Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks, it's show Died.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater. They want clod sodas, hot popcorn,
Speaker 2: and no monsters.
Speaker 3: In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2: No nos Ma pier to me, said she.
Speaker 4: If he lo Pergi now.
Speaker 2: Hell not, be as sure.
Speaker 4: This is all you see.
Speaker 5: No bla, it's.
Speaker 4: Cigar, said Todel. Do sometimes stuff.
Speaker 6: Yes, crevel loyalty, that's a service.
Speaker 4: I fei.
Speaker 6: H en.
Speaker 2: Done.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 3: joined me once again. It's mister Matthew asked.
Speaker 7: For gear, your obedient servants.
Speaker 2: Mine.
Speaker 3: Also back in the booth is Miss Jessica Shires. Hello,
Speaker 3: we are kicking off a very special month which is
Speaker 3: both a month of Patreon requests and also our Shoctober selections.
Speaker 3: This one comes to us from our very own Jessica Shires.
Speaker 3: Also known as Legend of doom House. Melpertwee is a
Speaker 3: Gothic horror film starring Matthew Career as Yan, a sailor
Speaker 3: back at his home port where he visits the estate
Speaker 3: known as Melpertwee, where he encounters a group of colorful kooks,
Speaker 3: including the formidable Cassavius played by Orson Wells. We will
Speaker 3: be spoiling Melburt Twee as we go along, including the
Speaker 3: big twist at the end of the film. So if
Speaker 3: you don't want anything ruined, turn off the podcast and
Speaker 3: come back after you have seen it. We will still
Speaker 3: be here. So, Jessica, as the person who requested this one,
Speaker 3: when was the first time you saw Malpertwee and what
Speaker 3: did you think?
Speaker 8: So the first time I saw it was probably when
Speaker 8: the Barrel DVD came out, which is I think the
Speaker 8: only American home video release to date of the film.
Speaker 8: I was a big fan of Daughters of Darkness, huge
Speaker 8: fan of that film, and I had heard that Kamel
Speaker 8: had done this other film that was had similar lives
Speaker 8: along the fantastique and the descriptions of it founded really great,
Speaker 8: so I thought I would seek it out. Watched it,
Speaker 8: didn't entirely make sense of it the first time. Not surprisingly,
Speaker 8: I was very intrigued by it, and I actually it
Speaker 8: was quite I've seen the years before. I watched it
Speaker 8: for a second time, and really and at that point
Speaker 8: I had read the novel. I was very interested in
Speaker 8: Belgian art, Belgian literature, and I was able to put
Speaker 8: all the pieces together and it meant a lot more
Speaker 8: to me and I was able to understand it such
Speaker 8: as it is a bit more of the second viewing.
Speaker 8: I'm also a big fan of Silvia Bartine, who has
Speaker 8: a small role in the film, so I was really
Speaker 8: intrigued initially to see it because of her and her
Speaker 8: role in it, albeit small. Though not disappointed. I just
Speaker 8: wanted to mention that and being a fan of Daughters
Speaker 8: of Darkness. Last year I did a pilgrimage to the
Speaker 8: hotel where Daughters of Darkness was shot in Austin, Belgium,
Speaker 8: and there is a star for Kumal on the sidewalk
Speaker 8: outside the hotel where some of the exteriors were shot.
Speaker 8: There's like a star for in honor of Kummel's career.
Speaker 3: Oh, very fantastic. Yeah nice And Matthew, how about yourself.
Speaker 7: This was a film that was run on Australian TV
Speaker 7: in the late nineteen nineties and I remember the Orson
Speaker 7: Wells appearance was what attracts me to I think taping
Speaker 7: this ilm on television. But it was one of those
Speaker 7: movies that I never really properly sat down and watched
Speaker 7: from start to finish. It was always I think I
Speaker 7: looked at the well scenes and then I left that
Speaker 7: on the shelves for a little time, and it took
Speaker 7: me actually years to finally get around properly sitting down
Speaker 7: and watching the whole thing. I always had a very
Speaker 7: I very much associated this film with a dreamlike atmosphere,
Speaker 7: which I think is it really does, and when you've
Speaker 7: only seen fragments of it, it seems even more dream
Speaker 7: But yeah, now, so coming back to it years later,
Speaker 7: I was two years ago, I was putting together a
Speaker 7: course on traditions of the fantastic and cinema, and I
Speaker 7: was looking at the French fantastic and this doesn't quite
Speaker 7: fit into that sense, it's Belgium. But I did come
Speaker 7: back to this film again, and yeah, so I'm very
Speaker 7: intrigued by this way, We'll say that, and the Orsowell's
Speaker 7: appearance is its own kind of separate, fascinating bit of history.
Speaker 7: But beyond that, the film, I think it's just very
Speaker 7: fascinating on its own.
Speaker 3: I think this was definitely first time watch for me
Speaker 3: for this show. So thank you very much, Jessica for
Speaker 3: choosing this one. I was really happy seeing it, and
Speaker 3: it had been one that I had wanted to see
Speaker 3: for a long time. I don't I think I'm making
Speaker 3: this up, but I'm pretty sure that I have a
Speaker 3: friend in Toronto who does a ton of film screenings,
Speaker 3: and I believe he has done screenings of it, and
Speaker 3: he's had various responses to the movie. Some people it's oh,
Speaker 3: it's way too slow. Other people just eat this up.
Speaker 3: So I had heard about it, heard like, oh, there's
Speaker 3: this strange film with Orson Wells in it, and that
Speaker 3: kind of was the hook, but not enough to actually
Speaker 3: make me watch it. And then thank you again Jessica
Speaker 3: for saying, yeah, let's do this one. Finally sitting down,
Speaker 3: I was excited to see both more Wells as well
Speaker 3: as another Harrykamel film, and it did not disappoint whatsoever.
Speaker 3: I had a great time with this. I started with
Speaker 3: the shorter version, and we'll definitely talk about the versions
Speaker 3: of this as we go along, or in the second
Speaker 3: half of the show, finally caught up with the long version.
Speaker 3: It had been long enough in between that I couldn't
Speaker 3: be like, oh, for sure, this is new to me,
Speaker 3: or that's new to me. It all felt of a piece,
Speaker 3: It just felt more of it. Unfortunately, the longer version
Speaker 3: is all in Flemish and so there is no Orson
Speaker 3: Wells voice and I think you hear his laugh but
Speaker 3: that's about it, which is really sad because that's half
Speaker 3: well yeah, well, what would you guys say, half of
Speaker 3: an Orson Wells performance is the voice because that voice
Speaker 3: is just like melted butter in your ear.
Speaker 7: Oh totally, that's certainly true. But against the vocal performance
Speaker 7: is another discussion point too, because at this point in
Speaker 7: his career, Wells with sometimes taking unusual approaches to his
Speaker 7: vocal post synchronization, and in fact, there was another film
Speaker 7: he made around this time, Jesure Island, that was an
Speaker 7: extremely unimpressive vocal performance from Warson Wells, to the point
Speaker 7: where the distributor of the film in the United States
Speaker 7: hired another actor to readub his performance. Clarity that we
Speaker 7: associate with Wells as a speaker was not always present
Speaker 7: in this period of his career.
Speaker 3: This movie has just an amazing cast on top of
Speaker 3: Wars and Wells. I love that it starts off with
Speaker 3: Matthew Carrier as yan Or Jan, but I think it's
Speaker 3: yan and I like that in the book chapter that
Speaker 3: you shared with us, Jessica, he was spelling it ya
Speaker 3: n N. I was like, I think it's just j
Speaker 3: A N. But okay, whatever, He's great. I love Michelle
Speaker 3: Bukay as did delou him showing up very early in
Speaker 3: the movie in his little bowler hat and everything, and
Speaker 3: then also Danielle Pilon as Matthias. Those two together I
Speaker 3: think are great. And the Didelu character, I really like him.
Speaker 3: Bookay plays him as so many characters are being played
Speaker 3: as very impish, but he's very good at being impish.
Speaker 3: And it's such a different because I just saw him
Speaker 3: a few months ago playing a very uptime boss in
Speaker 3: the Francis Weber film La Jouette's the Toy, so definitely
Speaker 3: plays it a lot differently than Jackie Gleason would play
Speaker 3: the same role in the American remake.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he was incredibly and I actually just passed away,
Speaker 8: like just only a few years ago. He lived quite
Speaker 8: a long life and age a massive somography and in
Speaker 8: this film particularly. I've seen him also in a lot
Speaker 8: of very serious European films, but this isn't a serious
Speaker 8: European film, but he's it's the physical comedy that he
Speaker 8: brings in this performance is something you so rarely see
Speaker 8: from him. He's absolutely hilarious. It doesn't even have to
Speaker 8: be speaking, and just like his movements, his body language,
Speaker 8: his facial expressions are just absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 3: And this is such a journey for this character of
Speaker 3: Jan starting by coming into port in his very smart
Speaker 3: sailor suit and thinking that he sees his sister and
Speaker 3: pursuing her. The whole movie starts off with a image
Speaker 3: of the Jabberwocke from the Lewis poem, and then there's
Speaker 3: even a quote from Alice in Wonderland, and I think
Speaker 3: there's a couple of lines throughout the movie that make
Speaker 3: reference to Alice in Wonderland. So him chasing after this
Speaker 3: woman that might be his sister might not. It's so
Speaker 3: white rabbit and he goes right down the rabbit hole
Speaker 3: into I think this is supposed to be a bordello,
Speaker 3: is what I'm guessing. But what a wild space for
Speaker 3: him to go into. And then did Alou is the
Speaker 3: entree into the whole malper twee. I don't want to
Speaker 3: say sequence, because the majority of the film takes place
Speaker 3: in Malpertwee, and it is a fantastical land where we
Speaker 3: don't know what the hell's going on for so much
Speaker 3: of this, and on purpose, it's very surrealistic and just
Speaker 3: that this whole space of malbur Twee is like what
Speaker 3: six or seven different locations all stitched into one. It
Speaker 3: just goes on forever.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I feel like that's intentionally so, because I
Speaker 8: think Camel really wanted to give you the sense that
Speaker 8: you don't know exactly where this is. You also don't
Speaker 8: know when this is. It's like vaguely nineteenth century, but
Speaker 8: really it isn't specified, didn't specified what city it's in.
Speaker 8: It's just somewhere in Flanders. So there's this sense that
Speaker 8: places are connected in a way that doesn't really make
Speaker 8: visual sense, but somehow it all comes together. I think
Speaker 8: that sort of uncomfortableness is definitely intentional.
Speaker 7: It's also the fact that we almost never see the
Speaker 7: exterior of Malko Tweet. There's a couple of fragmentary shelves
Speaker 7: of the exterior, but otherwise that lack of we see
Speaker 7: in the gardens and its own but so you don't
Speaker 7: really see the house itself. So that contributes to this
Speaker 7: sense of very vague architecture when you're inside the house.
Speaker 3: And Kamil was doing some interesting things like with the stairway,
Speaker 3: and I just was talking about the film Naked and
Speaker 3: how important stairways are in that one, and stairways are
Speaker 3: definitely very important in this and whenever I see a stairway,
Speaker 3: and especially somebody going down a spiraling stairway, I'm just like,
Speaker 3: that's probably a descent into madness. And this whole movie
Speaker 3: is that. I love what Kameel does where he actually
Speaker 3: shows you the stairs going down and then takes the
Speaker 3: shot and reverses it to show you the stairs going up.
Speaker 3: So it just looks like the staircase is infinite, like
Speaker 3: you don't know how high it goes up, and you
Speaker 3: don't know how high this goes down. And there's a
Speaker 3: very prominent shot of him coming down Yan coming down
Speaker 3: a stairway and just over and you get this kind
Speaker 3: of repetition of him coming down the staircase, and I'm
Speaker 3: just like, oh, that's really nice. And you get that
Speaker 3: and him going through hallways a lot, you get this
Speaker 3: like maze like it's almost vertigo like with the way
Speaker 3: that he's chasing chasing perhaps Nancy. And again this space
Speaker 3: of the town that he's in is impossible. And to
Speaker 3: your point from earlier, this is in several towns. I
Speaker 3: think this was Ghent and Bruges, and I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if there was a third location. So it's done, thank you,
Speaker 3: So Camell just stitching all of this stuff together too,
Speaker 3: to make an impossible city for an impossible house.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was funny. I was rewatching the film today
Speaker 8: and in watching those scenes again, Mapartwee, the house itself
Speaker 8: is very much its own character and is alive in
Speaker 8: its own way. And to me, I think of the
Speaker 8: way the staircase is shrives as like a spine. If
Speaker 8: you think of the house as almost like a living being,
Speaker 8: it's like this sort of central pillar. But it's also
Speaker 8: like the nerve center of a swirl. So much of
Speaker 8: the action takes place as like going up and downstairs
Speaker 8: or so I just saw it as a sort of
Speaker 8: spinal call, of kind of metaphor in a way.
Speaker 3: I can totally see that, especially when you get up
Speaker 3: to the attict. And for me, an attic in a
Speaker 3: movie is like the real subconscience, like what's happening in
Speaker 3: the brain that the rest of the house isn't aware
Speaker 3: of to have that workshop up there, and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to remember the character's name, the taxidermist? Is that feel theourette?
Speaker 3: And what a performance by Charles Johnson's just his laugh
Speaker 3: and his little voice that he does, and it sounds
Speaker 3: very similar between the English and the Flemish versions. I
Speaker 3: love what he's doing and I love that he's just bonkers,
Speaker 3: fucking bonkers. If anything, he's the Manhatter of this picture.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's just to go back to the
Speaker 8: actors and the casting for a second. A lot of
Speaker 8: the sort of lesser known at least to a sort
Speaker 8: of English speaking audience of the actors were just like
Speaker 8: people knew that from people that Kummel knew from Flemish theater,
Speaker 8: Flemish television, things that just wouldn't be known really outside
Speaker 8: of Belgium. And they're just like some of these smaller
Speaker 8: characters are just like one give wonderful performances and I've
Speaker 8: had to go and look them up and know who
Speaker 8: is this person? And so I think Kamel really had
Speaker 8: a knack for casting. I think both in the sense
Speaker 8: of like these grand actors, he casts such as you
Speaker 8: know Orson Wells or Del sarig and Daughters of Darkness,
Speaker 8: but he also really knew how to fill those smaller parts,
Speaker 8: I think, And yeah, I just think that speaks to
Speaker 8: how much of an actor's director I think he is.
Speaker 8: I think he's aside from maybe some of these big personalities,
Speaker 8: he seems to work well with some of the act
Speaker 8: of another. That's not entirely true, because there's Danielle we
Speaker 8: May and Daughters of Darkness who apparently wasn't treated particularly well.
Speaker 8: But I do think he had a special relationship with
Speaker 8: his actors and they were able to deliver these really
Speaker 8: great performances for him, even for characters who had smaller roles.
Speaker 3: He definitely did not like Orson Wells, though he respects
Speaker 3: Orson Wells, but he really can't say many nice things
Speaker 3: about him quite often, especially the challenges that Wells was
Speaker 3: throwing up at this point and the whole thing of
Speaker 3: I want to wear this fake nos and then Kammell's
Speaker 3: just thought, I got to come up with the whole
Speaker 3: lighting scheme Kamel and not say enough nice things about
Speaker 3: his director of photography, Jerry Fisher. He talks about him
Speaker 3: so much on the audio commentary and just all the
Speaker 3: inventiveness that he presented and some of the some of
Speaker 3: the real heart of the film goes to the cinematography
Speaker 3: and just some of the things that Kamel was doing around.
Speaker 3: I know, he points out that he tries to light
Speaker 3: Yan if woman would be lit, and then Nancy, Jan's
Speaker 3: sister tries to light her as a man would be lit,
Speaker 3: and then even gives us like a porthole both behind
Speaker 3: Yan and then a I'm trying to remember, oh, the
Speaker 3: narwhal tusk for Nancy behind her. So this whole like
Speaker 3: gender play that he does, which then totally brings to
Speaker 3: mind the one character's mother from Daughters of Darkness, which
Speaker 3: is obviously a man in drags, which I love that.
