years producing sculprures and tactile objects.?

and working on Otrantskj I (lhe Castle ofOtranto), begun in 1973 and eventually completed in 1979. J The fact that Czechoslovakia, like other Eastern bloc countries, was severed from d u: European and North American modernist path in the late 1930s explains to some uucrvening
,II/Iek

,I.'gree Svankmajer's CHAPTER TWO 1I.IIcd by the modern

I'

frame of reference. A first viewing of his films by Westerners in its most narrow sense. Importanrly, who had not wirnessed the animation work of the postwar those shocked included period.

in a

d u: carly 1980s often shocked sensibilities '1II1ger generation

which had been reared on visual arts dorni-

rhe upsurge of Eastern European cinema

Many of these in dornibarely existed in unfashionable

Jan Svankmajer: A Mannerist Surrealist

Michael O'Pray

111lhe 1960s, especially '1.1111 ritish inrellectual 8 \\""Icm

Idlils had been unavailable

for some years and had become

film circles. Serious discussion

of animation

film theory until the late 1980s.

,~vankmajer, however, had been recognised as a major film animation talent in th11 I ')(,()s by writers such as Ralph Stephenson (1967). Like others in Czechoslovakia, I' 'iv.mkmajer seemed to turn inwards to Czech traditions European - Mannerism, marionette paiming. d , ti,. '.11 graphics and of course Surrealism, rc, a survivor of Stalinism. 1he surrealist spirit

I, ,', .ilways been closely associated with Eastem I', ',111 absurd tale bordering on surrealism'

art, and particularly

111 Ii1111, great Czech animator Jif Trnks Ruka (lhe Hand, 1965) has been descri the (Holloway II,IV Wave betrays a surrealist sensibility, not least in its often eccentric black humour

1983: 235), and the entire Czech

11,,1 s.rrdonic wit. Juraj Herz's black comedy Spalouamrtvol (lhe Cremator, 1968) and 111, 111Jird's surrealist 1 iI

Valeriea tjden divu (Valerieand Her Week ofWonders, 1970) are

that have seeped imo Czech culture. felt this New Wave 'Surrealism' and existentialist ideas endemic was to

, ,,""ples of work imbued with surrealist properties li. -wcver, it should be poinred out that Svankmajer

I""
/

rcpid and fatally infected

by the psychologism

111.11 movement as a whole (see Krl 1987: 23), even though Zahrada (lhe Garden, film its the I')I,X) visually and thematically ,'ivankmajer was not unique suggests some form of kinship. in his influences. Trnka, who died in 1969, was also art referby Czech

Jan Svankmajer most prorninent leadership

joined Czech

the Prague-based theoretcian,

Surrealist

Group

in 1970 after meeting who had assumed

01'

Vratislav

Effenberger,

of rhe Czech surrealist

movement

on Karel Teige's death in 1951. During to abstract non-figurative a new group, UDS, was set up around to an end a briefbut of his conversion to in 1968 can only

the 1950s the movernent Effenberger.' important Surrealism Svankmajer's

had lost many of its members decision

~ed with a varied an~ ingenious use of techniques and sophisticated 1111 . His landmark film, Spaleek'(lhe Czech Year, 1947), was 'influenced n
I IIIdlic I ltllt'r

art, bur it revived in the next decade when period of 'innocence' with the momentous

paimings importam

and inspired

by folk traditions

and songs' (Holloway of Svankrnajer materiais

1983: 232). include Karel and What-

to join this group brought

Czech animators

who were precursors the use of differem

in his work. 1he coincidence political

I 1I1.11~ and Hermina 1\. I rhcir similarities, 11I111J.lIors, remarking tI,," ;,l'lllan

Tyrlov: rhe former experirnenred

however, Svankmajer (quored
I -

with mixing animation for puppets.

events in Czechoslovakia Svankmajer

1111'11 , Iion, and Tyrlov explored

be a source of debate for commentators, Revolution', perceivedas

and it would seem fair to say that the events has stared, since the 'Velvci

has always felt distanced

from these Czech he believes

were a major factor in his loss of innocence. 1here is little doubt

thar he has tried to separate himselffrom with 'representational

this school by'refusing illusion', whereas he is with Svankmajer's

that ali his work has been politica!. that Czech Surrealism's critical and subversive role must b ' by the Soviet Union a response to rhe crushing of the Dubek government Svankmajer post-production

111Ilillil myself to animation' IIIII'II',sl Li in 'brute uul IIIOSt political

in Krl 1987: 22). Furtherrnore,

and Trnka dealt primarily real ity' (ibid.).

