Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Year of Release:  1970
Director:  Jaromil Jires
Screenplay:  Jaromil Jires, Ester Krumbachova and Jiri Musil, based on the novel Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Vitezslav Nezval
Starring:  Jaroslava Schallerova, Helena Anyzova, Karel Engel, Jan Klusak, Petr Kopriva
Running Time:  73 minutes
Genre:  Surrealism, horror, fantasy

This virtually plotless film centres around 13 year old Valerie (Schallerova) and her surreal dreamlike adventures involving vampires, predatory priests and her mysterious family.

This is a beautiful film featuring a succession of stunning images.  Virtually unclassifiable,  it has elements of horror, fantasy, fairy-tales, however it makes a kind of dreamlike sense, you can see it as a girl's fears of and attraction to the adult world filtered through her subconscious, as she enters puberty.  Sensual, and ethereal, it's a unique film and one that you really have to experience for yourself.  It's a world where horror and beauty coexist and is full of life and energy.  It's a film that some will find pretentious and wilfully obscure, but others will find it mesmerising. 

    Jaroslava Schallerova in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

Alice

Year:  1988
Director:  Jan Svankmajer
Screenplay:   Jan Svankmajer, based on the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Starring:  Kristyna Kohoutova
Running Time:  84 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, surrealism

The famous children's story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been filmed many times including as a Disney animation and a 3D blockbuster version directed by Tim Burton in 2010.  However, it is fair to say that you have never seen a version of Alice like this one. 

One day, a young girl, Alice (Kohoutova), follows a stuffed white rabbit into a desk drawer and into the nightmarish "Wonderland", depicted as an endless number of drab, decaying household rooms full of disturbing and bizarre creatures.

The film marks the feature debut of Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer after a couple of decades of short films.  He stated that he felt that previous adaptations of Alice in Wonderland had misunderstood the story by depicting it as a straight-forward fairy tale instead of a kind of dream.  As a result this film depicts Alice's experiences as a kind of surrealist nightmare, which seems to owe more to Svankmajer's imagination than Carroll's.  He also wanted to abandon the traditional fairy-tale aspect of good over evil, and thus his Alice is much more amoral and violent than viewer's may be used to.  Svankmajer's interests lay in stop-motion and puppet animation.  Svankmajer's interest in puppetry was very much rooted in Czech culture where, instead of being seen as minor entertainment for children, puppetry has always been considered a perfectly legitimate art form for adults as well as kids.  Wonderland is depicted as a series of bleak, cluttered rooms in a seemingly endless house where space itself seems to be elastic.  The rooms are populated by bizarre and disturbing creatures which range from bizarre hybrids of everyday objects to traditional marionettes.  In this world, the White Rabbit is a taxidermically stuffed rabbit who begins by removing nails from his paws and keeps his pocket watch inside his sawdust filled chest.  The Caterpillar is a sock with eyes and teeth, who sleeps by sewing his eyelids together.  Alongside this bread rolls sprout nails, slabs of raw meat crawl along the floor, and Alice shrinks by turning into a porcelain doll.

The only human character in the film, aside from an adult woman (presumably Alice's mother) who only appears briefly in the opening scene of the film, is Alice herself who also provides the ony speech in the film.  All the dialogue scenes are depicted as if being read by Alice from the book, complete with close-ups of her mouth reciting the words.

This is a startling and bleak film which removes all the sweetness and cuteness from the story, and makes the darkness central.  It might not be the best version of Alice in Wonderland to show the little kids, because they would probably end up with nightmares for weeks.  Even adult viewers might find it a little too much in places, if only for the sheer strangeness of the whole thing.  If you are familiar with Jan Svankmajer's short films than you will have some idea of what to expect.  Svankmajer has a sensibilty and an imagination which is like nothing else in modern cinema.  It is an unforgettable experience, which will creep into your dreams.

Go Ask Alice:  Kristyna Kohoutova makes new friends in Alice.            

The Exterminating Angel

Year:  1962
Director:  Luis Bunuel
Screenplay:  Luis Bunuel
Starring:  Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook
Running Time:  93 minutes
Genre:  Drama, comedy, surrealism

Have you ever been at a party where all you want to do is leave, but for whatever reason, you have to stay? If so, then spare a thought for the characters in this classic surrealist satire from Spanish director Luis Bunuel. 

Following a night at the theatre, a group of wealthy friends return to the palatial mansion of Edmundo Nobile (Rambal) for a dinner party.  The servants have all made their excises and left for reasons, even they can't properly explain.  During dinner, sheep and a bear run around the hallways of the mansion.  Eventually all the guests find themselves inexplicably trapped in the mansion's music room.  There is nothing physically stopping them from leaving, and it's not that they don't want to leave, it's just that for some reason they can't.  Days drag on, food and water become increasingly scarce, the group become increasingly hostile amongst themselves and irrational.  Slowly they begin to suffer from hysteria, disease and hallucinations.  Rescue attempts from the outside world fail due to the same strange phenomenon that is preventing the guests from leaving the music room is apparently preventing anyone from getting into the house.  There is nothing physically stopping the rescuers and they want to get in, but for some reason they just can't.

This bizarre movie does not offer any explanations, and is filled with strange and disturbing imagery.  It is however unforgettable.  Here Bunuel attacks his favourite targets of the wealthy middle and upper classes and organised religion.  However he also broadens his satiricial scope to take in the ritualised nature of modern life.  As always with Bunuel the darkness is alleviated somewhat by comedy, albeit very black comedy, and some sympathy with his characters, even if they are not particularly likeable.  Shot in Mexico, on a very low budget this is still a very stylishly made film.  The idea of the film being largely set in one room, might seem dull and uncinematic but Bunuel and his cast and crew milk every drop of tension and humour from the nightmarish scenario.  

There's a direct reference to this film in the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris in a scene where the time-travelling writer (played by Owen Wilson) describes the idea of the film to a bemused Luis Bunuel (played by Adrien de Van) who resonds:  "But why can't they leave?  I don't understand."

Still powerful, still troubling and still relevant, this will make the next party you go to seem not quite as bad.  In a weird way, the movie does end up making some kind of weird sense once you've seen it.  Even the sheep and crawling hand.  

      The partying never stops in The Exterminating Angel