Speaker 8: I love that You're completely right about the Jerry Fisher
Speaker 8: and Kamel's Kamel is I would say in debt to
Speaker 8: him for how amazing the film looks. But I think
Speaker 8: Kamel acknowledges fully in both the interviews and in the
Speaker 8: commentary how much he owes to Fisher and how much
Speaker 8: he enjoyed working with him, and they seem to have
Speaker 8: an amazing collaboration on the film. It's almost like Fisher
Speaker 8: co directed it in a way, it just seems like
Speaker 8: his involvement and his influence on the film are so
Speaker 8: strong that he definitely deserves all the praise that Kummel
Speaker 8: gives him. Oh but I was going to say the
Speaker 8: lighting and the way that Jan looks. I've seen it
Speaker 8: argued in various reviews that Matthew Carrier is not really
Speaker 8: great in this role. I think Matthew Carrier is a
Speaker 8: great actor, and he has some better roles. But really,
Speaker 8: I think you can tell he was chosen for his
Speaker 8: looks here because he has that absolutely beautiful, angelic look,
Speaker 8: and he's lit accordingly, and a lot of his shots
Speaker 8: remind me a lot of the way men are photographed
Speaker 8: in Paint Narcissus or the photographs of Pierre Gille almost
Speaker 8: can't be like very soft, very beautiful, very feminine. I
Speaker 8: just think that's interesting. So Camel seems not afraid to
Speaker 8: play around with gender for sure.
Speaker 3: I absolutely love what they do in this brothel scene,
Speaker 3: and just how speaking of lighting, and then just the
Speaker 3: way that the colors pop those giant female forms that
Speaker 3: are on either side of the stage and the background
Speaker 3: of the stage almost looks like an open mouth to me,
Speaker 3: and then you have the singer, and you've got all
Speaker 3: of these other women there with these big wigs on,
Speaker 3: especially their multi colored wigs like very bright. I just
Speaker 3: I think it looks so good and just wild with
Speaker 3: the female forms, especially you've got the the I guess
Speaker 3: they're probably made out of wood, but the women. There's
Speaker 3: one who's got her hands over a crotch, but her
Speaker 3: boobs are exposed, and then right next to her is
Speaker 3: one where it's from the back, or a different women
Speaker 3: from the back with their butt exposed. And just to
Speaker 3: watch the singer going through this whole setup that they
Speaker 3: have with this beautiful place with just again the reds
Speaker 3: are everywhere and it looks so good. And then you
Speaker 3: have just tons and tons of guys dressed in their
Speaker 3: sailors outfits, which Jean is a sailor. And then I
Speaker 3: love that in the longer version of this, you get
Speaker 3: those the little kids, and I think it's actually the
Speaker 3: same little boy where you see a little boy in
Speaker 3: a sailor's outfit. And then there's another one who comes
Speaker 3: out of a storefront and he looks all ragged and
Speaker 3: he's got like a tiny tim crutch and he's coming
Speaker 3: out I'm just like, are these other versions of Yan?
Speaker 3: Is this where he could be or was? Because there's
Speaker 3: I thought about a twist at the end, but there's
Speaker 3: actually a couple twists to this. This probably is all
Speaker 3: in Yan's head, So I would not be surprised if
Speaker 3: these other little boys in sailor suits are just other
Speaker 3: incarnations of him.
Speaker 7: In the shorter version, you lose the kid on the
Speaker 7: crutch asks Yan where is Bacha Luka? Which is the
Speaker 7: same place that Yan was looking for where he was from,
Speaker 7: And that's got In the shorter version, I think they
Speaker 7: eliminated that kind of keep it living a bit faster.
Speaker 3: Yes, I much prefer Melportwee to Legend of Doomhouse, and
Speaker 3: especially just as a title, because Legend of doom House
Speaker 3: just is that's awful. That feels like something that you
Speaker 3: would find in the dollar ben at Sun Coast.
Speaker 8: It definitely sounds cheap.
Speaker 7: So I guess nobody knows how to pronounce Malfa tweet
Speaker 7: though until they see the movie outside of Elder Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I thought for years that this movie is called
Speaker 3: mel Purtuis.
Speaker 7: There's other ways to pronounce it. I'm sure.
Speaker 8: I actually had never really realized and the times i'd
Speaker 8: watched it where that word came from Etymologically obviously, mile
Speaker 8: and so bad and house are rooted in there, and
Speaker 8: apparently it is from the sixteenth century save and it's
Speaker 8: where a fox lives. So it's like a fox is
Speaker 8: den and Jeel Ray, the writer of the novel upon
Speaker 8: which Malpertwee is based, use that as a four for
Speaker 8: the house and change the letters a little bit, and
Speaker 8: so that's the genesis of the titles.
Speaker 3: Jeanrey' is a fascinating guy. I was not familiar with
Speaker 3: him at all until starting to do the research for this,
Speaker 3: And Yeah, very interesting career. And I can't say I
Speaker 3: enjoyed reading the book melper Tweet just because it shifts
Speaker 3: on a dime. It really reminded me of something like
Speaker 3: the Saragosa Manuscript, where you just don't know, like you're
Speaker 3: reading it and you're just like, I have no idea
Speaker 3: the next paragraph. We could be in a completely different place,
Speaker 3: it could be completely all these surprises are just hiding
Speaker 3: around the corner. You can't really predict what's going to
Speaker 3: happen in this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's an enormously complex book, even more so than
Speaker 8: the film's complex, and it was considered to be unfilmable
Speaker 8: right possibly rightly so, and we for those who read
Speaker 8: the book realized that basically what Kamal does is take
Speaker 8: a sort of segment of the book and use that
Speaker 8: as the narrative and then make some references to things
Speaker 8: that happen outside of that segment of the text. But
Speaker 8: it's just it's polyphonic the novel like it's multiple narrators,
Speaker 8: it's multiple periods and time. It's just like separate stories
Speaker 8: that merge onto each other. So I think Kamel's approach
Speaker 8: in adapting that was in John Ferry, to his credit,
Speaker 8: who was the screenwriter, were able to actually make something
Speaker 8: that was a mostly narrative film out of this unfilmable book.
Speaker 8: And it's funny. So the book was written in nineteen
Speaker 8: forty three, and for those who aren't familiar with genre,
Speaker 8: he is a leading figure of the Belgian literary fantastique
Speaker 8: and he's a lot of people compare this his book
Speaker 8: Moper Tweet to the Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft. I
Speaker 8: haven't read that one, to be honest, so I can't
Speaker 8: speak to the comparison. But a lot of people see
Speaker 8: some similarities in the story there, but it is very
Speaker 8: much so. Jeanrey was mostly a short story writer. He
Speaker 8: wrote detective fiction, but he's very well that he's one
Speaker 8: of the most famous twentieth century writers in Belgium, and
Speaker 8: he does these stories that involved the fantastique. And whereas
Speaker 8: it's not he wasn't a fantasy writer per se, because
Speaker 8: he worked and again to define what the fantastique is.
Speaker 8: It's it's like a convergence of a fantasy world or
Speaker 8: supernatural elements with the real world. And so it's whereas
Speaker 8: a fantasy novel could be set in an entirely supernatural
Speaker 8: world or a made up world, fantastique sort of deal
Speaker 8: with the tension between the surreal, the supernatural and real life.
Speaker 8: That's the definition of the fantastique is the sort of
Speaker 8: the tension between the two. So he worked in that
Speaker 8: genre and he was, as you say, quite an interesting figure.
Speaker 8: He made up a lot about his life in interviews
Speaker 8: when he claimed to be sailor, which we can see
Speaker 8: is in Yan's character he was actually not a sailor,
Speaker 8: so he made up quite a lot about his life.
Speaker 8: And what's funny is Kumel also inserts a lot of
Speaker 8: nods to genre in the film. I think you see
Speaker 8: early on in the film, Yan stops outside of I
Speaker 8: forget exactly what the store is. It's like some kind
Speaker 8: of hardware store.
Speaker 3: Something like yeah, something like that, working on nets, and
Speaker 3: then you have that tagging suit next to him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, oh that's right, Yeah exactly. And so the name
Speaker 8: of the store is h Dixon, and one of Jeanre's
Speaker 8: most famous literary characters was a detective called Harry Dixon,
Speaker 8: so nod there to him, for sure. So yeah, there's
Speaker 8: a couple little nods to Ray throughout his film.
Speaker 3: Apparently, Alan Renee was very big fan of genre and
Speaker 3: wanted to actually do a movie based on some of
Speaker 3: those Harry Dixon stories, also known as the American Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was their subtitle or I
Speaker 3: think it was. I think they were building him up
Speaker 3: to be a little bit bigger, But yeah, I thought
Speaker 3: that was nice. And then I also thought you mentioned
Speaker 3: Jean Forrey, the screenwriter. And there's a lot of times
Speaker 3: in the commentary track too, where Kummel will be saying, oh,
Speaker 3: the screenwriter wanted this, so I gave it to him.
Speaker 3: That diving suit. He's the one that came up with that,
Speaker 3: or there's a part with and I'm going to have
Speaker 3: a hard time because Susan Hampshire plays multiple characters. I
Speaker 3: think it's when she's Nancy, the sister character, where she's
Speaker 3: getting money out of this place they're called the Color
Speaker 3: Store and her hands I want to say, turn red
Speaker 3: while she's getting the money and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, the writer wrote that, and I
Speaker 3: thought I would follow suit, I would do what he wrote.
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, how nice of you as a
Speaker 3: director to actually do what the writer is asking for.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And unfortunately, my understanding is that Fairies screenplay was
Speaker 8: tampered with quite a bit by the studio, And I
Speaker 8: guess we'll probably talk at some point about how this
Speaker 8: was a big studio project in their involvement in aflex
Speaker 8: of production that produced different outcomes. But yeah, so I
Speaker 8: think I don't know in what ways this screep that
Speaker 8: was tampered with or exactly you know what, But I
Speaker 8: know anecdotally from Herring, Kommel and the commentary talk about
Speaker 8: it that it's not exactly as written by his screen writer.
Speaker 8: It suffered from some interference.
Speaker 3: I mentioned Nancy and Susan Hampshire, and one of the
Speaker 3: big reasons too why this feels very surreal is that
Speaker 3: she does play multiple roles, and she will even be
Speaker 3: in shots with herself. They use a lot of body
Speaker 3: doubles for her and they do such a good job.
Speaker 3: There are too many times where you're watching an actor
Speaker 3: who is playing multiple roles. I'm looking at you, Eddie
Speaker 3: Murphy and a few other people where it's just like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is Eddie Murphy and makeup, or this is Eddie
Speaker 3: Murphy in a fat suit. Of course, Eddie Murphy does
Speaker 3: pull that stuff off very well, so I'm sorry to
Speaker 3: pick on Eddie Murphy, but with this back in nineteen
Speaker 3: seven one and Susan Hampshire playing these multiple roles, there
Speaker 3: were times where I had to check myself and say, oh,
Speaker 3: that's the same actress. I can't even believe that's the
Speaker 3: same actress, especially when she's let's just say to Gorgon,
Speaker 3: she looks so different, the way that they've shaped her nose,
Speaker 3: the way that they've given her green contacts, which were
Speaker 3: not easy or nice to put in back in the
Speaker 3: early seventies. I still remember Michael Jackson and all the
Speaker 3: problems he had with those contacts in the Thriller video.
Speaker 3: They didn't come up with good contact technology until the
Speaker 3: nineties or two thousands, So back in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: this poor thing wearing these green contacts was just suffering.
Speaker 3: I think the daughter of the producer who's also on
Speaker 3: that commentary track, is talking about how they would put
Speaker 3: bella donna in her eyes to numb them because it
Speaker 3: hurts so much. Talk about suffering for your art.
Speaker 7: I watched recently the Star Tred at the time with
Speaker 7: Gary luck lis Ould. He can barely keep his eyes
Speaker 7: open for the episode because you see how painful l
Speaker 7: must have been in the sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they do fantastic job of hiding her,
Speaker 3: but they don't go out of their way at least
Speaker 3: for me to say this is the same person. It's
Speaker 3: not like a gimmick. And I just think that it's
Speaker 3: another layer of the surrealism of this because you've got
Speaker 3: one actress playing multiple characters, and then also some of
Speaker 3: those characters are not humans. And we should probably say
Speaker 3: one of the big twists of this movie is that
Speaker 3: when Yahon makes it to Melportweet, which I'm assuming is
Speaker 3: his childhood home. He's coming back home, and there are
Speaker 3: all of these weird people that are living there now,
Speaker 3: and all of them, except for I think Cassevius, there
Speaker 3: were some Well's character. They're all gods. They are all
Speaker 3: the original of Greek gods, and so you get hints
Speaker 3: here and there, as far as oh, this person's playing
Speaker 3: some notes, Okay, that's probably Apollo, the god of music,
Speaker 3: or like this person over here is Vulcan, or this
Speaker 3: person over here is Infestus. Sorry, I always fuck up
Speaker 3: which one's the Greek and which one's the Roman, So
Speaker 3: apologies if I do that tonight. But you find out
Speaker 3: throughout the course of the movie, and especially there's a
Speaker 3: big reveal that Cassevius has captured all of these gods
Speaker 3: and basically has hit them doing his bidding. Most of
Speaker 3: these gods are now house servants, and they've forgotten who
Speaker 3: they are. And I keep screwing up the character's name,
Speaker 3: I keep forgetting. But the crazy little guy who's the taxidermist,
Speaker 3: yeah had him. So all of these gods into human skin,
Speaker 3: and there are moments where they remember, and there's other
Speaker 3: moments where they don't, And yeah, I love this and
Speaker 3: that they're all trapped there by, and it almost feels
Speaker 3: like for his amusement to have all of these gods
Speaker 3: that he has power over. Jessica, you mentioned the kind
Speaker 3: of almost palimppest way that this is written. That's one
Speaker 3: of those stories you're peeling back that onion because you
Speaker 3: have multiple narrators, like you're saying, and so many of
Speaker 3: these narrators it's fragments of stories or I collected this manuscript.
Speaker 3: That's I think again why it reminds me of sorry
Speaker 3: ghosta manuscript because of the multiple levels and layers that
Speaker 3: you have, and I love that stuff. I absolutely love
Speaker 3: when you have a story that changes as you go
Speaker 3: through one narrator to another and then have to figure
Speaker 3: out where they are in relation to each other as
Speaker 3: well as in relation to history.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I totally agree. The book is difficult, especially on
Speaker 8: a first read, but it's wonderfully written, and you really
Speaker 8: do have to occasionally stop and say, Okay, what exactly
Speaker 8: is going on here? But I think the way he
Speaker 8: does that, with different voices and different stories all interwoven,
Speaker 8: it is just brilliantly done. There's although genre himself was
Speaker 8: not a surrealist. He was championed by the surreala's, especially
Speaker 8: The frinch Raider orramal Canot. He wrote in a similar
Speaker 8: style in some of his works. I can think of
Speaker 8: one novel that he wrote that's very much you don't
Speaker 8: know where you are entire and you jumped back and
Speaker 8: forward in time. It's very surreal. It's like a classic
Speaker 8: text of h Surrealism was a big champion of genre
Speaker 8: in this novel.
Speaker 7: Maybe to come back to Susan Hampshire and having to
Speaker 7: act within this type of labyrinthine structure. I think part
Speaker 7: of the reason that her different characters seem so distinct
Speaker 7: is also in the performance. It's not just the fact
Speaker 7: that her makeup and hair is so effectively distinct. I
Speaker 7: think she really does seem like different people in each
Speaker 7: of her incarnations.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, completely. And it's not like she's, oh, now
Speaker 3: I'm the evil woman, so now I'm gonna can't really
Speaker 3: twirl or mustache because she doesn't have one. She doesn't
Speaker 3: let add on, she doesn't overact this stuff. It's so
Speaker 3: subtle in some of the roles that she's playing, and
Speaker 3: I can't remember if they're the furies or the fates,
Speaker 3: but the three women that are there always knitting stuff,
Speaker 3: and I love how the knitting turns into snakes at
Speaker 3: one point. But when they're knitting things, she's very nondescript.
Speaker 3: She does stand out as far as she's the youngest
Speaker 3: of these three women and is probably the most interesting one.
Speaker 3: She's got the most dialogue, I think, but it's not
Speaker 3: look at me in this different role. And when she
Speaker 3: stands out as Nancy. I love the blue dress that
Speaker 3: she's wearing and that she's coated in this blue color.
Speaker 3: And Kumal again is so concerned about the colors and
Speaker 3: the color scheme. I just I love how careful he
Speaker 3: was with what colors people are wearing, what colors different
Speaker 3: objects are. I love that big red and I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's a stone. When Yan wakes up and
Speaker 3: he's looking around, he suddenly he thinks he's back on
Speaker 3: his ship because there's a literal porcole right there and
Speaker 3: all of this nautical stuff. And I'm guessing is this
Speaker 3: his bed from when he grew up that he always
Speaker 3: I want to be a sailor. Is that why there's
Speaker 3: so many nautical things? Or did they just set up
Speaker 3: this place to make him feel comfortable when he woke
Speaker 3: up in this strange bed.
