Six Figures Getting Sick (1966)

Director:

David Lynch

Genre:

Short | Animation

Plot:

Lynch's first film project, it is basically an endlessly repeating film of people vomiting with their...

Plot Keywords:

Vomiting | Produced By Director | Surrealism | Siren | Student Film

Also Known As:

Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (USA) (alternative title)

Runtime:

USA:4 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Company:

Pensylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Movie Connections:

Featured in Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (1997) (TV)

interesting as a repetition work, though far from Lynch's best short film

Probably the best, or most engrossed, I found myself in David Lynch's first short film effort- animated of course- was that in his use of repetition there were more chances to spot things not seen the previous time. This is really in some ways rather disgusting in its own abstracted art-school sense, but it grew on me the more times I saw these 'six figures' going through their digestive problems. There's a mix of colors used in an animated style that I haven't seen much since I was younger (it was done here and there on these kids videos I watched, the lower rent ones, heh). The alarm sound that blares, what Lynch himself described as the 'sound' attributed to the moving painting he tried to recreate, is my least favorite part of the short. I almost wished Lynch had gone the Brakhage route, leaving just the images to speak for themselves. What I did really find interesting though on a purely film-student level however was how I liked it the more times it repeated itself, trying to get the viewer to see into what is being done with the ink marks and various blotches of ideas in forms of smoke and vomit. Nothing too outrageous or speaking of the future genius he'd show, but it would've been something I'd given high marks for if I was judging whatever contest he originally submitted this to forty years ago- it definitely carries that appeal.