L'homme sans ombre (2004)

Director:

Georges Schwizgebel

Writer:

Adelbert von Chamisso (novel)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Drama

Plot:

A solitary man without a shadow rises from his desk, dons his hat, and leaves his apartment. He walks through a city to a large door...

Plot Keywords:

Hat | Shadow | City | Drawing Room | Desk

Awards:

4 wins & 2 nominations

Also Known As:

The Man with No Shadow (International: English title)

Runtime:

Canada:9 min

Country:

Canada | Switzerland

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Company:

L'Office National du Film du Canada

Movie Connections:

Edited into The Animation Show 2005 (2005)

Shadows and Souls

Expressionism and Surrealism are most typical conceits for artistic film, but this one seems more Impressionistic. It starts with a light revolving around a cube and the shadows that are created from it, and then it leads into a story that seems to be about a man who sells his soul (shadow) to the devil for money and women, but then finds out that both are useless since nobody trusts him or likes him because he doesn't have a shadow, so he hunts for it to get it back.

Beyond just dealing with shadows as a subject, it focuses on exploring shadows artistically. As a whole, the work is dizzying and hard to grasp as not only is the light constantly changing but the viewpoint is changing at the same time, almost like we're some sort of God-like omniscient figure that is playing the spin-until-you-fall game.

However, it provides excellent ways of creative transitions, where space and time are not just transcended by movement, cuts, and dissolves, but by perspective. Oftentimes we zoom in to a shadow walking away, only to zoom out from it again and, though it hasn't really changed, it's now heading the opposite direction and in a new environment.

It's certainly very amazing, though dizzying.

--PolarisDiB