Speaker 7: He doesn't seem to know that he's at malport Twee
Speaker 7: until the reveal comes and they need to come very
Speaker 7: or rate about it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my just this has made a little bit clearer
Speaker 8: in the book. But initially, when you meet the character
Speaker 8: of Jan and he gets off the ship, he goes
Speaker 8: looking for a child at home, which he told has disappeared,
Speaker 8: and Malpertwee is actually a Case's house, so it's not clear.
Speaker 8: I think the first time I watched it, I didn't
Speaker 8: really understand that either, because it's more important in the
Speaker 8: book because of the way the stories interconnect that Yon's
Speaker 8: house is separate from Malpertwee. But yeah, so that's the
Speaker 8: different they're different spaces.
Speaker 3: Okay, I did not pick that up at all, Thank
Speaker 3: you so much.
Speaker 8: So, yeah, he's dismayed to be there. I think of
Speaker 8: Cassevius's bad reputation, and he doesn't want to be there.
Speaker 8: He wants to go home. He doesn't understand why Nancy
Speaker 8: has also come to Malpertwee and his Eliti has like
Speaker 8: childhood nanny who's they've all from there They've all all
Speaker 8: these people from his various parts of his past and
Speaker 8: his family have just landed in this house and he's
Speaker 8: just not happy about it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Do you think that's just his brain putting
Speaker 3: them all there and melding them all together, because ultimately
Speaker 3: this does or allegedly is a fantasy of his.
Speaker 8: That's a really good question. I think Kummel suggests that
Speaker 8: it is. I don't know, Like again, just to compare
Speaker 8: to the book, I think in the in the book
Speaker 8: it's it's a little more separate. But I think Kummel
Speaker 8: probably liked that idea that it was all a dream.
Speaker 8: He even said he says of the whole film that
Speaker 8: it's a fairy tale, it's a fantasy. So I definitely
Speaker 8: think he could be riffing on the idea that this
Speaker 8: is all going on in Jan's head.
Speaker 7: Something that's very key to the sontestique in the French
Speaker 7: tradition anyway, is that ambiguity. Do you have these intrusions
Speaker 7: of potentially supernatural or events, but they're very much in
Speaker 7: the perception of the characters. So whether they're hallucinations, dreams,
Speaker 7: or some kind of supernatural reality remains open ended. In
Speaker 7: a lot of that type of fiction. I think this
Speaker 7: film carries that tide of approach to its conclusion.
Speaker 3: I'm really glad that we talked about a Virgin among
Speaker 3: the Living Dead recently or last year. I guess that
Speaker 3: was just because this reminds me a lot of that too,
Speaker 3: with the way that we are going to a house
Speaker 3: that doesn't exist or has our main exist. Yeah, just
Speaker 3: like our main character and Virgin among the Living Dead.
Speaker 3: And then when you get to this house, you're just like,
Speaker 3: who are these people? This is quite a collection of
Speaker 3: just very odd characters. And then you get the big
Speaker 3: reveal at the end of that, Oh, they've been dead
Speaker 3: this whole time, and she's actually in this Isn't she
Speaker 3: in an asylum in that one.
Speaker 8: Fished, Yes she is. It's so funny because I had
Speaker 8: honestly never thought about how similar the narrative is to
Speaker 8: virgionmong the Living Dead, which obviously I love. I chose
Speaker 8: that one, and as I'm watching it in one of
Speaker 8: my recent rewatches for this, I was like, well, I
Speaker 8: even made in my notes just oh wow, it's just
Speaker 8: like Virgin among the Living Dead. There's several similarities throughout
Speaker 8: the film to Virgin among the Living Dead, which I
Speaker 8: was just delighted to be able to make note of
Speaker 8: any and not to jump to the end too much,
Speaker 8: but there is the scene at the end of where
Speaker 8: all the relatives I'll just say, comeback, is very much
Speaker 8: like the end of Virgin Mung the Living Dead. It
Speaker 8: just reminds me so much. I think the scenes are
Speaker 8: so similar.
Speaker 7: Another film that came to mind is The hour Glass Sanatorium,
Speaker 7: the Polish film. I'm not sure if you've seen that,
Speaker 7: but this idea that you enter this house in that
Speaker 7: case it's a sanatorium and all the usual rules of
Speaker 7: time start to vanish. This The character protagonist of that
Speaker 7: film too encounters people from his childhood and it's all
Speaker 7: been a very free slowing santesmagre just like input tweet.
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree with that, and even some of
Speaker 3: the color scheme, because that's the thing I remember the
Speaker 3: most about Our Glass Sanatorium is just the beauty of
Speaker 3: the colors, especially the greens that showed up in that.
Speaker 3: That's when I think of that movie. The color green
Speaker 3: immediately comes to mind.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and yet another film along these very same lines,
Speaker 8: and also a eurocal film, if you will, is Mario
Speaker 8: Baba's Lisa and the Devil very similar with the colors
Speaker 8: always eats Bava, so you've got like these baba esque
Speaker 8: bright colors. It just almost seems to be something in
Speaker 8: the zeitgeist at the time, because all these films were
Speaker 8: made around the same time, and to see these similarities
Speaker 8: running through them is really quite interesting.
Speaker 7: I don't want to bang you Orse and Wells drone
Speaker 7: too loudly, but The Trial as well was film in
Speaker 7: such a way that there's this kind of ambiguous architecture
Speaker 7: all the time, and Well's film that by shooting bits
Speaker 7: and pieces in totally different spaces and sticking them together,
Speaker 7: and so it does become this very dreamlike world because
Speaker 7: there's no logic to the way the interiors are laid out.
Speaker 7: Some of it's shut inside the Guador says Paris. Other
Speaker 7: things are shot in Italy, it's all mixed together in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I don't know. There's definitely a category of
Speaker 7: silves with this imaginative architecture, dreamlike juxtaposition of totally different spaces.
Speaker 3: And I love Cassevius. How does Orson Wells ever get
Speaker 3: out of bed in this movie? I think he's just
Speaker 3: always in bed, and the bed itself the bedroom, I
Speaker 3: should say, feels very much like a theater to me,
Speaker 3: especially during the reading of the Will and some of
Speaker 3: those scenes where you just get so many characters stuffed
Speaker 3: into one place and it just feels like Wells is
Speaker 3: on stage by being in this bed.
Speaker 7: I just think one of the attractions of taking this
Speaker 7: job was to be able to do the whole role
Speaker 7: from the bed. He wasn't that mobile at that point,
Speaker 7: and no, I don't say that in any derogatory way,
Speaker 7: but he was having mobility issues, so he was taking
Speaker 7: roles that enabled him to basically be fixed in his
Speaker 7: position on screen. In Treasure Island, he doesn't really do
Speaker 7: the peg legs thing at all. You mostly just see
Speaker 7: him sitting down. And I think that for the producers
Speaker 7: of the film too, they could sell the film as
Speaker 7: an Orson Welles film, But because all of his scenes
Speaker 7: take place in the exact same setting, it could be
Speaker 7: done very quickly. And I think it's three days plus
Speaker 7: the half day that he gave them pretty sheepish sleep
Speaker 7: free because he'd been such a bad play during the filming.
Speaker 7: He obviously had some remorse for being so unprofessional that
Speaker 7: he let them have a bit of extra time free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what he had just done a Claude Chabral film
Speaker 3: and Schabral can contact the Kamal or vice versa. And
Speaker 3: he's just Oh, he was a nightmare. I worked with
Speaker 3: him for nine weeks and it was just awful at them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he could be a very bad boy and quite often.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I did read and it's probably in the interview with
Speaker 8: Kamel on the Barrel release that Wells was one of
Speaker 8: great choices for this role, and the other two being
Speaker 8: Henry Fonda and Peter Eustonov. I know quite I feel
Speaker 8: like that's a very diverse group, and I feel like
Speaker 8: even though Wells there was a lot of trouble on set,
Speaker 8: Kamell didn't like working with him, although he says apparently
Speaker 8: that in real life he was very nice, but on
Speaker 8: the set and working with him, he was a total
Speaker 8: pain in the ass. But that I think, I just
Speaker 8: can't imagine anyone else in this role but Wells. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 8: I think he just turned up and when they finally
Speaker 8: got him to do what he was supposed to do,
Speaker 8: he did it wonderfully.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: When you find out that he had captured all of
Speaker 3: these gods that he went to some island and found
Speaker 3: them and then brought them all back and enslaved them.
Speaker 3: I can see Orson Wells doing that. I could see
Speaker 3: him being a young adventurer going out and doing these things.
Speaker 3: I could probably Am and Peter Ustinov and maybe even
Speaker 3: Henry Fonda, but Wells has that gravitas. And then also
Speaker 3: where he's at with his way to mobility and doubt
Speaker 3: and drinking and eating rich foods and all of these things.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, that's probably what I would be doing too,
Speaker 3: if I had the wherewithal to capture all of these
Speaker 3: gods and make them do my bidding. Yeah, I'd probably
Speaker 3: relax and just lay in bed all day too.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 8: It's very kind of Island of Doctor Moreau for me.
Speaker 8: And I think he's in that era like it would have.
Speaker 8: I could see him playing that role, and it's like
Speaker 8: there are some similarities there about it, and we'll probably
Speaker 8: get to that at some point. About creating trying to
Speaker 8: create monsters and stuff, and you see this when you're
Speaker 8: in the taxidermis lab. You see all these like jars
Speaker 8: of things, and I'm just that's so island of doctor Morrow.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, what's a bride of Frankenstear And that's kind
Speaker 7: of the little miniature people, but in this case they
Speaker 7: didn't work out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love those little mindature people where you get to
Speaker 3: hear that squeaking because at first I was like, are
Speaker 3: those mice? What is going on here?
Speaker 8: And a little arm in the mouse trap while Yong
Speaker 8: comes across it and he freaks out. It's like a
Speaker 8: baby alarm.
Speaker 3: Basically, that was great. It took me a minute to
Speaker 3: even realize what was going on and why he was
Speaker 3: so horrified, And I was like, Oh, it's the little
Speaker 3: people that we haven't seen because I literally was thinking
Speaker 3: of them like mice.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the sound design in this. You mentioned the editing.
Speaker 3: We'll talk more about the different versions, but I think Kamel,
Speaker 3: I want to say, he edited this himself, the longer
Speaker 3: version of this, and did a freaking fantastic job. It
Speaker 3: just flows so wonderfully. We were talking about Tinto Brass
Speaker 3: recently and just how he was like, Oh, yeah, editing
Speaker 3: is half the movie, and I have to edit these
Speaker 3: movies in order to imbue it with my style, and
Speaker 3: I could see Kamel being exactly the same way this
Speaker 3: feels like him from stem to stern at least the
Speaker 3: longer version, the shorter one not so much. But with
Speaker 3: this one just such care taken with everything, and like
Speaker 3: we were saying, for as far as the DP being
Speaker 3: the co director, I don't think would argue with that
Speaker 3: at all because he was such an important figure to
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 8: So I don't know if you guys know this sort
Speaker 8: of the why he didn't edit the version of the
Speaker 8: film that went to can and was the first version
Speaker 8: of the film that was released is basically United Artists
Speaker 8: didn't They wanted to have their own editor like they
Speaker 8: since it was so again being such a big budget film,
Speaker 8: they was an unknown entity to them. So they said, no,
Speaker 8: we're gonna you did all the shooting, We're going to
Speaker 8: bring in our own guide to the editing, which was
Speaker 8: I think that we've amused and upset by. And so
Speaker 8: they brought in their own editor. And I know we'll
Speaker 8: get to talking about the differences between the two versions later.
Speaker 8: But ultimately, when Kummel was allowed to make his own
Speaker 8: edit the film, which I think was maybe a year
Speaker 8: or two later, and United Artists saw it, of the
Speaker 8: producer saw and they said we should have let you
Speaker 8: edit it. Why did you let this version out that
Speaker 8: it's nowhere near as good as the version that you
Speaker 8: cut together, And he said, I didn't want to go
Speaker 8: behind this editor's back, and so it was just all
Speaker 8: I think United Artists were afraid to take that chance
Speaker 8: on him, and obviously was a missed opportunity completely.
Speaker 3: I think we get the most of the little people
Speaker 3: when it comes to the Lamperness character, and if I'm
Speaker 3: saying that correctly, who we find out later on is
Speaker 3: actually Prometheus. He has stolen the light and so he
Speaker 3: gets his liver picked out every single morning by a bird.
Speaker 3: And the revelation of the bird was a real shocker
Speaker 3: to me the very first time I saw this, the
Speaker 3: use of the animation, I thought that was fantastic. I
Speaker 3: like that Kummel admits that Nis is a little much
Speaker 3: and that he probably should have been rewritten and separated
Speaker 3: from the book a little bit more, because he is
Speaker 3: playing it to the hilt as that character and then
Speaker 3: him being tormented by the little people voices doesn't help
Speaker 3: very much at all. But because this guy is nuts
Speaker 3: and he's played by John Pierre Cassell, who, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think he's a great actor, but man Omantisy just go
Speaker 3: for it in this role. Hats off to him. He
Speaker 3: doesn't pull any punches.
Speaker 8: It's a little much.
Speaker 7: He's a bunuel actor too, and he's very different in
Speaker 7: the street show of the bourgeoisie. He knows how to
Speaker 7: do that kind of very subtle performance as well. But
Speaker 7: I guess the character is of all the gods, as
Speaker 7: we discovered they are within this house, he's the one
Speaker 7: who is maybe the least individualized as something more than
Speaker 7: just Prometheus. I think the other characters have more human qualities.
Speaker 3: It seems that lampernous I love that they read Cassevius's
Speaker 3: will while he's still alive, and he gets to see
Speaker 3: the reaction from all of the people in the room,
Speaker 3: all of the people that are waiting for him to die,
Speaker 3: and gets to see how they react when they find
Speaker 3: out that they can have all of the wealth that
Speaker 3: he has amassed over the years. But they can't leave
Speaker 3: the house.
Speaker 8: But they hear the sums of money. They get really
Speaker 8: excited then, but he can never leave them.
Speaker 3: He keeps them in prison. Oh you want my money, Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll stick around. The last two people that are alive
Speaker 3: are the ones that will get everything if they're still
Speaker 3: in the house, and eventually Nancy. Is it Nancy or
Speaker 3: is it one of the other incarnations of the actress?
Speaker 3: But I think it's Nancy and Matthias. They are like, Oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to give up the money and we're going
Speaker 3: to leave. But the rest of the people don't want
Speaker 3: them to leave. Nor does it feel like the house
Speaker 3: wants them to leave, Like you're saying, it does feel
Speaker 3: very much like melpur Twee is a character here and
Speaker 3: very much a living character. It almost feels like it's
Speaker 3: breeding sometimes, especially when you hear those gas lamps and
Speaker 3: the little noise that happens when they get put out.
Speaker 3: I'm like, that's totally somebody just doing a voice doing
Speaker 3: the sound effects for these lamps.
Speaker 7: At this point in Well's career, I think he had
Speaker 7: a lot of professional frustrations and acting was something that
Speaker 7: he did buy necessity because he needed to earn a living,
Speaker 7: and also he funneled a lot of that money into
Speaker 7: his own productions. And he just started making the Other
Speaker 7: Side of the Wind in nineteen seventy and so this
Speaker 7: is very soon after he started that project. So he
Speaker 7: went to Europe for a while, made some films the
Speaker 7: Chapral film I did the name, actually thought he did
Speaker 7: a Chabral film, and he did this. Being in that
Speaker 7: position of being an actor being directed brought out the
Speaker 7: worst in him. He'd been doing this for many years,
Speaker 7: being in a lot of movies, usually in Europe, sometimes
Speaker 7: some very bad movies. And when he found himself with
Speaker 7: a weak willed directors, he would completely take over as director,
Speaker 7: so he'd be performing and directing his own scenes. But
Speaker 7: then there were other occasions when he didn't have such
Speaker 7: an easy time of taking over. Even on the Third Man,
Speaker 7: I said of legendary film, legendary performance by Wells, but
Speaker 7: he was not very cooperative in that role. I know
Speaker 7: that those that were chasing him around Europe to get
Speaker 7: into the do a post synchronization, and I think just
Speaker 7: generally was not happy being subordinate on its film sets
Speaker 7: and the stories Kummel tells about Wells and he seems
Speaker 7: to have really annoyed the crew because of the demands
Speaker 7: he was making on them. Not surprising really, Wells was
Speaker 7: a bit like that at times and then in totally
Speaker 7: at other contexts he would be the most charming first
Speaker 7: and the universe, and something about being an actor and
Speaker 7: being directed brought out some ugly side of Wells, especially
Speaker 7: if he didn't respect the film. And I'm curious about
Speaker 7: something that I have always thought about Maltlea Twee, is
Speaker 7: what Wells actually thought about this material, because I think
Speaker 7: we may get into this. There are some other Wells
Speaker 7: projects which echo certain aspects of Malpatwee. I think maybe
Speaker 7: the Immoltal story is something we're going to talk about.