Nevertheless,

lhe Hand, Trnka's most successful

in 1968, ~fter which there was a period of silencing of 'difiiculc' voices in Czechoslo vakia. 1his silencing included because of his unauthorised who was 'forced to rest from the cin mn' changes to Leonardo denk (Leonardo;

film, would seem to suggest some connections

,,,IIt, ,ISdo 'S Ihc Polish fiImrnaker Walerian Borowczyk's Renaissance (1963), in which ,..!--IIIIIIII 'COI1Slru ts ilS ,Ir. r
("1'1 h .urim.u ion is rar ,Iy discuss -d ouisi I th fram work of puppetry and 11111 I'XII'III SV,Ilt!\IIJ.I)'I' 11{'~ fil'llll wit hin 111(,IWO 1I1:11I srrnndx o('lhl' (:zt'l'h .mimu

Diary, 1972), which involved pointed references to the sornbrc rcaliry of Czc h dnll lir, :lrlCr 196R. II did nor mnkc his 11' I filll1 urn il rhc 1:11('I()~()s, sp 'l1dil1g Ih

toI

tion tradition as 1967 (1967: experimems that tradition. Svankmajer.

(the other being the graphic 124). Svankmajer's Interestingly, Ronald with a form of ractile materialiry Holloway animated has claimed

rradition),

as St .phcnsou

notcd as early and his own

111l.dist' Don Sajn tDon fna. l "',11' hc rcad as mannerisr

1')70). Sil1lilarly, Kostnice (7he Ossuary, .197~) could as \ Pan of rhe problem, of course, IS fixmg a clear

membership

of rhe Surrealist Croup

as surrcalist.

have made him a uni que figure within Jan Lenica, who most resembles as the 'true successor of Jan Svankmajer

it is a Polish filmmaker, films' (1983: 246).

'"" 11111 what comprises Surrealisrn (or, for that rnatter, Mannerism). We have only of I" usider rhe differences between, say, Andr Breton, Georges Bataille and Walter lI. uj.unin to understand
I

the issues involved."

Furthermore, Jarry-

so much of surrealist

art as tj

Lenicas experimental Svankmajer's time as rhe burgeoning , tion of historical of historical postmodernisrn,

I'. 'lound'

by the early surrealists

in pre-surrealist

history ~ Giuseppe

Arcimboldo,

repuration

was firmly established in the West in the 1980s at the sarne A superficial resemblance exists between in the visual arts: they share a zest for rhe manipulain a bricolage fashon, and continuity. and the general disruption of impotence in the face But, unlike many purveyors

111,l"llymus

Bosch, the. M~rquis de Sade, ~fred

that to make judgemems

of postmodernism.

his work and this developmem and aesthetic

1111.11 or is not surrealist IS always precarlOus. is 'w.mkmajer has admitted that Mannerism has lingered on in his work, despite his II1(,llIptS to expunge it (see Krl1987). "" , loscr exarnination I "l\ory attention the distinction However, it could jusdy be said rhat in his early As I have already remarked, is dfficult to make. For between the rwo approaches 1,1,,1\ hc was as much a surrealist as he was a mannerist.

visual elemems Svankmajer

coherence

does not embrace

its inveterate

i of humanist
~ outwards which

thernes. On the contrary,

his stance is essentially

radical, always facing

to the films might suggest that ir resides in the films' thernes. mannerist

towards the world and eschewing self-reflexivity has been seen by some as haumed as a dead language and movie industries.

for its own sake. of art, imeresting only to

, .unple, rhe surrealist films seem to offer a more social and political message than the 1,I.Ivlully hermetic films. I believe that this is much too simple; not only do a shading ofMannerism into Surrealism, (1986), and vice versa, of this I shall
'rv.uik majers films exemplify

Postmodernism academics Conceptual movernent,

by the spectre of Surrealism," 1he massive attack on subject Minirnalisrn, Surrealism as a living and vital Art took its

for years had been viewed and the advertising

111, .ilso rheir formal aspects are as telling as their themes. In recognition I
ui.rkc

matter in Western art after 1945 in the narne of Abstract Expressionism, art and so on seemed to have extinguished even though ali these movements had the automatic

use of Arnold Hauser's writings on Mannerism between Mannerism Svankmajer's

in which he has argued 1his essay takes one very

I

1," .1strong connection

and Surrealism.

in varying degrees took from Surrealism. gesture at its core; Conceptual could be found in Man Ray and cemury - in the surrealist

1'.1 I icular route in trying to undersrand I

films. Many orhers are possible films is Giuseppe Arcirn-

Abstract Expressionism other surrealists.

