Street of Crocodiles

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.

I saw "Street of Crocodiles" on my first Filmfestival in 1991. Its darkness and sadness, its brutality and decay, this strange feeling of being somewhere else and someone else who does not understand the rules of this world. The world of the genius brothers Quay confirmed my urge of being a filmmaker. It's a kafkaesque journey into your subconsciousness. It is unique. 10 of 10.

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.

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.

The animated films of twins Stephen and Timothy Quay succeed more as art than entertainment, drawing heavily on ideas and imagery made popular by the Surrealists, adapted to fit their own highly individual obsessions. Using found objects (broken dolls, scraps of cloth, odd bits and pieces of junk) the Quay's create abstract and obscure short narratives noteworthy for their incredible precision and fluid mobility. The craftsmanship is startling and inventive, the mood haunting and dreamlike, but like most Surrealist art the meaning is often infuriatingly oblique. Like many other of their films I've seen, 'Street of Crocodiles' achieves a hypnotic flow of miniature detail torn straight from the subconscious mind.