The Greatest Love of All Times

L'amour monstre de tous les temps (1977)

*** (out of 4)

Walerian Borowczyk directed this ten-minute short film that has Tannhauser Ouverture going full blast the entire time. We start off by seeing various people walking through the crowded streets and then we bounce to a man doing some sort of art. As the film progresses we see a painting being done and finally it's full creation is revealed. This film, also known as THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL TIME, is a pretty darn good film and I'm sure many will take away some sort of meaning in it. Honestly, I don't know if the director was trying to say anything or not but I do know that this was one of the more entertaining shorts that I've seen from the director. The music is perfectly used and I thought the various images were excellent and together you just get dragged into the picture. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but this is a very entertaining film.

After seeing the ravishing The Story of Sin (1975-also reviewed) I was very keen to see more of auteur Walerian Borowczyk's 70's output. Noticing that Arrow has included a good number of his shorts as extras or presented as a collective disc, I decided to watch the lone 70's credit from their Borowczyk: Short Films and Animation disc.

View on the short:

From the first brush-stroke following Serbian surrealist painter Ljubomir Popovic's painting, cinematographer/director Walerian Borowczyk stylishly paints between documentary and surrealism,with Borowczyk cutting away from the painting to the public on the street in his distinctive, fragmented editing fashion.

Blasting out Wagner's Tannhauser Overture as the lone audio on the soundtrack, Borowczyk dips into his surrealist paint pot via twirling shots on Popovic washing his hands and putting the finishing touches to a painting of the greatest love of all.