lead from Marcel Duchamp:

images in Minimalism

11111. is hoped, will be raken by furure critics.? it 'I he mannerist artisr most associared wirh Svankmajer's sixreenrh-century courrs ofFerdinand 1, Maximilian

However, in the last decade of the rwentieth

jin

de

I" ,Ido, An Italian artist who spenr many years in Vienna and Prague in rhe service of
"I\'

sicle, we might say - it is a differem questiono Once more Surrealism seems to matter
to artists and not just to art historians. Equally, issues around ideas have L'Amour of notions of moved to the centre of debates about art theory, For exarnple, the infarnous

II and RudolfII,

his repura-

111111 rests on the composire l'I',lds, represeming

" I
',)11

heads he rnade, mosdy in the court of Rudolf 11. 1hese of objects such Fantastic of Modern is another artisr deemed a precursor of the in thefarnous exhibition,

abstract entiries such as the seasons, are composed

fou

photography

and Surrealism

exhibition

(see Krauss & Livingston through

19'86) in the the medium

rces, vegetables and flowers. Arcimboldo organised

mid-1980s photography, -

has now become a landmark

show in terms of its higWighting and psychoanalysis in the postmodern trajectory. which

rcalists - a surrealisr avant la lettre. His inclusion

of the body, sexuality, sexual difference the works of Cindy Sherman, Svankmajer's alist movement another Eastern European

Ir'. Dada and Surrealism,

~l

by Alfred H. 'Barr at the Museum

which itself has beco me influential own work has a very different proper - the Czech movernent, counterparts

period, as seen in

Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons and others, Ir flows out of a surreis different to its to has existed in one 'form or Surrealism are responsive

New York in 1936, placed him fir~IY,in Il'plltarion has grown in this century, culmmanng 'l'Cll clearly in Svankmajer's

~he surreal,ist canon. Arcim~o,l~o's m the Arcimboldo Effect exhibition et al. 1987). His influence can be

,'I Palazzo Grasso in Venice in 1987 (see Hulten

early films, Spiel mit Steinen (Game with Stones, 1965), Et o/Dialogue, 1982) and Flora (1989).

since its inception

in the early 1930s. Western in that most brands

( 'rtera (1966) and Historia naturae (suita) (Historia naturae (suite), 1967), as well as in l.ucr lilms such as Monosti dialogu (Dimensiom 11is collage-like forms ~an also be traced in Svankmajer's marionette films Zvahlav aneb 1,11 iky Slamnho Huberta (fabberwockyljabberwocky, or Straw Hubert's Clotbes, 1971), l'uncb andJudy Svankmajer and the feature film Lekce Faust (Faustllhe is equally interested in Arcimboldo Lesson o/Faust, 1994). to the Boheo as a figure in the bizarre court of of Svankmajer'

I their
I

of Surrealism

cultural contexrs. Nevertheless, this picture by rwo broad

there is, among other characteristics, Svankmajer has remarked

the shared

concern wirh rhe body and with bricolage. To complicate further, that his films have and Surrealism. His while in (-)lrh aestheric modes - Mannerism

I been influenced

early work is commonly the work beginning its aspirations. surrealist Problems

identified

with the rather elusive style of Mannerism, between

Rudolf II - the Arcimboldian

mi.m ruler. Alrhough

111mHistoria naturae (suite) is dedicated arnera movernent;

with rhe so-called watershed arise from this demarcation

film, lhe Garden, is surrealist (Til" (.'(I((ill !lllI/lr!'!//('

madc in 1967, ir has many of rhe hallmarks

I'l'p \I

rhe rnann .ris: and the

l.ucr work - rhythrni . and rapid 'dilillg; swirt

the juxraposition

films. For exarnple, the 'rnannerist'

Rakvickrna

, ...JiVl'

ncrion nnd nnimat lou: ~11I,,1 \lI' 'I~

'~

xu xl horizontal

arncra 1l10VC1l1cnrs; nd a

Hoti e/Punch flndJudy,

J 966) d cs not s em that diffi rCIlI iJ1 I Ir 11111111111'111 rhc \ 10

,1111 IUIl' h,l\l'd 011 Nl'l

IId

dlhlll'c\

dlflt'!l'Ill L11l'11l '~.

In exploring the paimer's methods essay (1991) on Arcimboldo ChieRy, there is the relationship to the primary the paintings level of vegetables.

and visual conceits Roland Banhes' fascinating to Svankmajer's work.