Speaker 7: But that's a film Wells made in the late sixties,
Speaker 7: really a French television film, but it has another tall
Speaker 7: blonde sailor as its protagonist as well, and could make
Speaker 7: an interesting double feature with Melpa Twee. It's about that
Speaker 7: old man played by Orson Wells who is manipulating the
Speaker 7: life of the lives of this young sailor and a
Speaker 7: woman played by Jean Moreau and in another weird house.
Speaker 7: I'm surprised Wells didn't take that seemingly take more of
Speaker 7: an active interest in this film and it's its subject matter.
Speaker 8: Matthew, I'll ask you this because I'm not really at
Speaker 8: all super familiar with Well's career. Is I read somewhere
Speaker 8: that he at some point actually played the god Jupiter,
Speaker 8: which is a funny because obviously it's not a god obviously,
Speaker 8: but just a kind of an interesting reference.
Speaker 7: I don't know what film that would be, but that
Speaker 7: seems like a role built for us and Wells because
Speaker 7: that's about his size. I think he called himself a
Speaker 7: king actor, not meaning that he was superior by the actors,
Speaker 7: meaning that he was a kind of actor who would
Speaker 7: be cast in those sort of roles. He would play
Speaker 7: kings and leaders, and I guess God Jupiter would be
Speaker 7: in that category as well. It'd be hard to imagine
Speaker 7: or some Wells playing the taxidermists. Multiple reasons. He was
Speaker 7: that kind of grand actor, very tall, huge voice, all
Speaker 7: of this kind of stuff. Yeah, you can totally understand
Speaker 7: why they thought of Wells for this role. I'm actually
Speaker 7: not entirely impressed with this performance. I have some reservations
Speaker 7: about it, and I was interested to hear from you,
Speaker 7: Jessica that you do really like his performance, because I
Speaker 7: think the makeup issue which Kumo speaks about, is pretty
Speaker 7: indicative of Well's approach to performance in this period. Very theatrical,
Speaker 7: and he would do his own makeup and it often
Speaker 7: looked really banged on the screen in the Multi Story,
Speaker 7: which is only three or four years before this. He
Speaker 7: did his own makeup for that film, and it just
Speaker 7: looks so fake. There's something very theatrical about it. When
Speaker 7: he would do fillows back in the United States and
Speaker 7: they would force makeup artists on it, he looks much better.
Speaker 7: But yeah, this was a tendency of his his European period,
Speaker 7: and I think the performance is very theatrical too, and
Speaker 7: he does mumble his way through a lot of the lines.
Speaker 7: So anyway, I'm sure to hear Jessica your reflections on
Speaker 7: his performance.
Speaker 6: He was.
Speaker 8: I think he was able to embody the character in
Speaker 8: a way that was really believable for me. And he
Speaker 8: would want Casavius to be this ancient warlock who's in
Speaker 8: his sort of dying days, so it's this dying lion
Speaker 8: or something like that. At his last gasps. I think
Speaker 8: he manages to embody that I'm still this powerful person
Speaker 8: inside this sort of weak, dying body, even though he
Speaker 8: barely moves. He's able to carry over that bombastic personality
Speaker 8: and this big, over the top character. And yeah, I
Speaker 8: just think he for me, he handled it really well.
Speaker 8: I do love the stories about the makeup though, with
Speaker 8: having to color corrects for the greenness of the nose,
Speaker 8: and how they would make him sweat under the lights
Speaker 8: so they could dad some of the heavy makeup off
Speaker 8: of him when he wasn't really paying attention.
Speaker 3: Didn't they even do some close ups of him where
Speaker 3: there was no film in the camera.
Speaker 7: I didn't hear that. I don't know, but I wouldn't
Speaker 7: be surprised because he was, according to Kummel and the cinematographer,
Speaker 7: just so difficult on the the really practical level. He
Speaker 7: demanded certain things. He demanded, Okay, now you're gonna do
Speaker 7: my close up. Now you're going to do the lung shot.
Speaker 7: And why are you shooting above the shoulder? Why don't
Speaker 7: you change the angle of the cameras? So everything had
Speaker 7: to be justified to Wells. I think in a way,
Speaker 7: he's playing a gay probably test. It's like a kid
Speaker 7: testing what he can get away with.
Speaker 3: It's like Marlon Brando. He would always do that kind
Speaker 3: of shit where it's why does the Jirell even need
Speaker 3: to be a human? Can't he be a bagel? And
Speaker 3: it's for fuck's sakes, Marlin, And then it's no, you
Speaker 3: are hired for this role, you're going to play it,
Speaker 3: and then once the hammer comes down, then it's okay,
Speaker 3: all right, they'll do that. But he's he was always
Speaker 3: playing those kind of tricks, and yeah, it feels like
Speaker 3: Wells was kind of writing that playbook for him.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it seems though. When they would go out to
Speaker 7: lunch that week, Kamel and Wells got along wonderfully. Jumeldo
Speaker 7: was watching his watch because the time was taking away,
Speaker 7: and Wells didn't want to leave the table to go
Speaker 7: back to work that afternoon. Man, I can totally understand
Speaker 7: being so torn between having lunch with Orson Wells, who's
Speaker 7: probably the best conversationalist in the history of the world,
Speaker 7: but actually having to go back and keep directing your
Speaker 7: movie when you have a very limited time to do this.
Speaker 7: So I will, I think, didn't really care. Quite happy
Speaker 7: to keep eating his lunch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, eating his lunch, drinking his wine probably, yeah.
Speaker 3: But can you imagine the feeling of telling Orson Wells
Speaker 3: a story or a joke and having him laugh.
Speaker 2: That laugh is just so great.
Speaker 3: I loved whenever he would laugh in an interview.
Speaker 8: He has that great laugh. There's and you only get
Speaker 8: to hear it in the English stubbed version where he
Speaker 8: asks where the priest is and one of the three
Speaker 8: sisters says, oh, he's in the church, praying for you
Speaker 8: because you refuse last rite. This is one of my
Speaker 8: favorite moments of orson Walls and the Fell. Where do
Speaker 8: you see him taking in that information and how funny
Speaker 8: it is and then he laughs and it's just wonderful.
Speaker 8: He's just openly a sorcerer. Of course, the church is
Speaker 8: a joke to him, and all these trappings of Christianity
Speaker 8: are a joke.
Speaker 3: Tom I wanted to address that I did put this
Speaker 3: in October lineup because I don't know how many people
Speaker 3: would consider this a horror movie, but I definitely find
Speaker 3: a lot of horrific elements to it. And then the
Speaker 3: whole idea of these gods who have forgotten who they are,
Speaker 3: these creatures of incredible power that have been captured by Cassevius.
Speaker 3: There's just something really They're very scary. So many of
Speaker 3: the gods are frankly, very scary, and especially when you
Speaker 3: come to things like the Gorgon. And I love that
Speaker 3: Casseavius doesn't die, or he doesn't die a natural death.
Speaker 3: He has the Gorgon turn him into stone become part
Speaker 3: of her reliquary. You get to see at one point
Speaker 3: she's got all of these statues around her, and I'm
Speaker 3: just like, oh, these are the former victims. How nice.
Speaker 3: But when these gods wake up or realize what they
Speaker 3: are and what they could do, I mean, that's a
Speaker 3: pretty frightening idea. And in the meantime they just seem
Speaker 3: so off balance that this whole place does not feel
Speaker 3: safe at all. Yeahn wandering around from room to room
Speaker 3: with all these mirrors and long hallways and things. I'm
Speaker 3: just like, you are in an unsafe place, my friend.
Speaker 3: I would leave as soon as possible if you can.
Speaker 8: Again, it's a little bit like Virgin among the Living Dead,
Speaker 8: where Christina is repeatedly told throughout the bill you need
Speaker 8: to leave here. This isn't safe, this is dangerous. You
Speaker 8: should get out while you can.
Speaker 7: There's a few very violent sequences, and a Prometheus scene
Speaker 7: is really hard and gory, but yeah, mostly it's the
Speaker 7: atmosphere of a horror movie, more so than the periodic
Speaker 7: scenes of gore and violence that we expect in a
Speaker 7: horror movie. But yeah, and I think psychologically this is
Speaker 7: a very disturbing film an experience for young So it
Speaker 7: seems like a horror movie for me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's a lot in the psychology the beyond.
Speaker 8: That's terrifying about it is just the fact that he's
Speaker 8: in this place that he doesn't understand. No one is
Speaker 8: communicating to him what its secrets are, what's going on
Speaker 8: with all these people, the general atmosphere of weirdness that
Speaker 8: pervades it. So I think it's that unknown aspect and
Speaker 8: trying to figure out where you are and orienting yourself
Speaker 8: in a strange environment that lends itself to the atmosphere
Speaker 8: of terror or beer.
Speaker 7: It's also a comedy, and that's I see this as
Speaker 7: a very funny film. And I watched today back to
Speaker 7: back Daughters of Darkness and Output Maltward Tweet, and yeah,
Speaker 7: Daughters of Darkness, the tone of that film is much
Speaker 7: more conventionally a horror film. I think it's a great film.
Speaker 7: But Malpu Tweet is that quirky, weird, funny running through
Speaker 7: it all the way, not just the text of Dervist,
Speaker 7: but a lot of the characters play these roles in
Speaker 7: a kind of comical fashion. So it's a strange mix
Speaker 7: of lows that we see in this film.
Speaker 8: For me, this lends itself to the fact that I
Speaker 8: think this is a very Belgian film, And you know,
Speaker 8: I don't know how much you know and Omni Belgians
Speaker 8: you know, or how familiar you are with Belgian culture,
Speaker 8: but it's it's definitely it conveys a sort of I
Speaker 8: think what's known as Belgitude, which is the term that
Speaker 8: was coined to explain the tension that Belgians have in
Speaker 8: their culture of being split between two colonial powers, two
Speaker 8: dominant languages spoken within the country, and there's just a
Speaker 8: self deprecating humor that Belgians have. And I really I
Speaker 8: hear when I hear Camel being interviewed, and I feel
Speaker 8: like I see it a lot in this film. When
Speaker 8: you mentioned the comedy, I think that's totally resonant with
Speaker 8: that kind of vibe of trying to interject some humor
Speaker 8: into what could otherwise be very serious, stark phil So,
Speaker 8: I love those moments. If you were in it again,
Speaker 8: it reminds you of how specifically Belgian this film is. Well.
Speaker 3: I love those moments where you get that tableau of
Speaker 3: you know, the three women knitting and you get to
Speaker 3: see the ceiling, which is really nice. You get to
Speaker 3: see the gorgon, she's usually by the mirror, which is
Speaker 3: kind of cool as well. And then the taxidermist Didelo
Speaker 3: counting his money that he can never spend because he's
Speaker 3: going to be stuck at this house forever. But I
Speaker 3: love those shots where again, it reminds me very much
Speaker 3: of a stage presence, where you're just getting that almost
Speaker 3: establishing shot of these characters, and sometimes you cut into
Speaker 3: them and sometimes you don't. You just watch them, like
Speaker 3: the one moment where the taxidermist has that cup and
Speaker 3: ball game and he's just trying to do that and
Speaker 3: he's just over on the side of the screen doing
Speaker 3: that for a while everybody else is doing their thing.
Speaker 3: And I just love those little reset moments because really
Speaker 3: the taxidermist is pretty fucking scary, because that's the one
Speaker 3: time where Yan really has to worry about his life,
Speaker 3: is that he almost gets cut open and stuffed by
Speaker 3: the text thermis. I love way he is just oh,
Speaker 3: and you've got such beautiful skin to flay. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is hawful. And I'm like he's
Speaker 3: just eyeing them up to put sawdust or straw inside
Speaker 3: of this poor guy.
Speaker 8: What you were saying before about the way that the
Speaker 8: images are set up, and I think the whole film
Speaker 8: is very painterly, and I think intentionally. I think, in fact,
Speaker 8: I'm sure that Kamela's is and Jerry Fisher because I
Speaker 8: think he said that Jerry Fisher went to a lot
Speaker 8: of Belgian museums to look at artworks, plumaged in Belgian artworks,
Speaker 8: and he's definitely making references to specific works of art
Speaker 8: in these films, like I'm thinking of Paul delvo A
Speaker 8: Nam agreed, I think De Delou's bowler Hat is such
Speaker 8: a great mcgret reference, James enzeor with the Mask. So again,
Speaker 8: this kind of goes back to the pole Belgian nos
Speaker 8: of it is like it's the art and literature is
Speaker 8: very ingrained in their culture. So it's just part of
Speaker 8: growing up in Belgium is these things are are embedded
Speaker 8: in your psychee. So it doesn't surprise me all that
Speaker 8: you see these specific references to artworks throughout the film.
Speaker 8: And there's even a point where one of the sequences
Speaker 8: where Ian is going through the house and opening various
Speaker 8: doors to rooms and he opens one and it's just
Speaker 8: like a painting. It's obviously there's a sort of almost
Speaker 8: like a cinematic reference to matt painting in cinema. But
Speaker 8: also it's again like surrealists are like Matis, so almost
Speaker 8: like a sky or something like that, So you don't
Speaker 8: expect to open a door and find a sky that
Speaker 8: doesn't just you know, not a window, just it's there.
Speaker 8: And again it is very artificial as well, like it's
Speaker 8: not like a realistic painting of a sky. It's definitely
Speaker 8: like invoking surrealist art.
Speaker 7: And did anybody think of Raul rue Is looking at this?
Speaker 7: I don't know how familiar you are with that filmmaker,
Speaker 7: but another kind of baroque surrealist and in films like
Speaker 7: Three Clowns of the sailor that.
Speaker 8: Ohh yeah, I did think of that film. Actually, I'm
Speaker 8: glad you mentioned that because there are some similarities there
Speaker 8: for sure with that film.
Speaker 3: I can't say I'm that familiar with his work. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: it sounds like I need to be.
Speaker 7: Well, we made it more than one hundred films, so
Speaker 7: you got a big job ahead of you, Michael, but
Speaker 7: take your choice. Yeah, yeah, the filing of that kind
Speaker 7: of baroque Mezo saying the way that this film is
Speaker 7: not with tweets, that every shot is filled with so
Speaker 7: many things, and often things in the foreground, things in
Speaker 7: the background. That's the kind of approach Raw Ruiz takes,
Speaker 7: and sometimes two extreme almost comical lengths where you'll have
Speaker 7: extreme foreground objects and then with split diopters you'll have
Speaker 7: things in the very very distance. But in terms of
Speaker 7: the storytelling too, there's a lot of commonality these that
Speaker 7: kind of labyrinthine stories within stories, as you mentioned the
Speaker 7: Saragosa Manuscript of the one thousand and one Nights. The
Speaker 7: love of storytelling and the way that places sometimes are
Speaker 7: the portals into stories and into different times. That's very
Speaker 7: much part of Ruiz's filmmaking.
Speaker 3: Is I love how this movie ends. We talked about
Speaker 3: Virgin among the living dead. There is that type of
Speaker 3: element with all of the gods coming out, and then
Speaker 3: that poor priest trying to hold up his cross, and
Speaker 3: the one character breathes fire to melt the cross, which
Speaker 3: is pretty great. I can't remember if that's he Festus.
Speaker 3: I guess it makes sense.
Speaker 2: He's got the.
Speaker 3: Power over fire exactly. Yeah, But then how the movie
Speaker 3: kind of peels itself back. We talked about the layers
Speaker 3: of coming to town and seeing Nancy, and then he
Speaker 3: goes into the brothel, and then it gets over the head,
Speaker 3: and then he goes to Cassavies' house, and at one
Speaker 3: point during the movie towards the end, he wakes up
Speaker 3: and now he's back at the brothel, and then he
Speaker 3: starts to run through the city again like he was
Speaker 3: chasing Nancy. And then you get to see, Oh, here's
Speaker 3: a sign and it has this character's name, and oh,
Speaker 3: here's another sign with another character's name. He's just oh,
Speaker 3: is this was this real or not? But then he
Speaker 3: actually finds the house and goes through that some more,
Speaker 3: and then eventually you find out that no, that isn't
Speaker 3: the finale of this, that we are one layer deeper,
Speaker 3: that he's actually a patient at a mental institution and
Speaker 3: has written this all out as almost like his therapy.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I just I love that we keep pulling
Speaker 3: back and back only to find that the whole story
Speaker 3: wasn't even the story that we were being told.
