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Blood of the Beasts (Le sang des bêtes), a landmark
documentary, opens with a view of a Paris suburb that is peaceful,
ordinary, comfortably familiar. Children play, lovers kiss: then,
Franju switches to a slaughterhouse, where workers routinely - and
graphically - transform live animals into disemboweled carcasses
in an orgy of carnage and blood. On one level, these images alone
make the film as jarring as the most effective horror thriller.
At the same time, they compel us to confront the realities of the
world in which we live: a world that is filled with everyday horror
and pain.
http://www.madphat.com/mpmania/
product1302.html |
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Heavily
influenced by German expressionism, but simultaneously brutally
realistic, Beasts contained some of the most disturbing scenes
of animal cruelty on film and yet, paradoxically tempered them with
a certain compassion and grace thereby creating a form unique to
French cinema. Some critics have pointed out that the scenes of
animals moving in lines towards certain death were subtle references
to the Nazi death camps. - Sandra Brennan http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=
1800063189&cf=biog&intl=us |
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| Under
the Hays Code, scenes of sex and birth were taboo, even in the case
of animal-subjects, such as in this controversial home movie (Private
Life of the Cat) by Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren. |
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A
fugitive kitten whose entrée into the world posed a clear
threat to 1940s American morals.
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Ruggero
Deodato's Cannibal
Holocaust is
credited as "the most widely banned film ever made." A
group of filmmakers enter the Brazilian jungle to document cannibal
tribes, only to reappear as dead bodies. Live animals are tortured
and killed, and the director had to convince Italian courts that
no humans were hurt.
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In
Das Orgien Mysterian Thatre Herman Nitsch,
a Viennese Aktionist, uses animal corpses for mass action painting.
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Be
Human-Betty Boop
1. Man brutally whipping a dog and horse.
2. Man punches a cow.
3. Man wrings the neck of a live chicken.
4. Later, abusive man is horse-whipped as retribution.
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| REQUIRED
READINGS & WEBSITES |
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•
Georges Franju, "Realism and Surrealism", Jim Knox, trans. Originally
published in Etudes Cinematographiques #41/42 (1965) "Surrealisme
et Cinema"; Yves Kovacs, editor.
http://isosceles.alphalink.com.au/GEORGE_FRANJU.html |
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| • Raymond
Durgnat, Franju, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),
course reader |
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SUGGESTED READINGS & WEBSITES |
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| •
Alan Lovell, Anarchist Cinema (Jean Vigo, Georges Franju, Luis
Bunuel) (New York: Gordon Press, 1975) |
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| •
Jenny Lanyon, "Human beings in extremis. An introduction to the works
of Herman Nitsch", Centre stage: contemporary drama in Austria, Frank
Finlay and Ralf Jeutter, eds. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999) |