.1\ hlucs, bolero, .hvidcd between

foxtrot,

waltz. 1he images of me animal from museums, in close-up old drawings, devouring

categories

are themselves in lithoar rhe

also provides insights applicable

live-action

images of the animals and their representation of nature by rnankind,

between differem levels of meanings - the images of 1his almost linguistic or conceptual relationship on: in

1'.l.lphs, stuffed specimens

and so forth. 1he unifying represenred what we have just seen. 1his Similarly, in the film's series, of rhe

vegetables that suggest a face, which in rum is an image of a season, which relates back is an aspect of Arcimboldo's work that Barthes has remarked of meaning

IIll'aning, however, is one of the destruction , IId of each secrion by a mourh 11"<nique of constructing h uouically disrancedfrom

caregories which in rum are divided imo other caregories, their original scientific function, we are reminded conveyed

which in rum ... and so on, is typically Arcimboldian. Let us once again rum to the question what inreresrs, of a language language, branches, unitary what fascinates - for, after ali, this is 1he 'units' of articulated a on and disturbs us in Arcimboldo. the phonemes '0111 rcalist fascinarion "'g.lI1ised enactrnents I vcri rable precursor 11, I1Sof 'art' objecrs. I '1he earlier film Et Cetera, using drawn animation, IIIIIIIS of repetition 11, , i
t ripartite

with forms of scienrfic caregorisarion. of sexual perversions,

In this obsessive caregoby seriality and

are here on the canvas; unlike

I"illg, Sade's horrific sysrematisarion of Surrealism

they already have a meanlng: meaning; but this second

they are namable things: fruir, Rowers,

these units produce of fact, doubles: as a matter

in Les 120 Journes de Sodome (lhe 120 Days of Sodom, 1784), is and a descendan r of Rudolf II's own bizarre colleccontains the same srrucruring rhan in Historia

fish, sheaves, books, babies, etc.; combined, meaning,

the one hand, I read a human same time read an altogether conceive

head ... but on the other hand, I also and at the differem meaning which comes from a differem ... 'Cook', 'Calvin' ... now I carrof only by referring to the meaning 'Winter' meaning

and serialiry, alrhough is repeared

much

less convincingly

region of the lexicon: 'Summer', ths stricrly allegorical

u.tt urae (suite). Ir comprises

rhree main episodes - 'Wings', '1he Whip' and "Ihe House'. years later in Dimensions o/ Dialogue, one of rhe is divided by the sequences of toppled over by rhe rnalevofound in children's games. 1h1;1 in early

formar

the first units ... Here already, then, are three meanings image.(l99l: 143-4) A similar of animal layering of meaning occurs

in one and the same

,\ I, i III boldian films par excellence. Similarly,Jabberwocky I'" Ime building bricks, which evolve imo rhe maze-game is rhe reperition persistem use of childhood, I, 111 car, C::peraring in rhis sequencing

in Historia naturae (suite) where scienrfic categories,

the whole

I. l.ucs to Svankmajer's

especially his own, as a source for

life is represemed

by ancient

for instance Aquatilia,

I", work, a subjecr I shall discuss larer. Sigmund ml.uu ile games (rhe infamous "I underlying 'fort-da')

Freud showed how reperirion

I
I

Reptilia, Mammalia.

1hese are correlated

in rum to diflerenr categories of music, such

expressed a need to derive pleasure in rhe face in , ofLewis Carroll and Edgar Allan as an historical art

fears and anxieries (see 1974). 1his repetitive device is less prorninent

111<" lilms after rhe early 1970s, when rhe influences I', t,' come to rhe fore. !\rnold Hauser makes a disrincrion between

Mannerism

11"-vcrnent and rhe mannerisric ~l1lajer

li

wh ich ofren appears ar the end of a particular degenerare and mannered. which mos r interests him; nevertheless, and a modem

moverhere - and To of is

111<"111. when a style becomes self-conscious, ir is rhe historical movernent I" onnections

In rhe case of

to be made berween that movement

form ofMannerism.