Speaker 8: And again, Very Virgin of the Living Dead wakes up
Speaker 8: and suddenly is in the hospital recovering from this psychological misadventure.
Speaker 3: All right, We're going to take a break and play
Speaker 3: an interview with the director of malput Tweet, Harry Kumel,
Speaker 3: and we'll be back with that right after these brief messages.
Speaker 1: Casino Andishkia is new today on digital in the brand
Speaker 1: new action comedy starring Dominic purcell a fading action star
Speaker 1: heads to Italy to revive his career with a bold
Speaker 1: new movie, but when the production's virals out of control,
Speaker 1: his comeback turns into a hilarious misadventure by Casino Initia
Speaker 1: on digital, now not rated from Republic Pictures.
Speaker 3: How did you even get your start when it came
Speaker 3: to filmmaking, because you've been making films for quite a while,
Speaker 3: even before you got to your first feature.
Speaker 2: It's very and it's the story that I've do many times.
Speaker 2: My parents like the double eight film camera at that time,
Speaker 2: that let's go double eight, not super eight. Look at
Speaker 2: they came to sting they can do. He filmed the family,
Speaker 2: you know, right that people be so Will had the
Speaker 2: camera Nick after the war and Roger the planning quite expensive.
Speaker 2: He filmed and the film looked. I already went to
Speaker 2: look to be seen about even at a very young age.
Speaker 2: You will give my pocket money that they my parents
Speaker 2: gave me every week to say you look to this.
Speaker 2: So the films look not at all like films in
Speaker 2: the cinema. They were all dreadfully film. But you know,
Speaker 2: and so I told him second day, he doesn't look
Speaker 2: like anything. If you can do it better. Here it's
Speaker 2: the camera and you buy film yourself and you show
Speaker 2: me what you can. Must have been I cannot exactly see.
Speaker 2: So I made the film filmed in the street, the tricks,
Speaker 2: the tran ways disappeared, you know that kind of thing
Speaker 2: stage that I read about. And then my father out
Speaker 2: so without and said the immortal wealth. But where is
Speaker 2: your mother and where is your city? Who didn't it
Speaker 2: just me at all? At cirys Low. So that went
Speaker 2: the beginning with comrades at skin. One of them was
Speaker 2: quite wealthy, had very expensive double eight camera called bullets.
Speaker 2: They are still existing in sixteen millimeters and what's the
Speaker 2: beny best camera on in the market. That's very very
Speaker 2: from about ten of my school cameras, I must have
Speaker 2: been through our thirteen we made a feature film together,
Speaker 2: not alone, feature of the detective story with false new
Speaker 2: stuff because of the blueberry length self want and using
Speaker 2: our own apartment center kind of pick and people saw
Speaker 2: that and thought, well, it looks like a film. So
Speaker 2: then at fourteen I read a am purchasement that amateur
Speaker 2: films were showing their flow in Antwerp in real cinema,
Speaker 2: and I went to see that and that was a
Speaker 2: revelation for me because they were able to show films
Speaker 2: over sixteen win sounds, which at that time was something
Speaker 2: extraordinary because having sound on film at that time for
Speaker 2: Amatuel was an extremely complicated thing. You got to struggle
Speaker 2: well about the details of the cher So I saw
Speaker 2: that I was a big fong and I at that
Speaker 2: time I already went two three times in the week
Speaker 2: to do cinema to the films that were children allowed,
Speaker 2: and I also was sent by my parents in English
Speaker 2: summer school since the age of twelve, and in Britain
Speaker 2: films that were not allowed to go and were not
Speaker 2: danger films. A film like Hitchcock you could go see
Speaker 2: when you were had where a company by an adult.
Speaker 2: So there I saw my first Hitchcock when I was twelve,
Speaker 2: and that was dialm in three DS. That this was
Speaker 2: extraordinary that I've already seen on self a few Hitchcock
Speaker 2: films whom I thought were extraordinary. But I'd also seenilms
Speaker 2: by from steal Belt, among others. My father immediately because
Speaker 2: the boat very big television the story of anatahan By
Speaker 2: from stone Belt to say Masters, which also they impressed
Speaker 2: me very much. I also saw a unual on television
Speaker 2: which impressed me also the new not Forget. I was
Speaker 2: a teenager of thirteen fourteen fifty. I said, I want
Speaker 2: to make films that look like that. And I went
Speaker 2: to the amateur of films who have shown these films
Speaker 2: in the cinema, which I'm made so much because you
Speaker 2: saw a kettle boiling and you help the sounds of
Speaker 2: the kettle and that guns so I have musical and
Speaker 2: wonderful editing. Because there were no films that only amateurs
Speaker 2: made films. So I went there and they saw this
Speaker 2: little guy of fourteen arrived me and saying I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a member of your club. I became a
Speaker 2: mentep club and May with my sister my first feature film,
Speaker 2: The Wheel the Bow, destroying the house of my parents,
Speaker 2: and that was to go with the Maxsticks Anderson. I
Speaker 2: destroyed the pillows who makes snow with that kind of things,
Speaker 2: well whatever that work. And some of the people that
Speaker 2: amateur club helped me to put taitoos on it and
Speaker 2: sounds which was musing back back the area, back the
Speaker 2: sad music, and it was four of Trick's film Trick
Speaker 2: with that I like, very bad double in the thing.
Speaker 2: And I showed this film indy amateur and it was
Speaker 2: what they call an over night said, these people could
Speaker 2: not believe that the guy, a young guy of what
Speaker 2: the years, had made the film that made him try.
Speaker 2: So I thought, I can do things that all those
Speaker 2: cannot do. I had my studies to go on n
Speaker 2: go beyond me what very young man does when he
Speaker 2: is back studying. But at the same time, my only
Speaker 2: dream was to go to make film. My saga Tip
Speaker 2: day let me do his business what was nothing and
Speaker 2: I wanted to So I started to help people who
Speaker 2: work television were starting at that time. I'm talking now
Speaker 2: of fifty six exet and still in the amateur and
Speaker 2: in the a matter, we were atue that all these
Speaker 2: amateurs found not belonging to amateurs. They said, you make
Speaker 2: films like they make in the cinema that does not
Speaker 2: interest us, so we became accepted which was being founded
Speaker 2: quite famous at the time called film fifty eight times
Speaker 2: that it was made, and we started to make much
Speaker 2: more important and at the same time we started to
Speaker 2: do little items for televisions were about cinema and I
Speaker 2: was helping and there and everything and not the mission.
Speaker 2: I was ten twenty twenty one, still studying, just out
Speaker 2: of the army as a lieutenant, and the people at
Speaker 2: the Terribusion there was a show at the showing new
Speaker 2: fragments excerpts of new children in the weeks, and they
Speaker 2: asked me to come, because I've done I can for
Speaker 2: that show, to come and direct that show. So I
Speaker 2: was able thanks to that to see a lot of
Speaker 2: fills in the week because I choose the e And
Speaker 2: at the age of twenty one, they said we have
Speaker 2: here a winter Skins the Wander Silent and the first
Speaker 2: big go production between Holland and Transers in my home
Speaker 2: country was big, big documentary about Erasmus the Philops and
Speaker 2: they said to me, do you work to make this documented.
Speaker 2: I remember my school year, my different something, and in
Speaker 2: one month, less than one months, I read everything I
Speaker 2: could about as they said, okay, I'll do it, and
Speaker 2: we went with the school of four people throughout all
Speaker 2: of you because of that credible and travel in this
Speaker 2: time everywhere when it's anyway, but every rope, and we've
Speaker 2: filmed the documentary, you're seeing natural occasions where it will
Speaker 2: commentary be spoken by this My only I insisted, go
Speaker 2: one thing because at that time everything on television on
Speaker 2: film but film on sixty minutes, I said, black and white.
Speaker 2: I said, oh no, I only want to made thirty
Speaker 2: five million, almost big, big to do when everything that
Speaker 2: I said, if I don't have that, it's five millimeters,
Speaker 2: I am not doing it. So they accepted. And you
Speaker 2: must always remember that at that time film were extremely
Speaker 2: expensive as the material to buy it, so that was
Speaker 2: not a city. I went off to make that documentary
Speaker 2: and it went on in me have beached celebs price
Speaker 2: go at that time called the Italia ri it's so
Speaker 2: be it. And so I went on making a lot
Speaker 2: of prestigious documentary a little bit like Gems in the
Speaker 2: Indian's naturally not in that amount, but that kind of thing, big, big,
Speaker 2: big production. And also they started to give me and
Speaker 2: that was my first thing with actors on television because
Speaker 2: I'd already started direct active stage. On the stage, I
Speaker 2: had been there in between, all in between, I had
Speaker 2: been an assistant to very famous stage story and definitely
Speaker 2: so I knew began you know something about active story.
Speaker 2: And they started to give me one of my first
Speaker 2: video feature all song thirty five million. It were the
Speaker 2: Grief Diggers by Hans Cuttery, only play that I recently saw.
Speaker 2: It began or somebody of twenty must have been twenty five.
Speaker 2: What's not bad looking back, so they said to me
Speaker 2: at that time it looked different than what the people
Speaker 2: will pay. That's what's the whole point. And it was
Speaker 2: I would always been a very good technician. Please don't
Speaker 2: think and this are supposed to be a good technician
Speaker 2: is nothing, and that there's simply something one can love
Speaker 2: as one does. There is nothing to be a good technique. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the cinema is made of very bad technique nowadays.
Speaker 5: And the.
Speaker 2: Discuss but if a ballet anouncer would be done, see
Speaker 2: like some do make its are making, they wouldn't have
Speaker 2: enough to make those and broughtten eggs to throw to
Speaker 2: the state. This is with the terrible this, So I
Speaker 2: went on. They were at that time, the first subsidies
Speaker 2: in were being developed by the Ministry of Culture, and
Speaker 2: of course they came to me and said, I heard
Speaker 2: your basic television documentary. I said, there are dailor plays, whatever,
Speaker 2: are you interested to do a first movie? Because I
Speaker 2: mean with whom self? Such something depicted that didn't because
Speaker 2: it wasn't blending enough towards the basic novel by Henry
Speaker 2: Jane and Jane not especially a Flemish writer and uh
Speaker 2: and so I had adapted to Belgium, but that was
Speaker 2: not enough. I need to do them better. They counseled
Speaker 2: me to you a Semish writer, and I made my
Speaker 2: first feature, which was going to do show. This film
Speaker 2: was not very well deceived in Belgium, but when it
Speaker 2: was shown in writ all of of a sudden it
Speaker 2: was chown as one of the ten best films of
Speaker 2: that year. Slowly I started to build up my careers.
Speaker 3: Were you aware of the novel mel Portwitt before you
Speaker 3: started the project?
Speaker 2: My first show at your apartment? But there it's when
Speaker 2: you teach again. It's very very heap ex It has
Speaker 2: been restored now everybody in front of safety the best
Speaker 2: still meta bay at that kindle. Did you see, but
Speaker 2: don't forget. It's a very small country and people don't
Speaker 2: understand in your own country what you are doing now internationally.
Speaker 2: At that time already I must say that they remember
Speaker 2: and go a little bit back. I was still making
Speaker 2: shows for the new films in the week that I
Speaker 2: look you about with excerpts of film. And for that
Speaker 2: I was sent to various films where I met a
Speaker 2: lot of film direct with whom I started to talk
Speaker 2: and they saw this young man that you'd have always
Speaker 2: the same thing. Oh, this very young man knows well.
Speaker 2: I got acquainted with very famous direct who were very nice,
Speaker 2: and we saw that film and liked it and made
Speaker 2: it knows compliments and so you see this. I have
Speaker 2: to tell you that I went to a lot, so
Speaker 2: I think three three years, for as long as ten years.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna gold I'm missed doing so from the
Speaker 2: film everybody, well, it returns to belt being this film.
Speaker 2: All the critics forget ever and start feeling too, bury
Speaker 2: me under ross and whatever you want, and they and somebody,
Speaker 2: the producer lady for you told me there is one
Speaker 2: subject that completely made for you. That is the novel
Speaker 2: nult three by genre and I said, I read the number.
Speaker 2: I said, my goodness, it is almost impossible to do.
Speaker 2: But being and that are twenty six emergive being about thirty,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. But before that the twenty
Speaker 2: take twenty nine, I was thirty nine. I said, But
Speaker 2: because it's still cool, and because I had made the
Speaker 2: first cook, which was not the easiest subject to do.
Speaker 2: I said, you know, when you are wet time you say,
Speaker 2: you say to yourself, I can't do it. So I said, oh, well, outsied,
Speaker 2: But having made that very well film that was such,
Speaker 2: it said, certainly not immediately with the public here Roun,
Speaker 2: but it turns me and also with the young producers
Speaker 2: and film make it here in Belgium who ordered me
Speaker 2: and said you are the best of the TUC And
Speaker 2: they came to me and they said, we are young
Speaker 2: producers and we have directed and produced erotic movies. Well,
Speaker 2: what you call shan film. Are you prepared to do
Speaker 2: one of these films for us in your style? I
Speaker 2: said everything. If it is in my style, the style
Speaker 2: of that, it will never be commercial. Can no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no. We believe in you make it. So where
Speaker 2: I watch, confronted with the idea that was while I
Speaker 2: was preparing mal so no mind said okay that at
Speaker 2: the same time I watch within my head, woom can
Speaker 2: I talked to I don't. I don't like to ride
Speaker 2: my mood myself. I'm like an opera composer. I Leally Nycoto,
Speaker 2: and I know the opera composers did their own little
Speaker 2: great bos like Micha Plagner, the red food ramatists. And
Speaker 2: because they need four hours to do something you can
Speaker 2: do in twenty minutes. So not thinking away he's great
Speaker 2: that but that he could he was not very keep
Speaker 2: and that by myself. One of the reasons, and Hitchcock
Speaker 2: Network allot directly itself, was it's much better to work
Speaker 2: with someone so I have because I traveled a lot
Speaker 2: of television who documentary that right. I gave him to
Speaker 2: contact with very important intellectual people in France and everybody
Speaker 2: I asked, do you perhaps know somebody in France who
Speaker 2: knows about cinema and would be capable to do that,
Speaker 2: not to adapt that not and never body will well
Speaker 2: do that novel that's a different one from them. That
Speaker 2: one of the very great publishers of France told me,
Speaker 2: I know of somebody do you treat up super start
Speaker 2: that food? There? What published tale that's trying to pick
Speaker 2: that toy important? And he said, I know it and
Speaker 2: it's called not very Unfortunately, because of the novel guy,
Speaker 2: he has no longer much work. He had written at
Speaker 2: that time sixty five sins. Can imagine, among which one
Speaker 2: of the greatest French ever made the Kids of the Bahow.
Speaker 2: But not only that, he had written the treatment of
Speaker 2: the Children of Paradise. Can you imagine because of that quality,
Speaker 2: who did not have any working because of the new
Speaker 2: real lie. These idiots of the new reb believe that
Speaker 2: they could write, which they couldn't. They couldn't throw that
Speaker 2: they couldn't write. Two thinks that the same mode, the
Speaker 2: biggest one being false. It's harmably bad director. And I
Speaker 2: don't even mention something that are of device. I go
Speaker 2: from it. And these people were there except with a
Speaker 2: few except female. Of course it will make that and
Speaker 2: song that they were in the bar. They were, and
Speaker 2: they were truly they were fantastic people, and of course
Speaker 2: example became. They were very good, but the rest scratch
Speaker 2: so uh. This poor man, together with the other great
Speaker 2: writers for the bus, were written for ludeuphon were the best,
Speaker 2: the best of the best in France. And I can
Speaker 2: assure you that screaming scream writers when they were the
Speaker 2: best of the best, two them, they were very very
Speaker 2: very good. Then they presented me to that man he
Speaker 2: reads the book. It's it's a bit difficult. Which is
Speaker 2: did you which? And said we better do to have
Speaker 2: I think about Meanwhile, now I go back to these
Speaker 2: young prodies who had said made for us and the
Speaker 2: optics in silent h and uh I said, oh my goodness,
Speaker 2: to do that. So and I didn't even know what
Speaker 2: kind of subject when uh as say about me. I
Speaker 2: went for a walk. You saw a magazine called the
Speaker 2: History up history, and and we retired to the bloody
Speaker 2: countess that counts sound count about the countess? That story
Speaker 2: I read about because oh, I said, this is the
Speaker 2: subject for me. Seek under development. You dembeat in the
Speaker 2: blood of the refect. You stay young one. I go
Speaker 2: immediately back with this young produce. So we say you're
Speaker 2: completely bad. This low bugs in costume. It's seventeen sixth
Speaker 2: no no, no, no no no, that was before digit
Speaker 2: to see them up, that's where you could have multiplied
Speaker 2: the and I and I said, oh, but that's not
Speaker 2: the public. Since he bathes in the blood of words
Speaker 2: to stay young. Maybe she's still young and she's still
Speaker 2: longing the world looking for to gets more difficult every day.
