Street of Crocodiles

Devotees of Jan Svankmajer and Kafka, identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay distill every disturbing dream you've ever had into a decidedly unsettling short film. American by birth, the twins seem European by sensibility and have settled in London to make their films. Street of Crocodiles is one of their better known efforts and is obliquely influenced by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who published the memoirs of his solitary life under the title, Sklepy Cynamonowe (literally translated as The Cinnamon Shops, although generally known in the English speaking world as Street of Crocodiles). The Quay's short follows a gaunt puppet who is released from his strings as he explores his bizarre surroundings: rooms full of dark shadows, unexplained machinery and strange eyeless dolls. Everything has a sense of decay and Victorian melancholy. There is a notion of a plot, possibly dealing with sexual tension, but really Street of Crocodiles is about establishing a mood and a nightmarish and deeply sinister world. The Quay's use of tracking shots and selective focus is unparallelled in the world of stop motion.

This is an incredibly powerful work. Using stop-motion animation, the brothers Quay produce a dark, claustrophobic universe of animated detritus. The events of this universe seem to have meaning, but that meaning is altogether withheld from the viewer.

The Brothers Quay are two of the most unique and visually surprising film makers in a long time. Street of Crocodiles is a short they made, and is full of unbelievable animation. An incredible mix of objects are used for the props and characters, creating strange effects and meanings. The visual style of Street of Crocodiles has been copied in many recent stop-go animation films, including many of the music videos for the band Tool. However, nothing can match the virtuosity of the Brothers, who support their impressive animation with political insight, dealing with the strife of their homeland in Europe. Truly amazing things are accomplished by the brothers in this film, such as using telephoto lenses to change focus in mid animation. The amount of detail and work that is put into this film is unbelievable, but the result is even more impressive.

We feel as if we're in a completely different world watching this -- and not necessarily just because of the animation, which is spectacular. It has more to do with the architecture of the images, and the way the camera investigates the space -- you feel as if you're in a shoebox, tinted with brown-gold sepia tones of rot. The way the camera moves is really very striking. For the comparisons to Kafka, I think it's specifically in the dislocation of the image that the Quays bring out his influence. This film is as if Jack Skellington went down the wrong tree. (The eyeless dolls must have influenced "Toy Story"'s horror sequence.) We're in this strange, unfamiliar place, and the camera slides around in very smooth yet jittery movements as if our eyes. We see objects like screws move around on their own, and objects drop calmly as if the sky is falling; our vision is distorted as images of our hero are stretched. I haven't read the Bruno Schulz, so I'm pretty much limited strictly to experiencing this visually. 10/10

Although the imagery is familiar, I'm pretty sure that this was the first film from the Quay Brothers that I had seen and this is why I think it will stick with me. I will not pretend to understand the full commentary or relevance of it but the end titles do help with the portrayal of a soulless world and its outcome. What the makers have succeed in is creating a crushingly animated world where even the puppet freed from his strings comes to misfortune and perhaps looks back to wish he had never been able to break free from his mechanised controls/shackles.

This seems to be the thrust of it from what I can understand and in this regard I found it darkly satisfying and disturbing. With the theme in the background the foreground gets filled with disturbing images of decaying machinery and puppet figures, the doll-headed ones being an image that many viewers will find themselves recognising even if they are not entirely sure why. It is the creative images and movements that drive the film and even when I was not sure what I was watching, i was still very much held by what I was seeing. It is a dark and nightmarish piece of animation and I enjoyed it very much for that – even if it was not the most comfortable viewing ever.