I would like to argue that in films such as Game with Stones ir is rhe comem "I'l'cially an Arcimboldian
jl/f/Y

one - that is srressed, as we have seen, whilsr in Punch and formal Mannerisric properries are prorninent. characreristics

;lnd Jabberwocky,
I

for example,

li", cxtent Arcimboldo 'w.urkrnajer's '"lly

,I

does not evoke or express ali rhe mannerist represenred.

films, but only some of thern. Arcimboldo's Mannerism and his Surrealism,

collapse imo rhe groresgue As for rhe relarionship

very small part of what Mannerism

between

'w.rukmajer's

I will argue, like Hauser, rhar what rhey

1',IIl' has as much to do wirh an attitude Manncrisrn has had many diflcrcnt

expressed in the work - namely of alienarion inrcrpretations.

t

,111,] 1' an aggressive narcissism - a wirh formal rechniques. 0 For Max Dvofk ir was assoeiir was largely hund, hc .onvcnt ional and absolutist ). On lhe orhcr 111',]wiih ihc cxpr .ssiou 01' t hc spiriru.rl, ,-"'1 III1lV'11\'Ill 01' .uu i d.I"il ivru, Inlhl'li" of
t

whilxt ror Walrer Friedlaender

,I ll"l\ ,ioll ,Ig,liml

lu: I li"," H('11, I ",1111" ("'( 11.111\1'1l'lH(, 11

Hauser

believes that Mannerism

essentially

expresses a tension between

the dassical possessed of,

morality and rationality and innovation malleability

on rhe one hand, and brute realism, the grotesque, world. lhis resistance is always juxtaposed

sensuality, with the objects in modelled of the

and rhe anti-classical, dassical orared elements

and not simply a reaction againsr it. In other words, ir is a more For Hauser, rhe problem was that Mannerism different He remarks that Mannerism to ir, but incorwas 'a product rationalisrn convena

on the other, Svankmajer's

revolt is always ser againsr the sheer implac A key image is the passage between the mush of pulverised into the impeccably

posirively defined movernent.

able 'thereness' of the material these two levels of human day heads which nineteenth-century

itself and was not a form sysremarically and anti-classicism, naturalisrn traditionalism

and infinite flux of the imagination. experience.

many of its characreristics.

For example,

tension between dassicism and irrationalisrn, ~ tionalism

and formalism,

the first section of Dimensions ofDialogue father is penetrated

is transformed

sensualism and spiritualisrn,

and innovation,

then spew out more mush.

In jabberwocky Authority

the photograph

and revolr againsr conformism'

(1986: 12).
films. Dvoik, recognising that ir had a profound of the world portraits sensuous aspecr.

by a real rongue,

and then that same tom and order and their repre- I authoriry is undermined

These, game tensions If mannerist imagery rhrough

are apyarc:.gt in S~ankmaje!'s also understood

mouth spews images of a prerty young woman. sentation hy this condensed Ir would

spiritual aspecr to Mannerism,

are ser againsr a vulgar tongue. lhe same 'dassical'

art expressed higher spiritual values, ir often did so using very sensuous irself as comprehended flowers, plants, of the work is perhaps an inapproin Svankmajer's composite of naruralistic

image of 'perverse' sexual play - that is, oral sex, as rhe wornan's headj' at this point not to mention the formal qualities of

thar tied ir firmly to the materiality the senses. Arcimboldo's

repeatedly pops out of the man's mouth. be a mistake ,~vankmajer's films. As in the mannerist Illontage or editing, a fragmentation Iional mo de that contains tradition, the most basic elemeru: is a forrn of of the image, and at the same time a cornposiof the frame. On this it as: is enlighrening, for she understands

trees, books and so on highlighr priate description , groresque. What

this ideal, although 'spiritual'

is the constant tension

for work that is largely imbued with wit and a strong'lsense is worth emphasising

the energies of that very fragmentarion

! between certain ideas of freedom and human desire, and l He achieves this only by means of an animated artificial
distorted depiction of the real. Like Arcimboldo, is thus refused as inadequate into service to create imaginary ideas, naturalism

his means of expressing rhem. world using film tricks and a

point, Linda Murray's view of Mannerism subject rnatter either deliberately to understand of perspective, - the main incident dstorted proportions

images of the real must be brought his in and failing, being too conventional or transformations

obscure, or treared so that ir becomes difficult pushed into the background or scale - figures jammed that any movement or swamped in ... wirh extremes into too small burst the discordant or irnpact of a would

beings and objecrs. Insofar as it cannot represent

irrelevant figures serving as excuses for displays of virtuosity a space so rhat one has the impression contrasts, naturalistic

its acceprance of the world as it stands. Nevertheless, provides the very sruff of which those animations Hauser speaks of the Mannerisrs thoughr and appreciated \ rational synthesis (1986: 15). In Svankmajer's mannerist. film work these characteristics that ordinary,

it is the real material world which are comprised. and defied as ~ese

who took fully into account the inadequacy of rarional everyday reality was inexhaustible are quite

confines of the picture space; with vivid colour schemes, employing purposes, but as a powerful adjunct to the emotional

effecrs of 'shot' colour, and the use of colour, not for descriptive

easily discernible

picture. (1967: 30-31) _Manneristic Svankmajer's painterly 'displays characreristics of virtuosity' crowded have rheir filmic almost swamp equivalence. For-( and
I

For example,

whilst j 5 Bach: Fantasia g-moll (J. S. Bach: Fantasy in G

largely of images of natural phenomena (stone surfaces) artefacts

Minor,

1965) is comprised

and relatively ordinary these phenomena he constructs osrentatious the music.