Speaker 2: And with the young Podude who asked me that, and
Speaker 2: it was very great, I must say. He asked that
Speaker 2: we wrote a treatment of sixty page which I didn't
Speaker 2: have on the on the corner of the table in
Speaker 2: during three days and three ninety all in one pie.
Speaker 2: And that's was the film that would become Daughters of Time.
Speaker 2: And I said, we couldn't. But if I hit it now,
Speaker 2: this is a bad subject with erotic scenes. I cannot
Speaker 2: show this to my parents, who would the deaf care blitz.
Speaker 2: But you know, and and I said this, I've just
Speaker 2: made the film that has been applauded by a great
Speaker 2: director like Peter Brook in England said that was myself
Speaker 2: when we saw that they be a fine So whatever
Speaker 2: you know to be applauded by Peter Brook at that time,
Speaker 2: I don't know it. You can imagine, but that was
Speaker 2: just the great director of that was the accur dreams
Speaker 2: and more of his time. Oh, I thought, I have
Speaker 2: got a salut. I can't insult his good younger producer.
Speaker 2: I send the treatment to jelfried is great writer. Letter written.
Speaker 2: They talk of the parody well the treatment, and regretted
Speaker 2: of the all the films of usul in Christian Jack
Speaker 2: name a great French filmmaker. He had word and this
Speaker 2: and he will certainly reject this as the world has
Speaker 2: he ever heard. And then I have the defense to
Speaker 2: do something else. I send it to him. At that
Speaker 2: time we use telegraph. That guy and courier communic key
Speaker 2: and I get back to telegram this story. Is it
Speaker 2: the great Liberation? I want to write the dialogue and
Speaker 2: readapt the screen and adapt the skip from the script.
Speaker 2: My plan fell into the water. So I was down
Speaker 2: by this. I put in a second top stack in this.
Speaker 2: I said, if we do that, though, I want the
Speaker 2: greatest uh intellectual actress of France at that time, the
Speaker 2: great Delphin Sherry. She had just me that because he's
Speaker 2: the great actor side of the state actic, and I
Speaker 2: said I would do it because she will Confuse, of
Speaker 2: course I don't do that kind of trust. This was
Speaker 2: not knowing either love or at that time who loved
Speaker 2: coming speak, and not knowing her sense of humor and intelligence.
Speaker 2: And she said, oh, this is one such completely different
Speaker 2: for what they lets me do and everything, we will
Speaker 2: have a lot of fun. I want to do it.
Speaker 2: So my second plan let into the water. So I
Speaker 2: was bound by that, that you'll go back to my
Speaker 2: earth that had been a little bit postponed that he
Speaker 2: was working on. So once thoughts of darkness we need,
Speaker 2: of course again in Belgian. They didn't understand most to
Speaker 2: us about the film made by Belgian looking back, that
Speaker 2: it didn't look quite a maturist. But it was again
Speaker 2: and oh man, that's not exactly and overnight success in
Speaker 2: the United States because that finance the very little Mandyness
Speaker 2: and it came to Palace where also it was the Overnights.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I thought so was complete and
Speaker 2: that thought of darkness made the huge amount of money.
Speaker 2: Well look it's still now, it's shown all over the
Speaker 2: world people, young people.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: I still con't understand it, but that's the truth. So
Speaker 2: they said, you can do whatever we want. I said,
Speaker 2: i'd us with mal Petre Malfetree being issue with the
Speaker 2: French called the three on the steam and the chulp.
Speaker 2: There all thought, oh, he's going to make up but
Speaker 2: taking the option darkness with the same kind of fixtures,
Speaker 2: we will have even more famous actual will do everything.
Speaker 2: We take the best camera man there is terrificial at
Speaker 2: that time, very very good. Jerry reads the screenplay scream Papers,
Speaker 2: sitting at that track, said all I want to do
Speaker 2: it pixel wonderful and at last I can do something
Speaker 2: where I can show really what I do, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I had also the possibility of what who name a
Speaker 2: great director photography of that time in Britain or Simbawi, whoever.
Speaker 2: They all wanted to make. There is the they were there.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's a dream for the cinematter cut Jerry.
Speaker 2: I care actors and everything, and I start to do
Speaker 2: the film and the few things can go wrong because
Speaker 2: when they saw that they didn't see the film. They
Speaker 2: were expected, of course if you were completely different movie
Speaker 2: than Doughters of dou and they started to interfere. They
Speaker 2: sent me, and the United Artists was in Gold, so
Speaker 2: they sent me an editor. I edit my films at
Speaker 2: the same time that I've been there, different called Richard Mark.
Speaker 2: He's probably dead by now, that should have been dead
Speaker 2: by then. It was not the fault of this man.
Speaker 2: He has done a lot of films he destroyed, for instance,
Speaker 2: through the film by Yankee Witch that is one of this.
Speaker 2: If you see that film again and if you want
Speaker 2: to see a film that The Midnight Go Boy he
Speaker 2: also did for which he had an oscar. If you
Speaker 2: didn't on the credit there there you would know that
Speaker 2: officals don't need anything the vertically edit. So but on
Speaker 2: top of that, he couldn't understand. But it's completely beyond
Speaker 2: edu capabilities, not only technical capability, intellectual career. This was
Speaker 2: not the film where somebody comes into a door and
Speaker 2: opens the door. That this people entered doors in a
Speaker 2: different way. In that way. It was well, he didn't understand.
Speaker 2: After one week, I say, getting me rid of that
Speaker 2: director and my abutity we were not the producer, doubt
Speaker 2: there were biggest producer. So no, no, no, no, this
Speaker 2: man has been sent to us by United Artists. We
Speaker 2: can't do that. They will think something is open. Said,
Speaker 2: but he's just anagy to come out, get with jet
Speaker 2: and with it right now. No no, no, no, okay,
Speaker 2: we stayed with that man. It was awful, but disbanded.
Speaker 2: It needed understand and the film went on in digital.
Speaker 2: You can of course flopped, not only because it there
Speaker 2: for the reason that at that time John Camp where
Speaker 2: on Camp with your colleague journalist said, do you really
Speaker 2: think this genre belongs to a Christopher like Camp that
Speaker 2: were be kind? It's un film. It's this immortal question
Speaker 2: has been registered and will enter history. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: How did you step? But one thing? They were nice?
Speaker 2: The film was no good because it was completely wrongly
Speaker 2: it was. But I had one saving grace. Thism was
Speaker 2: for good parts subcitized by the Famish Ministry of Culture,
Speaker 2: and I was obliged to produce, obliged to do Flemish.
Speaker 2: Well U to the BELVESI and producers let me do
Speaker 2: the Famish version, but re edited completely. But that was
Speaker 2: not just a rage that if it had been simply
Speaker 2: they negative and start all over again, wouldn't have been heeded. No,
Speaker 2: I had to swim between second takes and the ch
Speaker 2: thisim will never be but it could have been, because
Speaker 2: even what I did was not what it could have
Speaker 2: been if it had been well edited. That it's the
Speaker 2: whole story of that. Fortunately, my films have a tendency
Speaker 2: to survive the time, and with the is it has
Speaker 2: the film as cad of reputation, and now it has
Speaker 2: not the colde status of A Dot of Darkness, which
Speaker 2: is something exceptional. But I don't speak about the quality
Speaker 2: of the film. I speak about the cold status, and
Speaker 2: it is well it has now it's kind of repeative.
Speaker 2: Its reputation will now be underful because you're being union
Speaker 2: uh and very vast. There are hat shoes in it.
Speaker 2: As one of the ten films that they subsidized. To
Speaker 2: be completely restormed was not an easy task because the
Speaker 2: negative has suffered cuit a lot. But we managed. I supervised,
Speaker 2: the may take supervised. The fstorage Outdoors of Darkness is
Speaker 2: rapid than the original. When it is it is all right,
Speaker 2: and it will be shown in Bologna the old film
Speaker 2: historical films. But and then probably and I begin to feely.
Speaker 2: They all begin to say, oh, this very very special
Speaker 2: film that nobody has ever made something like that. They
Speaker 2: begin to make the noises that I know they usually
Speaker 2: made my film, and uh, I would prefer they recognize
Speaker 2: them immediately, But that unfortunate, not the case with that's
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: Of a Just to clarify, why were you not able
Speaker 3: to go back to the original footage when you were
Speaker 3: doing your.
Speaker 2: Cut of it, because once soon be made the negative
Speaker 2: it's got. It is not a digital movie is not
Speaker 2: pub but with analog film, with the old negative, it's got.
Speaker 2: So you have to do everything in between. You have
Speaker 2: you have second thanks. You you never in a big film,
Speaker 2: you never shoot one shop. You one take of one shop.
Speaker 2: We should two or three and to be sure on
Speaker 2: different cassettes. That's something probably for you, something out of
Speaker 2: pre history. But we usually so that it would not
Speaker 2: land up in the data if something went on that
Speaker 2: you still had a second take et. So it's a
Speaker 2: film made out of second takes. And in between the
Speaker 2: in between the dates, there are also pieces and it's
Speaker 2: a piece so here now and then I had to
Speaker 2: make a duke of the original editing because I needed
Speaker 2: to shot as it was, or a piece of that short.
Speaker 2: But mostly it was second choice with a second choil,
Speaker 2: so you'd see that. It's the reason if you know
Speaker 2: what a film bits, then you will understand its immediately.
Speaker 2: It is simply that you just the film that has
Speaker 2: been edited. You cannot unedited. That is everything. It is
Speaker 2: a unique material in the undercont bec people. Digital you
Speaker 2: have everything in all the quantities that you want without
Speaker 2: any problem. You can use the original constantly, whereas analog
Speaker 2: film you have only that one piece of negative like
Speaker 2: you may well anybody who want they where nobody and
Speaker 2: involve its anatherog photography. But if you use an adog
Speaker 2: film which film, so you you only have that one piece,
Speaker 2: so you will have to navigate the you in thisy.
Speaker 2: So that's the It's a very simple. If you want
Speaker 2: like the old sy but the syn I used to be,
Speaker 2: then then.
Speaker 3: I forget about the negative cutting part of things, and
Speaker 3: how you just don't have the backups of those anything else.
Speaker 3: That that's like you said, once it's cut.
Speaker 2: Once it's got it cut, but you can't do you
Speaker 2: but then the quality suff You can do the negative
Speaker 2: looks good in that works with a negative in color,
Speaker 2: so and the quality suffers terribly so that you're trying
Speaker 2: to level it. So you you taken choice. When you
Speaker 2: filmed a film on film, you to stop. You took
Speaker 2: a second sort for couples, so that and sometime things
Speaker 2: went along the self. Sometimes they were direct. We did
Speaker 2: eighteen takes of the same shop, and I'm not that
Speaker 2: kind of direct repair for you. I need to be
Speaker 2: one shot. But I couple one and sometimes something went
Speaker 2: from So you had a reserve and we had to
Speaker 2: redream all these speech bits and piece. It was the
Speaker 2: first of You cannot imagine how complex and complicates you
Speaker 2: it could not be got like you got a not
Speaker 2: I must say the results I see within the stipicity
Speaker 2: and very proud of technically because it's still with all
Speaker 2: its faults owns together. But it would have hell far
Speaker 2: better together if I had had it for the first time.
Speaker 2: Little and they goes the people of United Artists who
Speaker 2: saw then the first verse and then the second verse,
Speaker 2: the one I get didn't. They came to me and
Speaker 2: they said, but why didn't you call us and say
Speaker 2: you get rid of that the editor? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can't pack. That's not my character. I cannot behind
Speaker 2: the back of my producers begin to call financiers or
Speaker 2: whatever that you don't that's smally apprehensible and you don't
Speaker 2: do that. I would have done it now because I
Speaker 2: know that that this kind of that. At that time,
Speaker 2: I was pretty young, don't look at and with an
Speaker 2: extremely complicated film to make with the characters. It was
Speaker 2: a complicated to make a film itself. You don't have
Speaker 2: in Belgian, the very best usual, the best assistance in
Speaker 2: the world that date. Unfortunately, I had wonderful director for
Speaker 2: Productyons who they with it. They had a very good
Speaker 2: trade off of it. Also I had a few people
Speaker 2: and I had very very good British technicians for all
Speaker 2: the special effects. So these people helped me during the fruiting.
Speaker 2: They were otherwise, but come cuckoo. It describe the thing
Speaker 2: because it remained Belgian production where the very it's not
Speaker 2: like films that we make today were in commerce. The
Speaker 2: cinema is a commercial, smaller film that we made that
Speaker 2: in these times and seeking of the very very long
Speaker 2: time ago I have sent those. That is the reason
Speaker 2: why it is like it is like it. I don't
Speaker 2: understand me only I'm a crowd of what I did
Speaker 2: then with the material I help I think certain me
Speaker 2: during love it holds very well together and it is
Speaker 2: it's the young people you see. It seem to be
Speaker 2: increased because it's different from what if usually seen in
Speaker 2: that song and it have its reputation and I won't
Speaker 2: cry that fact, sure, but it could have been a
Speaker 2: thousand times that I have one of the greatest musicians
Speaker 2: of all time, the cinematical who told me, And I said,
Speaker 2: you know the French, don't. You don't pay French composers.
Speaker 2: He works on authorights the times that film. I told him, Souse,
Speaker 2: you have not earned a lot of money with that,
Speaker 2: you know. And he said to me, listen, Harry, this
Speaker 2: is the best film I ever made. The score for
Speaker 2: this is the best score I have to be the
Speaker 2: best score I ever made. For them, I would have
Speaker 2: redone it and not asked one sup for it. All
Speaker 2: these people who work for it, Jerry and the actors.
Speaker 2: I showed that an actor like he could do far
Speaker 2: more than what she did usually caught television and in
Speaker 2: the British industry and all these things. And I'm not
Speaker 2: this context, but you know it is not the film
Speaker 2: can I sometimes imagine, but it could be. I cannot.
Speaker 2: I cannot because one cannot know that there is something
Speaker 2: It is impossible to know. You cannot know it, you
Speaker 2: cannot even imagine it. And I certainly cannot because of
Speaker 2: it's something which went wrong in organization and should not
Speaker 2: have come home. But I don't complain. I'm a film
Speaker 2: that remains that ows up after so many years. That's
Speaker 2: not the immense success that thoughts of darkness but still
Speaker 2: folds well, So why should I mean? There are not
Speaker 2: many that I can say that, So I while that'll
Speaker 2: be unhappy.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Jerry Fisher. What was it like working with him?
Speaker 2: All fantastic technique, twenty minutes per shot, with total speed imagination.
Speaker 2: He was one of those that the opiece that goes
Speaker 2: through the museum, looks at the light, knows what like this,
Speaker 2: knows what drama is, knows understands the film. The only
Speaker 2: problem I had he knew I was a very good technician,
Speaker 2: and I knew he was a great Dicam photogog. So
Speaker 2: from time to time the shots, we'll see that in
Speaker 2: the shots that kind of it's not not very I wasn't,
Speaker 2: but it was always, Ah, I'm going to invent for
Speaker 2: you something which is so difficult nobody can have resolve it,
Speaker 2: and he do, whereas it's mine. Uh, Whereas I decided,
Speaker 2: uh will you be able to do that?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 2: And uh and the film surcs a little bit of that,
Speaker 2: a little bit. He had worked with terrible director. Woln't
Speaker 2: be despised. I would not like to be despised by
Speaker 2: Jacked Pish, who had the biggest approgans and u irony,
Speaker 2: which kills people with work. You know, the sister the
Speaker 2: British personty is incredible. When they don't try to people
Speaker 2: like you, you better jump into your grave. But we
Speaker 2: had great respectator uh. He was one one, not of
Speaker 2: the technic wonderful artists. But it were no surprise. It
Speaker 2: was all the time, in three times in museums, which
Speaker 2: is the way to learn how to do lights, because
Speaker 2: photography is life, nothing else. And he knew he understood
Speaker 2: the shop and the only thing that was different for
Speaker 2: Daughter of the Darkness that these photogogy called Edit Thunder
Speaker 2: and who was one of the very very best women's
Speaker 2: photography I ever had, probably the best. Women looked fabulous
Speaker 2: and in gortural darkness you can see what I did,
Speaker 2: and they look so fabulous that when we were restoring
Speaker 2: the fill in rome now two years ago, the Italians
Speaker 2: that worked in the last you know sce guys of
Speaker 2: twenty five years came into the room where we were
Speaker 2: to read the story and said, how beautiful in the
Speaker 2: Italian of how beautiful these women are in a film
Speaker 2: of fifty years old, you see, because they look fabulous.
