Street of Crocodiles (1986)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Directors:

Stephen Quay
Timothy Quay

Writers:

Stephen Quay (writer)
Timothy Quay (writer)

Release Date:

23 February 2000 (France)

Genre:

Animation | Short

Plot:

A man closes up a lecture hall; he reaches into a box and snips the string holding a gaunt puppet. Released...

Plot Keywords:

Screw | Experimental Film | Stop Motion Animation | Makeover | Machinery

Awards:

4 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Feliks Stawinski

...

Caretaker

Runtime:

Canada:20 min | USA:20 min

Country:

UK

Language:

None

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG | France:U

Company:

Atelier Koninck

Movie Connections:

Edited into The Films of the Brothers Quay (1987)

a contender for my favorite Quay brothers film

I like the Brothers Quay work in small doses, and all at once with one film coming after another it becomes too staggering an experience to handle. But seeing Street of Crocodiles really made it for me in terms of connecting it to other Quay brothers work, in terms of how their surreal representations and obsessions and neuroses come into their work, and how it pulled off so well this time. A lot of time their avant-garde impulses almost get the better of them, and many a fantastic image and sound is presented but without much context, leaving it almost impenetrable. I didn't get that this time around with this film- which happened to make Terry Gilliam's top 10 favorite animated films of all time- as it presents its ideas a little more coherently, and unlike other Quay work it ends not on a sudden beat but on one that actually makes sense, in its own non-sensical form.

It's really just one of the most pure visualizations of a nightmare world envisaged, as a puppeteer opens up a box and looks in at a figure moving around in this run down slum of a city, where screws continually keep unscrewing from their places and deformed dolls go about as they please performing grisly tasks. This animated figure (who really is anything but animated, as the character doesn't move around too much, except to continually look at things that perhaps he shouldn't, or doesn't understand at first) gets embroiled in the dolls' plans, which may or may not involve unscrewing his own head as well. At times it seemed like the Quays could go off again into the wormholes of their own visions, but they resist the temptation to go completely with the narrative- whatever there is of it anyway. Disorder and decay were words that kept floating in my mind, and all amid an atmosphere of not necessarily despair, but one that lacked much hope for any of its minions. Featuring some of the most inventive production design I've seen in any stop-motion film, and cinematography that still stuns me hours after watching it, it's a real little marvel of what can come out of the darkest corners of the mind, put to light and molded with the utmost care.