(old doors and locks), ir is through an isolation of

the Baroque richness of Bach's music. He using images of opulent, the music,

cxarnple,

the main therne

in terrns of their ractility - using the close-up and zoom shots - that Baroque architecture

ri14ures of his earlier films. lhe

film frame of jabberwocky

and Punch and

a film track to accompany splendour,

/I/(ly at times corresponds

to the 'figures jammed

into too small a space' of mannerist and the use of dolls, puppets and effi-

I
I

refuses the usual device of showing thus achieving a fresh interpretation

p.iinting. Extreme camera angle and movement gics in general often disturb proportion,

and instead finds a film language thar counterpoinrs

perspective and scale. lhis manic, overwrought

of Bach with a film of visual integrity thar resists and

.lcnsi ty of image is less visible in the later works such as Dimensions 1"I(;kgrounds to the day figures are minimal. vlcmcnts is a further 1'11'1" of discordancy aspecr of this heighrened are Svankmajer's Svankmajer's

of Dialogue, where

mixing of differenr visual accompa-

There is in this film, as in others, a mannerist tension between the materiality ractiliry of images of subject matter - albeit stone, day, cloth or whatever srressing the sensuous, the already rnentioned
f)il/ll'lIJiol/.I' olOill/ogl/l' jlll,ll""~

style. To add to this mannerist atmos-

material -xarnple, (suitr) nnd

rapid editing and camera movement,

and the higher moral concerns

of thefilm,

cmb dded in this

I()!
"li/li/rir

insrance in Bach's music. In many cases the films' rational is in

I

suuctu

division into parts of jflllbf'rl/If}(':y, /I/'//lr/II .nsc r 'Ialionshlp

(O

dH'

! 11111111 11111111IIIC'I' ,~lIhj' 'I 1

111.111 ol'dlt' '1', dH'

llilll~('dllil

'olHuln 'ti wit hln lhos!' ,~1111111111111111111 I' 1111111'1II1/irlll~ d

Itllld 11\1111

ni xl by the swirling and ar rimes highly-strung music (especially of Zdenk Liska). In I 111 'I' words, th formal prop rti S of the films are in thernselves distinctly mannerist. h I 'I hl'y rcappcar in lar 'r works, su h as /'dl/ik dornu Ushrr (7he Fall ofthe House ofUsher, ,..-'~I)H()) nnd 1(11/1'1',I'/,i/I"/fll/l/ " (':rdlllr!J CII,, l>t'l//IJ o/S/rtlilli 11I in Boliemin, 1990). In Ih1.~W,I , le)!' 111,111 'W('I',~,11 vi H'II101I ',~01 lIa' (illll,~,11'1' 01'1\'11 li 'Sl' virt \lOSiL'p:lSS:I~'S I 111',
.IIIr!

1111(''1"('1,111111 M 1IIIIl'I 111I I 111

li

1.11 1111 1111\\'1'1'11 IIld('I,

IHII 01 rlu- 1 r1Ii'III('N,

A Iurther elernent that Hauser psychological narcissism, form, narcissism. whereby

connects

with Mannerism

is alicnation

and, in its The for

dligy the proragonisrs

01"his fill1l~ is lhe most obvious way in which he has depicte to a passive victim of a 'brute realiry'. Don Juan, thwarted and

He discusses alienation and alleviation

as a 'key' to Mannerism. is achieved

.1 'soulless' being reduced

loss of the object of love, substituted some recompense psyche. For Hauser, narcissism alienation

by love of the self, is the basic motivation and social determinants,

111love, must find his end in a deep grave after his actions, which have all the inevii.rhiliry of the tragic hero. The man in Byt (lhe Flat, 1968) comes from nowhere !~oes nowhere; his life is reduced to a brief time spent in a room in which the world him. His alienation is both omological (a political and social being I

for the damaged which entails an

is rooted in historical

he feels were at play in the mannerist associares ir with 'asocial inclinations',

period and in our own. Narcissism

,.r objects

and animais

attacks and menaces

from both realiry and others,

a sense of not firting in; for this reason he

(.1 human being against the natural world) and historical

a state which he feels arose first in the mannerist of post-Renaissance art and also,

periOd and has been with us since. These are large claims and seem to give historical