Speaker 2: Now this director being Dutch were very good in sobs
Speaker 2: and faces and not very well adequate but not brilliant
Speaker 2: when it comes to atmosphere, whereas Jerry was only interested
Speaker 2: in atmosphere and women faces. He told me, he said
Speaker 2: to me, it's always the same you put that light
Speaker 2: the sixty degrees mean key, like a nighlight. And that's true.
Speaker 2: It is always the same thing, but it is not
Speaker 2: always safe. And that's that's problem of our business. It
Speaker 2: is the same thing. But if you have got talents,
Speaker 2: it is not the same. You use the elements of
Speaker 2: the technique or that what you add without even sometimes
Speaker 2: knowing what you adds. That's what makes the difference between
Speaker 2: or made by fast what could fool and film made
Speaker 2: by to say too and Bill Bakers when an idiot
Speaker 2: and the other a great artist. So you had that
Speaker 2: one great actnication for that man up to the end
Speaker 2: of his life. When he saw the film again in
Speaker 2: the be a fire we came out, then said in
Speaker 2: his in each very visual passion, Oh well, we didn't
Speaker 2: do too badly there.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: Well that we were British are like that and uh,
Speaker 2: and that's it's extreme extremely agreeable to work with English.
Speaker 2: The British technicians and the the artists, uh, the actives
Speaker 2: as well as the technicians. They are so professional, they
Speaker 2: have so little arrogant. Uh, it's it's and they have
Speaker 2: this mentality which very very you've got the exists they
Speaker 2: from the show oil on up to the director. They
Speaker 2: always say ourself, if you understand what I need? And
Speaker 2: they in Belgium, for instance, when I say you have
Speaker 2: to do the adults I very demanding, they said, of course,
Speaker 2: your work so hard. It's your film. That's Belgium. And
Speaker 2: often also the American mentors, oh, look it's the world.
Speaker 2: Can we go from one? Pay? Never? The British technician
Speaker 2: has that mentality. They always are proud of their work
Speaker 2: and proud of the work they are working on, and
Speaker 2: that is a pleasure. I don't know it's still like that,
Speaker 2: but I think so. It's in their mentality and U
Speaker 2: that they will all the British will always be in
Speaker 2: the because they have the strength of character and of knowledge.
Speaker 2: They and you get it hands the strollbacks, the the greateishness,
Speaker 2: and you can see that in some of their better
Speaker 2: films that are not so good and in the bad starts.
Speaker 2: The great directors they be clean, but in the lesser parts,
Speaker 2: say compare Ryan's Daughter, two Lords of Creatia, once of Raadia,
Speaker 2: big piece of coms u uh. This perfection and it's
Speaker 2: self locker can sometimes make them blind for deficiencies in
Speaker 2: the setup of the whole dractic. This is the problem
Speaker 2: because they are so they are not upsetted by techniques
Speaker 2: like the Jones what do you of Google? Some to
Speaker 2: go gaga because they don't want everything must be see
Speaker 2: the ten the really to use the whip there to
Speaker 2: get something done, and that it's outside their capabilities. But
Speaker 2: the British someone but I'm not the only director, but
Speaker 2: all people have work the greatest say the same thing.
Speaker 2: So it's nothing.
Speaker 3: May tell me about about your cast. It's such a
Speaker 3: great collection of different actors.
Speaker 2: Let's start with ousman. While that was just to call
Speaker 2: the man that not a lot to do. He said,
Speaker 2: I cost so much to day and I added so nothing.
Speaker 2: Spect he liked the parts because actually like parts where
Speaker 2: they die, actually love they dying, so cized though moment
Speaker 2: on the stake under then he was a dreadful man, saying,
Speaker 2: no respectful, it's the actors that was the worst part.
Speaker 2: But he was at the end of this he completely
Speaker 2: didn't understand cinema anymore. It was very tragic, and in
Speaker 2: fact he had always been the great produced, putting people together.
Speaker 2: His great look sick. But I have my doubts about
Speaker 2: other things. But he couldn't have. I had two and
Speaker 2: to give you an example, had three three possibilities ofs
Speaker 2: and Wells, John Houston or Peter Houstiner to play that
Speaker 2: part that could be called corking. Then this was an
Speaker 2: international co production, so we had to pick up people
Speaker 2: from various countries. My first choice for the acting part
Speaker 2: that Susan did very well was Caprin Diener through did
Speaker 2: you see because Catherine. I don't speak about the quality
Speaker 2: of actors. I speak about the aspect. Catherine at something extraordinary.
Speaker 2: She has a blank face. She had a brand face.
Speaker 2: That phase you could fill up with everything. She was
Speaker 2: not the greatest intelligence, intelligent tactics towards not Defini, sharing
Speaker 2: whatever not the gheman sing array or that guy no no,
Speaker 2: no no, but a face. You could do anything with it.
Speaker 2: And that was ideal for they do exact five parts.
Speaker 2: But see the unfortunately the idiotic produced. I had that
Speaker 2: that guy and arranged from her to see those of
Speaker 2: doctness in the cinema, no problem, but without telling me
Speaker 2: you have to come to that cinema at that time.
Speaker 2: This in the cinema. Unfortunately they outstand and Catherine had
Speaker 2: come from a suit suit somewhere and was not made up.
Speaker 2: And she's the kind of a pursume who needs to
Speaker 2: have their mask, you see. And she comes out and
Speaker 2: and presented to her as the director and the matter
Speaker 2: was over. She didn't talk to do the fill you understand,
Speaker 2: because she had been tracked and need too and that right.
Speaker 2: So somebody said, oh, I know I need to fill
Speaker 2: and strect with let's married at the time. What would
Speaker 2: you think of a suit and hand seem as a
Speaker 2: which no, which is not exactly like that. She'd be part.
Speaker 2: But she's very good. And they said to me, oh,
Speaker 2: we had the greatest of the that makeup man of
Speaker 2: the Brittany who used to be the makeup man of
Speaker 2: Ingridman afgt. It set a um and he will manage
Speaker 2: and which he did extraordinarily well. So I had general
Speaker 2: government and susan action. So that for a second, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to work because of you. In school group example,
Speaker 2: Miche greatest French actors at the time still is in
Speaker 2: my eyes along with us, and we said were perfect
Speaker 2: for the past. On the other hand, and I said, oh,
Speaker 2: I loved that to work with not your No, I
Speaker 2: need French actors and loved to work with not you said,
Speaker 2: And since he s there with plays comedies, I'll do
Speaker 2: a counter effect with him and do something completely different.
Speaker 2: This is that to do with my screen id. We
Speaker 2: love that character based and which comes directly out of
Speaker 2: the novel as such, And that was the biggest error
Speaker 2: I could have made, not yet yet, but as you know,
Speaker 2: and I've seen the film, all these characters are simple,
Speaker 2: the burgers an inside there are gods, okay, and I
Speaker 2: instead of making a strange character out of Jean Pierre,
Speaker 2: I should have made him the concerns of that huge house.
Speaker 2: What is about these lights going out? You see? That's
Speaker 2: what's the immense error of my life, and which I
Speaker 2: will approach to myself, because the young guy who read
Speaker 2: the strict play had already told me before and that
Speaker 2: is wrong, and you never believe somebody who says that.
Speaker 2: Here great difficulty too, but it's something on which you
Speaker 2: were a long time, which was this case strip all
Speaker 2: the other actors simply Vata I wanted to use because
Speaker 2: I do want to tell in fact, to play the
Speaker 2: young girl in Dods of Darkness, so see that she
Speaker 2: would have been better a time than that Canadian Canadian woman.
Speaker 2: And the rest yes, all Flemish, all pay music facts
Speaker 2: which we don't know good and and that one of
Speaker 2: them being out a comedian who played the non lumpy
Speaker 2: and he was there. All these people with the Flemish
Speaker 2: people were wonderful, uh reason, the more that the attitude
Speaker 2: of mister Wells towards them was apprehensible. Even the story
Speaker 2: the scene with Michael Bouquet in both at this big
Speaker 2: scene and there's a comedy scene and in the middle
Speaker 2: of the scene awesome stuffs to learn. He had said
Speaker 2: to me before do you use a close up in
Speaker 2: that scene? I said, no, no, no, of of sudden,
Speaker 2: it's a comedy scene. We've been a medium soft and
Speaker 2: we stay on the scene like it is. And Awsen
Speaker 2: did not like that. And in the middle of the scene,
Speaker 2: which a white comical scene, Michelle at very else, very
Speaker 2: very well and also started to laugh. So we redo
Speaker 2: the scene. And he always started to laugh at the
Speaker 2: same book so we had an Jerry behind me on
Speaker 2: the camera set. Give the bust if girts up, otherwise
Speaker 2: will be still be here to borrow. This gives you
Speaker 2: an idea of whom, as we else, was very dreadful person.
Speaker 2: But it happens, and if he wouldn't have been there,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been the same. People suffered more than
Speaker 2: I have suffered with Marilyne Monroe. So did it nothing?
Speaker 2: That seems each kind of thing, that's it?
Speaker 3: What else do you I'm very curious about the retitling
Speaker 3: for I imagine it's just for the United States the
Speaker 3: legend of Doomhouse. Was it really released under that title?
Speaker 2: I think I think that was the sep type of
Speaker 2: one of the pocket editions of the novel. It's written
Speaker 2: named fran in chaos in this trial the Amazon anty
Speaker 2: in the it's you go, it's like coumpty, it's wonted
Speaker 2: howls and that's that's that must be? That is and no,
Speaker 2: no nothing.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, how was the movie received? I you mentioned it
Speaker 3: playing at Cohn, you mentioned your Flemish adit of it.
Speaker 3: How did they play for audiences in Knetre.
Speaker 2: That's because on the one hand, the critics could not
Speaker 2: understand this kind of How could this kind of film
Speaker 2: be showning down? That would never be the case in
Speaker 2: our time could but that was the case in that time.
Speaker 2: It was not very received, not at all. When I
Speaker 2: had read on the film, there was of course revalidation,
Speaker 2: but still it never it never reached the eyes that
Speaker 2: Dogs of Darkness had, which I understand.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: I still believe that if I edited it from the
Speaker 2: first time, it would have probably not had that kind
Speaker 2: of success millions, such huge screenings and so on. But
Speaker 2: with the years now it has. When you look on nowadays,
Speaker 2: the barylmeter for such things is internet. Of course, it
Speaker 2: has its own reputation, I think, because it is such
Speaker 2: a bizarre more than olders. And that's it. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: there's one one act, of course, the main actor mature career. Also,
Speaker 2: it does it stop very well. I think I made
Speaker 2: an error in this sense in my mind, because it
Speaker 2: took a long time before we made that, for three years.
Speaker 2: Don't forget. I had seen him in one wonderful film
Speaker 2: by called The Us the Humorist by Vocus Brindle, very much,
Speaker 2: very young, and in my mind he had stayed that boy.
Speaker 2: And I think it's a little too old for the part,
Speaker 2: but for the rest. But these are small things that
Speaker 2: in every film has a problem in my store, and
Speaker 2: it's a new film. The woman is an horror but
Speaker 2: she can't help. She's very compactive, but I think she's
Speaker 2: she's n for the part. You know, some things happen,
Speaker 2: And who can explain that both the Caprio and about
Speaker 2: the Negro, who are such superb actors, are so awful
Speaker 2: in that Moon movie by scored the last thing that's complete.
Speaker 2: Nobody understands how how can a DiCaprio be so bad?
Speaker 2: I mean that, And it's not because coss my age.
Speaker 2: He's still the very great directory is its simply you know,
Speaker 2: it happens. It happens with films. Things happen that are
Speaker 2: INCOMPREHENSI and that is that is, that's the right, because
Speaker 2: if we knew, we would be living or in huge
Speaker 2: castles with hundreds of retainers and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows that Goldman who said that there, well, nobody
Speaker 2: knows anything. This is still the great truths about cinema.
Speaker 2: Man does not understand. I cannot understand for that in general,
Speaker 2: that film is very the tring of the wound. It
Speaker 2: is Indian thing. But apart from that, you cannot understand
Speaker 2: how such great, great actual gets me so terrible. And
Speaker 2: it happens. It happens, and it is not the question
Speaker 2: of approach. It's not a question of source. One cannot understand.
Speaker 2: I have no national explanation for strange things that happen
Speaker 2: in the cinema. Man can find you have a reason,
Speaker 2: like I explained to you that I told you that
Speaker 2: about the match, your career being a little bit too old,
Speaker 2: or so Captain the nor who would have probably he'd
Speaker 2: been more interested, not better, but more in certainly not
Speaker 2: as an act, but more interesting visually than Susan that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But can explain I can explain why
Speaker 2: in Dads of Darkness Canadian actresses because she was incapable
Speaker 2: of acting whatever I did. But I edited that movie,
Speaker 2: and therefore I could arrange things, and why the male
Speaker 2: and John Garland, but also to all he had been
Speaker 2: presented to me on photo has been twenty twenty years
Speaker 2: younger than he was. They did so that were the
Speaker 2: American people who wanted him because he had played the
Speaker 2: film in the House of dark Sadders and they said, ah,
Speaker 2: if he had played that he could play that. You know,
Speaker 2: our producers hard to the bass is very amusing out
Speaker 2: anecdotes that I wanted that I get told you Silvis
Speaker 2: for that part that the Canadian idiot did. But I
Speaker 2: had also I had thought of Malcolm McDowell. I don't
Speaker 2: know them. I am tells you something. An English actor
Speaker 2: for the part English aristotra. He read the escape and
Speaker 2: threw it literally my head and set and I won't
Speaker 2: do such phonography, okay, chack. Six months later he did Caligula.
Speaker 2: Now this must explain to you what actors are. And
Speaker 2: this can be translict into the very simple sentence, never
Speaker 2: believe that that's it, and there that's it. They are actor,
Speaker 2: they're acting. They can't help it.
Speaker 10: It is it is.
Speaker 2: It does not diminish their capability nor their talent. No
Speaker 2: nothing that if the extraordinary sentence nobody, no senity applies
Speaker 2: to somebody that's two active, it happens. You know, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's an art. It is not uh science and even science. No,
Speaker 2: it's not, because it can be used to want to
Speaker 2: make a niche. But for the restive, absolutely incomprehensible wise,
Speaker 2: things go well and by things go. That's true. How
Speaker 2: about you?
Speaker 3: What are you working on these days?
Speaker 2: Or what are you up to? I have an idea
Speaker 2: for a French biography of a famous French songstress who
Speaker 2: was the kind of how should I say, influences of
Speaker 2: her time in the thirties, twas and fifties, called susici holidos.
Speaker 2: You won't know her. Her thing was that she has
Speaker 2: been painted two hundred forty times by the most among them,
Speaker 2: the most famous painted the twenties thirties of her time
Speaker 2: two hundred and her cabaret. She had her own cabaret
Speaker 2: in Paris, but hung full of those paintings, and that
Speaker 2: is one of our of And she was a great singer.
Speaker 2: She sound only about about sailors and the sea, etetera.
Speaker 2: But what she did was maybe. And the interesting part
Speaker 2: of her is she was the lesbian of all lesbians,
Speaker 2: but loved one man and not a little loved so
Speaker 2: she He was the most famous and most handsome French
Speaker 2: pilots of his time, who was killed during One of
Speaker 2: his friends called you won't can know him, but all
Speaker 2: the French many you know. It's so well known that
Speaker 2: many schools are named after him, and that kind of
Speaker 2: fire that makes it extremely interesting. She knew everybody. She
Speaker 2: was what nowadays would be called an influence. She dressed
Speaker 2: that ambulish body, or great photographies like Manree photographed on
Speaker 2: all sides, the chacot, that name a great French artist
Speaker 2: and she is set about with it. So she was
Speaker 2: very important. The anything that produced us me who will
Speaker 2: we choose to play that part? And that's the big problem.
Speaker 2: But you will find that that is not and the
Speaker 2: biographies now something that is considered as being a good
Speaker 2: commercial bed. So I I hope that I will be
Speaker 2: able to make it. It is not a horribly expensive film,
Speaker 2: but of course it's a costume would be and uh oh,
Speaker 2: I think that she did one everything and a very
Speaker 2: very great artist and very very very interesting. The sexual
Speaker 2: path is interesting. They'll have to like itself with interesting
Speaker 2: obsession with her art. She she considered herself a great artist.
