of z-grade weird exploitation, try this pioneer from 1934. An impersonator on the run from the law works for a mad scientist who invents a re-animating agent. When he instructs his assistant to kill himself so that he can test it, he kills the scientist instead and takes over his life, slowly going insane in the meantime. The plot unravels as it progresses involving some women and an inheritance, while intertitles educate us about different mental disorders. So we get the undead, some gore as he eye-gouges a cat and eats the eyeball, gratuitous nude breasts and sleaze, a mad scientist, some Edgar Allan Poe elements, and hallucination sequences of hell, all in 1934!
Bizzare slapstick short from 1923 with surprising black and gory humor. The hijinks take place in a barber shop with an assistant who has a crush on a professor and a terribly lazy and incompetent barber. There is a scene involving a huge mole and a hammer & chisel, a ridiculous punkish haircut after a misunderstanding, scared customers waiting in line while an accident causes a slight decapitation, and an absurd duel involving a detached head.
A short slapstick spoof on Sherlock Holmes from 1916 made into a cult item by its heavy use of drugs. Coke Ennyday is a detective who literally sets his clock by his drugs and carries syringes with him in order to function. He also eats opium paste right out of a can and disables assailants with drugs. He investigates the mystery of a man literally rolling in money to find out his secret and befriends a fish-blower: a woman who blows air into inflatable fish for people on the beach.
Unusual short by a Christopher Young in 1941 experimenting with objects and their meaning as they are positioned in different, often jarringly inappropriate places. The statue of Venus de Milo (or her head) is placed in mountaintops, deserts, beaches, in front of factories, under warplanes, etc. Other objects include a violin, a tennis racket, and as you see the near-surreal montage you experience statements and thoughts about civilization, war, beauty, humanity and decline.
A silent film from Japan made in 1926 about an insane asylum. The plot involves a man who gets a janitorial job at the asylum to be with his insane wife, but the details are hard to decipher due to the nature of the film and the fact that there are no intertitles or live narrators (benshi). Most of the movie is an impressive collection of cinematography tricks such as super-impositions, camera angles, harsh contrasts and lighting, distortions, a frantic barrage of images, and rapid cutting, even pyschedelic/surreal sequences, all to impress on the viewer the madness of the insane as they dance, run and yell on screen. Praised by film-schools, this is avant-garde even today and technically interesting, but nothing beyond that.
A priest sees a couple and is haunted by hallucinations and erotic desires. A free-form stream of surrealism and symbolism ensues, with imagery including a male military figure with a sword, breaking of vessels, synchronized maids, a priest crawling through the streets, the growing tails of the priests robe, and more. Not exactly the first surrealistic short as some people think, but famous for being banned by a censor who said: "If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable".
Carl Theodor Dreyer's entry into the vampire genre is a uniquely atmospheric and visual work. A man, who we are told is a student of devil worship, checks into an inn and starts having strange feelings and experiences. The local family with a sick daughter seems to be plagued with evil and murder, he sees a figure with a scythe, a one-legged man, disembodied shadows, skulls, and has a disturbing out-of-body experience during which he witnesses his own burial. The plot occasionally becomes incoherent, especially at the end, but overall this classic delivers a somber, dream-like, eerie, supernatural atmosphere.
An energetic fantasy-slapstick gem using endlessly inventive cinematic special effects and stunts that even predate Buster Keaton's similar outings. Douglas Fairbanks plays a haunted man who is experimented on by a sadistic psychologist, fired from his job, has a romance with a crazy girl, walks up walls when he encounters a black cat, and is subjected to a crazy flood when the dam bursts. The centerpiece is the surreal nightmare during which the food he eats dances around in his stomach then chases him through fields and up the walls and ceilings of a house, and he finds himself with loose pijamas in a high-class crowd.
Famous 7-minute short by Duchamp and Man Ray featuring various spinning spirals and spiraling phrases containing wordplays and puns. More Dada chaotic subversion of how we think and see, but of interest to film-school students only.
Symbolic, gay, erotic short featuring prisoners who lust for each other through walls using straws, and through window bars using flowers, and a cruel guard who abuses his power and his gun. Praised for being poetic, and quite explicit for its time, but this is just artsy gay erotica.
Man Ray's expanded short after his 3-minute Return to Reason with a similar kaleidoscope of objects, spinning items, games with light and reflections, etc. A woman's legs while she dances the twist, a man takes off his collar from around his neck then collars are spinned, some faces and visual games with eyes, etc. A barrage of random imagery, some moderately visually interesting but mostly Dada chaos.
A surreal short by Joseph Vogel in 1947 involving a reclusive man with memories (or visions) of murder who constantly runs away from various things in a nightmarish dream-sequence. Fencers turn into a dancer, a glance through binoculars brings about chaotic shapes and imagery, newspapers with alarming headlines flap around him, etc. It doesn't really come together though.
People go on a trip to a chateau literally on the roll of the dice, then we get a kind of Dadaistic travelogue with provocative intertitles while they occupy themselves with various activities. Objects in the house are titled strangely (furniture as people), they wear stockings on their head, a woman juggles and brushes her hair in the water of a swimming pool, games and sports start moving backwards, various reflections, lights and shadows, choices based on dice, and all the while we get philosophical musings and snippets of poetry in intertitles. This is far from the spinning images of Man Ray's previous work and is probably an exercise in disassociating typical thought with everyday activities, but this is for film school and Dadaists only.
An angry abortion-manifesto of a film that takes the worship of all things new and avant-garde to ridiculous extremes. This 2 hour piece of torture consists of a 30 minute bombastic speech against conventional cinema, how an artist should give a person a migraine rather than nothing, how art should offend and tear out of its boundaries, how photography is outdated and should be subservient to sound, etc. Then we get a movie consisting of an endlessly rambling, dull narration and snippets of dialogue about a man's relationship to a girl spliced together with completely random footage of anything and everything, with purposely damaged film full of violent scratches, cutout shapes, blurs, and upside-down images, all the while we get a headache-inducing repetitive chant in the background. Finally, we get some recited Letterist poems which consist of loud noises made with letters, not words. If this is creativity, I'll take a cheesy Hollywood cliche anyday. Useless.