U
r
I
I

Mannerism

an importam

role in our understanding

icpressed by forces he cannot fathom or resist, except through sheer determination of"spirit). 1n lhe Death of Stalinism in Bohemia even the r~pressors a:e r~presented ~s', \clIlptural busts, and when a man is operated on, a mechanical clock IS seized from his ~ exposed bloody entrails. The idea of man as a mechanical hcing is encapsulated
i

by implication,

of modern ano Interestingly, an unwillingness

most ofHauser's

examples are from litera-

systern disordered

by a wilful

ture, especially, in modern he pinpoints

times, Proust and Kafka. In both writers, but in Kafka to resolve the tension in their work between device. each with equal status and underlying voice.; in his very first film,

by the beetle in lhe Last Trick ofMr Schwarzwald andMr Edgar, . Svankmajer makes a film of Poe s srory, The Fali of the neither human

particularly, competing

hc snail in the stone skull's ~ye in lhe Ossuary and the un~uly cat ~n jabberwocky., and brilliantly, figure nor even a representa- ~ 'actions' are performed by tree roots fi.ghting in the house, and the basic stuff of of this aliena':through capiby

views of the world which are not ironed our by some overriding Ali that speaks is the world - and then in a disjointed Svankmajer's films. Ir can be found

I rrnmarically

Reality in this sense is a series of fragmems, which is nothing. Alie~ation pervades

l louse of Usher' (1845), which contains Iion of one through an effigy. Instead,

IIIC mud, a coffin moving of its own accord through

Posledni trzk pana Schwarcewalldea a pana Edgara (lhe Last Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar, 1964), with its warring rnechanical marionettes, and in his second ( film, as the unified classicism of Bach's music is juxtaposed
against the fragmentarion of the i~~ge-track ~irh its peeling walls, fissuring stone, empty desolated windows and verugll10us corndors and streets, Film afrer film reiterates this picture of alienated being. The fashion in which Svankmajer has rnade the marionette, puppet, doll and

rlrc world - a viscous mud - struggling desperately to find a shape. Hauser understands Mannerism as the first cultural representation Iion that has not ceased since the late l th century. 1nstitutionalisation r.ilist expansion
c onsistent

is one cause: the age of Mannerism - whether

was the first to be threarened

.1 rising tide of institutionalisation theme of rigid structures

similar to our own (see 1986: 109). Svankmajer's abstract ideas, artefacts or natural mateaggressive arrack, and then being reconThe the bureaucracies of Stalinism - and ontoofMannerism? Quite and and

Ii.ils, broken down imo parts, often rhrough \1ructed - is a veritable \1ructures he confronts ~vankmajer, vuhstantially, I1'i'iser
l

image of his own caustic views on institutionalisation. are both political-

logical _ the brute reality of the external world. How far can such ideas be related to given his cornmitment discussing to Surrealism and rejection one would feel, insofar as he has made claims to both Mannerism one of the rnost importam berween which is associated characrerisri~s the surrealist makes his own connection structure, aesthetic

SUrlfalism. When interestingly

of Surre.alism, of the quali-

incrna by 'its film-like

with the abandonrnent

'pace and timeof ordinary experience and of most artistic sryles' (1986: 378). If Hauser believes that film in general abandons ordinary spatio-temporal Iics, Svankmajer's anti-classical Ma(nstream narrative work represents

an even more extrerne form has aspired to by which some kinship types of editing and so In montage of Surre-

,)r abandonment.
I!tC condition

film with its classical rules of construction These rules are based on principies
0

of naturalism.

1\ made with time and space - the 180 rule, eyeline marches, lorth. In Svankmajer, .1 lIulllclian spirit
1I1

the surrealist cinema found one ofits few postwar perpetrators. vankrnajcr has appropriared the often irrational

.ilivm and its Iragm .nuu ion as d -rivcd [rorn lhe unconscious. f/l'ky lhe cqual Slalll\ piVl'll \() dll' difl' .rcnt 1yp -risnt inn ol"Surn',IIl'III,

For example, in jabber,~l'roll, IS vankrnajcr .rnd n wot'ld

'S

of i111ges is exernplary of Hauser's a

.lrt\'I:l

,/.,II,II':KI "tilll"

111IId"

fi",t

\'1\(011111\'1' Wil!t l.ewis 11.11 .rl 011', ,lIld 111

11l1'\'11t llvc ,1\ luu, dl.IWIIlI\~,I)"II'1 'I

!
I
~

-distOrted and constructed

through

filmic special effects. 1he building bricks, shufRing

imo position

through animation

devices until they form an image, are knocked over by of graviry. Similarly, as already mentioned, (resonances of Max Ernst the hole.

an impish black cato 1hus, their status as animated objects is juxtaposed with their existence as real objects obeying the naturallaws the nineteenth-cenrury

phorograph of a bearded gentleman

spinning through

and Ren Magritte)

is tom at the mouth and a real tongue appears through

And again, the knife impossibly

the air comes to rest when its blade sryle. In many ways it will use of

sticks imo the table cloth, and then proceeds to bleed profusely.