Speaker 2: That she was also somebody who did not only sing,
Speaker 2: she recited poems in her cabaret and knew everybody. Uh
Speaker 2: and that's it's it's a kind of review a biography.
Speaker 2: It's a bioa with that exception that most biography of
Speaker 2: flashbacks and did so it's chronological because I detest backs
Speaker 2: and that shit the dirty.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm besit with, mister Koumel. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much for your time. This has been so great talking
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Well that's very if you have to believe it. I'm
Speaker 2: happy to thank you very much. Bye bye.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back and we were talking about
Speaker 3: melput tweet and like I said, the director's cut is
Speaker 3: the second version of this that I saw. I watched
Speaker 3: the theatrical version at first, and I think I need
Speaker 3: to watch probably both of them a few more times
Speaker 3: just to see more of the differences. But we've talked
Speaker 3: about how labyrinthine this story is literally at times, but
Speaker 3: the longer version definitely gives me a lot more to
Speaker 3: chew on and is much more of a satisfying watch.
Speaker 3: Like I said, the only thing that I'm missing is
Speaker 3: Orson Wells's voice, and Matthew doesn't sound like you even
Speaker 3: miss that.
Speaker 7: I think he kind of mumbles his way through the
Speaker 7: role a little bit, and so I think, yeah, it
Speaker 7: was a feature of his vocal performance in those years.
Speaker 7: I don't quite know what to say about why he
Speaker 7: was doing things that way, but yeah, I don't have
Speaker 7: too much of a problem watching this film in Flemish.
Speaker 7: I think, despite the fact that most of the main
Speaker 7: characters were speaking English, well Yan and Nancy are speaking
Speaker 7: English as orson Wells and I guess some of the
Speaker 7: other actors were speaking French. But in a way, this
Speaker 7: is like the Italian approach to making a movie, where
Speaker 7: you can const actors from all over the world with
Speaker 7: different languages doing scenes it seems, in their respective languages,
Speaker 7: and then being dubbed into one consistent language at the end.
Speaker 7: So we watch a lot of domes from the same period,
Speaker 7: you get very used to this type of the multi
Speaker 7: lingual approach.
Speaker 3: I've always been a fan more over the last two
Speaker 3: decades of the use of dubbing in European films, and
Speaker 3: just that the dubbing always, for me anyway, feels like
Speaker 3: it adds a little bit of a layer of disconnect,
Speaker 3: that you can tell that people aren't saying what they're
Speaker 3: actually saying, and that makes it even stranger for me.
Speaker 3: So watching a film that deals with the fantastique, seeing
Speaker 3: that dubbed, I think that actually adds another aspect to it,
Speaker 3: which I really like. So watching those shallow films, watching
Speaker 3: more of the horror films and things, it's just, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: this makes it even stranger because it feels like the
Speaker 3: voices aren't matched up perfectly with the faces.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like a disassociation kind of thing that adds
Speaker 8: to the sort of uncomfortable uncanniness of a lot of
Speaker 8: the films of this are especially horror and fantastic. And yes,
Speaker 8: I would understand that for a first time watcher. And
Speaker 8: I'm sure the first time I saw like a sort
Speaker 8: of European dubbed film where actors are not the lip
Speaker 8: movements aren't matching up, it was probably I'm sure I
Speaker 8: was very disoriented too. But isn't a quiet taste, And
Speaker 8: once you're able to get on board with that, I
Speaker 8: think you benefit from that quality that the dubbing hads.
Speaker 3: I have to recommend. I saw a really nice documentary
Speaker 3: called Forgotten Scares, which deals a lot with Belgian horror films.
Speaker 3: I think it's called Forgotten Scares and in depth look
Speaker 3: at Flemish horror cinema. It was from twenty seventeen. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of discussion of kumal In there, as well
Speaker 3: as some of the other Flemish filmmakers that were his
Speaker 3: contemporaries and even some of the newer folks that have
Speaker 3: been working over the last couple decades. I really thought
Speaker 3: that was great. It was so nice to get so specific,
Speaker 3: to look at just Flemish horror. I'm like, is there
Speaker 3: enough to sustain a documentary on Flemish? Yes, yes there is.
Speaker 3: It's more than just Daughters of Darkness Malpertwee and then
Speaker 3: say this with red teeth. There is a lot of
Speaker 3: good films being made at this time, and I find
Speaker 3: these fascinating. I'm really curious to get into more, and
Speaker 3: I love to hear that there's actually that what did
Speaker 3: you call it before, Jessica, the Belgian belgitude belgiitude. Yes,
Speaker 3: I'm curious to see, yeah, films that express belgitude.
Speaker 8: I think that while the Belgian film industry itself and
Speaker 8: documentary is absolutely wonderful, it's such a I actually came
Speaker 8: across it as an extra on I think it was
Speaker 8: Rabid Granny's some sort of. It was a nineties Belgian
Speaker 8: horror film, and so it was really great to watch
Speaker 8: because they do talk about Anti Coumal a lot at
Speaker 8: the beginning. But like I said, even though there isn't
Speaker 8: a sort of ground tradition of Belgian cinema, such as
Speaker 8: there is in France or Germany or Italy. I think
Speaker 8: the lineage that sort of leads up to films like
Speaker 8: malper Twee. There's another sort of director in the surrealist
Speaker 8: tradition that came slightly before Camel called Andrea Delvo I believe,
Speaker 8: who worked up in starting in the fifties, and I
Speaker 8: think up until the eighties. Rather, I think this sort
Speaker 8: of lineage of weirdness in our like they're surrealist roots,
Speaker 8: and prior to that, even the symbolist roots, because Belgian symbolism,
Speaker 8: which was a sort of precursor to Belgian or surrealism
Speaker 8: in general, is a weird, uncanny, strange, horrific images and
Speaker 8: channeling historical references. So I think, all in again, it's
Speaker 8: and I see it as part of the Belgian psyche.
Speaker 8: It's just and though there may have not been as
Speaker 8: much opportunity for the Belgian cinema to thrive in a
Speaker 8: way that it might in a larger country, I think
Speaker 8: that because they had this rich lineage that like once
Speaker 8: there started to be a tradition of Belgian films, albeit
Speaker 8: a bit later than other countries that it's They're very dynamic,
Speaker 8: they have their own character, and that's for me. I
Speaker 8: feel like that where that comes from.
Speaker 3: I would almost be curious to compare Swiss films to
Speaker 3: Belgian films, just because we talked a little bit earlier
Speaker 3: this year about the Unknown Man from Shandigor and just
Speaker 3: that Switzerland is in that weird position like Belgium is,
Speaker 3: where it's all of these different languages, all of these
Speaker 3: different cultures all coming together in one place. I would
Speaker 3: be curious to know if there are crossovers between that,
Speaker 3: just with that kind of fragmented, almost fragmented psyche that
Speaker 3: they have. And I love I've only been to Belgium once,
Speaker 3: but I really enjoyed it. Thought it was great. I
Speaker 3: loved ant Orp, and I love this whole idea of
Speaker 3: the two cultures living together and just that everything had
Speaker 3: to be in multiple languages. It was a little bit
Speaker 3: more organic than when you go to Canada and they're
Speaker 3: just oh yeah and the French stuff, like until you
Speaker 3: get to Quebec and that's just the French is the
Speaker 3: most important thing, and fuck all the English stuff. But
Speaker 3: when you're in the English speaking part of Canada.
Speaker 2: It's no.
Speaker 3: We also have to have the French. There's got to
Speaker 3: be the French here. There's got to have a wret
Speaker 3: on every stop side. But yeah, you don't see that necessarily,
Speaker 3: especially in Montreal. It's just oh, I don't want to
Speaker 3: speak English, get out of here. I really now am
Speaker 3: pretty inspired to see more of these Belgian films. And
Speaker 3: do you know did Kumel make other things that are
Speaker 3: worth tracking down and checking out?
Speaker 8: Obviously some Daughters of Darkness right, and you have as well.
Speaker 8: There's a movie that predates both of them that he made,
Speaker 8: I think just a few years before. It was this
Speaker 8: Deby feature called Believe It's Monsieur Howarden or something like that.
Speaker 8: I've tried to find it. It doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 8: readily available. I haven't. I've google searched it, I've seen
Speaker 8: if there have been been any like home video releases.
Speaker 8: I can't find it, and I would like to see
Speaker 8: it because it does seem to from what I understand,
Speaker 8: it lines up with Daughters of Darkness and Malpertwee in
Speaker 8: a fantastique kind of way. But my understanding is that
Speaker 8: after Malpertweet, Kummel was so disillusioned with the film industry
Speaker 8: that he just decided he was going to work in
Speaker 8: television and do documentaries, and so I think like the
Speaker 8: bulk of this work following Malpertwee is in that vein
Speaker 8: rather than I think he just decided like this he wanted,
Speaker 8: he liked doing those films, but also they weren't really
Speaker 8: working for him in terms of his career, and so
Speaker 8: he just decided to move on from it. He did
Speaker 8: some The other thing that I have seen that he's
Speaker 8: done was there's a there was a TV show in
Speaker 8: the eighties and nineties from France called LASERI Rose. I
Speaker 8: don't know if you're familiar with this, but it was
Speaker 8: like an erotic late night TV and it was done
Speaker 8: like taking stories, erotic stories from classic literature and adapting
Speaker 8: them for TV. And Kummel did a few of those.
Speaker 8: I think I did about Valerian Worovchick, the younger Bunuel,
Speaker 8: so they had it's quite weird, but they like sexy
Speaker 8: late night TV. But it's also like classic literature and
Speaker 8: very well respected directors working on these. So it's been
Speaker 8: a while since I've seen Kamel's contribution to that series.
Speaker 8: But now I have to revisit it just now, having
Speaker 8: deep dived into his the rest of his work.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the Baryl release, and we should probably clarify
Speaker 3: because that just sounds weird. A company called Baryl, I'm
Speaker 3: not familiar with their work too much other than this
Speaker 3: one release that they did back in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: I think it was where it's a double disc set
Speaker 3: of this movie with both cuts and a ton of extras.
Speaker 3: I've referenced the commentary multiple times. Great commentary track, really
Speaker 3: put together with care. But as far as I know,
Speaker 3: there's no Blu Ray of this in sight yet. So
Speaker 3: I'm hoping that they get on track and somebody releases
Speaker 3: this on Blue Ray because I think it really deserves it,
Speaker 3: and the film, even on DVD looks freaking fantastic, and
Speaker 3: I just I can't imagine how nice this would be
Speaker 3: if it was presented as a restored Blu Ray version.
Speaker 8: I can share some news about that. While I don't
Speaker 8: know of a specific Blu Ray that is in production
Speaker 8: as we speak, what I do know is that in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty three, the film was selected by one of
Speaker 8: the European Film commissions. Basically, what they do is they
Speaker 8: take a number of films every year and fund their
Speaker 8: complete and total professional restoration in pandem with the director
Speaker 8: if they're still around, which in this case Kumel is
Speaker 8: so Opportunity was one of the films that was selected
Speaker 8: in twenty twenty three for this, so they've completely restored
Speaker 8: it from the negatives. I think that both the negatives
Speaker 8: from the can version and the director's cut. He's had
Speaker 8: more say over the film than he ever has, and
Speaker 8: it's just been completely sorry. It's touring Europe. I think
Speaker 8: it's head of Screening and Brussels. I think it's screening
Speaker 8: in Italy earlier this year. He's got all the signs
Speaker 8: that yes, at some point we will get that, and
Speaker 8: I'm really.
Speaker 7: Excited about that. That's fantastic when you see a good
Speaker 7: quality version of Daughters and Doctors. It's such a beautiful film,
Speaker 7: so beautiful shot, and I feel the existing release of
Speaker 7: Malbritswee hints at what this might look like. But I
Speaker 7: can only imagine how great this will look in a
Speaker 7: restored version, because the potential is there for this bureau revelation.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this film really strikes me as one and I
Speaker 8: feel like I say this about a lot of films
Speaker 8: that I really love it. Once it gets out there
Speaker 8: and more people are able to see it in all
Speaker 8: its glory, that it will just inspire a whole new
Speaker 8: generation of fans. I think people will really fall in
Speaker 8: love with it.
Speaker 3: I completely agree, and once again, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for introducing me to this film, because it took a
Speaker 3: lot to get me to finally sit down and watch it.
Speaker 8: Happy to share the belove.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go ahead and take another break and
Speaker 3: play a preview for next week's show right after these
Speaker 3: brief messages.
Speaker 11: The Silent Hour is new today on Digital. Joel Kinneman
Speaker 11: stars as a detective guarding a deaf witness marked for
Speaker 11: death after seeing a gang murder. Trapped by the killers,
Speaker 11: they have to outsmart them to survive. Buy or rent
Speaker 11: The Silent Hour, now rated R from Republic Pictures.
Speaker 5: Own or rent Twisters on Digital now, or look for
Speaker 5: the four k Ultra HD in Blu Ray on October
Speaker 5: twenty second. The Blockbuster Disaster Epics starring Daisy Edgar Jones,
Speaker 5: Glenn Powell and Anthony Ramos, is packed with a whirlwind
Speaker 5: of heart stopping action and exhilarating thrills. We live Entertainment
Speaker 5: calls Twisters the perfect blockbuster Watch at home now with
Speaker 5: over one hour of exclusive bonus content.
Speaker 10: It is nineteen ninety five. Hunting is the national sport
Speaker 10: people and the prey. The world is ruled by a
Speaker 10: strict regime.
Speaker 2: They're going to make obedient little citizens out of us.
Speaker 2: Who are society? What do you mean?
Speaker 10: Step on the line and they take it to the
Speaker 10: funny farm.
Speaker 2: You could die laughing.
Speaker 9: All you have to do is lead my guests on
Speaker 9: a chase for one day, a little sport.
Speaker 2: You can to kiss. Not necessarily, you might survive.
Speaker 4: Come on, you big piece of shit.
Speaker 2: You come me. I'm the one you can't break. I'm
Speaker 2: what you've been afraid of all your life.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid of nothing.
Speaker 2: You're afraid of failing.
Speaker 10: Now a little flower. Yes, I'm gonna taste your honey.
Speaker 4: It is less the size of one's gun that comes
Speaker 4: or the school with which it's used.
Speaker 10: Don't you kill him, Jennifer, He's my target.
Speaker 2: This is Nata. The hunt is over.
Speaker 3: Shoot on sight, shoot a cue.
Speaker 2: Let me go?
Speaker 8: He no way, But you don't leave me here?
Speaker 2: You're right, Raby?
Speaker 8: Why but you chid?
Speaker 9: The hunters and the hunted the Quick, I'm dead s
Speaker 9: who will survive the blood and thunder shocker.
Speaker 1: Of the year.
Speaker 3: That's right. We'll be back next week when they look
Speaker 3: at Turkey Shoot. Until then, I want to thank my
Speaker 3: co host for this week, Jessica and Matthew. So, Matthew,
Speaker 3: what have you been up to lately?
Speaker 7: And teaching in my online courses. Film courses take up
Speaker 7: a lot of my time, but I've got a new
Speaker 7: course on the Italian cinema of the sixties that I'm
Speaker 7: putting together right now, and yeah, that's take up most
Speaker 7: of my time. But I'm also writing and working on
Speaker 7: Blu Ray colentrees.
Speaker 3: I could definitely use that class because I don't know
Speaker 3: that much about Italian films from the sixties.
Speaker 7: Come alone'll be very welcome.
Speaker 3: Lick and Jessica. What's new in your world?
Speaker 8: Not too much since the last time I was on.
Speaker 8: I've got a few sort of writing things that are
Speaker 8: in some kind of embryonic state and hopefully we'll make
Speaker 8: it to full fruition at some point. But yeah, other
Speaker 8: than that, I guess maybe for those who are interested
Speaker 8: in Belgian art, I can point you to my Instagram
Speaker 8: which is LaBelle o'so Law, dot Bell, dot Otero, and
Speaker 8: I post especially recently images that are in my psyche
Speaker 8: for various reasons because of other things in my life
Speaker 8: that are unrelated. Lately, a lot of Belgian surrealism has
Speaker 8: been making its way into the feed, So if you
Speaker 8: want to look at some of these images that I've
Speaker 8: spoken about, you can check out on Instagram and see
Speaker 8: some of them there.
Speaker 3: I highly recommend, just because Instagram it's very entertaining. Thank
Speaker 3: you well, Thank you so much guys for being on
Speaker 3: the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want
Speaker 3: to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check
Speaker 3: out some of the other shows that I work on.
Speaker 3: They are all available at Weirdingway Media dot Thanks especially
Speaker 3: to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 3: visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 3: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.