Game with Stones is an early mino r work in the mannerist

is an experiment, albeit a charming

one, in effects and ideas that Svankmajer

more successfully in later films such as lhe FlatandJabberwocky. Its opening sequence of extreme close-up shots moving over the surface of stone walls is rerniniscent S. Bach: Fantasy in G Minor. Likewise, the animated to size and shape, echo the similar patterning are eventually cracked and broken one thar suffuses his films. Ir also contains of stones. In this use of stories, Svankmajer material found in sequences of stones patrerned

J
in

groups - of lines, circles, squares and triangles - and repeared and ordered, according in the film on Bach. When the first Arcimboldian is consolidating G Minor. Imerestingly, the stones as up, the destructive intent can be recognised

head, comprised the latter film is than Game I1 Quiet Week in a House

the role of this natural

J s. Bach: Fantasy in

in many ways much more mannerist very differem

and to that extent more surrealist

with Stones. 1he Bach work is remarkably accomplished for a second film and one from its predecessor, lhe Last Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar,
acting out a rivalry berween two magicians. of Prague, but of its fragmems parts. It uses a in stone surfaces, is also a celebration

lhe Ossuary, in its almost systematic and overwrought

made of human Svankmajer bones, is visually mannerist ossuary guide's voice, becomes describes of black humour of human Jdvel

filming of architectural

forms of the manner.

which uses players dressed as marionettes

and, with its original soundtrack

J S. Bach: Fantasy in G Minor

_ doors, their locks, windows, Svankmajerian rechniques,

acurely

ironic and subversive in the surrealist of sound and image-track

walls and surfaces - not its recognisable

this [uxtaposirion and decorations

as a 'condensation

such as holes and fissures appearing

in its puresr form' (quoted in Krl1987:

29). 1he film 'documems'

visual rnotif which runs through

the films from lhe Flat to lhe Fali of the House of more evident is the film's use of the ends. 1he Mannerism,

lhe unique sculptures

of the church in Sedlec, made from rhousands

Usher. 1he Mannerism

marionette

of lhe Last Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar is fairly for black-humorous

bones and skulls of victims of the Black Death and the Hussite wars. On

low-key and could be .argued to be non-existent, image and tradition

lhe Ossuary is a perfect example of the surrealist objet trouv, the marvellous
across. Ir is also quinressentially surrealst in its innocent, uncanny

if

at ali,

object stumbled

lies in the close-ups of the heads and their mechanical image both grotesque and ironic. -

inners besieged by a beetle, an

qualities. Ir can be read as an image symbolising a Czech state inhabited by the dead who can be transformed imo life only by the imagination. For Svankmajer art is always .1rransforrnation in both personal
l

One of the most imeresting and enigmatic films of the earlier period is Tichj tjden v dome (A Quiet WeekIn a House, 1969), where the series structure is central, but with t~e added ~urrealist element.of in the hostile landscape the sec~et agem figure, who spies through objects. 1he newsreel-like the door to witness a bizarre world of anirnated shots of the II!-an hiding 1he horror witnessed a

of the real, the mundane

and the banal imo the 'reality' of the imagi- in which freedom is always rendered On a more omological and spirit can

narion. His surrealist notion of the imagination

and social terms - is truly Romamic.

witty level the film Sllggests that, even when faced with death, the human reate with the very materialiry of death, its detritus - the skeleton. In some ways lhe Ossuary can be seen as a companion 10 A Quiet Week /n a House), where a character hy rhc mo t minimal of acts - signing trapped

suggesr a parody of a New Wave scenario. A Quiet Week In a

House is clearly political in its allegorical motif of surveillance.

mill imo strips of newspaper; and the multiplying,

piece to lhe Flat (and also

in the various rooms - screws mixed up wirh sweets; a tongue rransforrn d rhrough

in a room asserts his freedom

shudd

ril1g Ohjl' I' ll1ovil1f\ ihrough

his name on a door filled with other victim!..

a dislocated spacc and time - suggcst thosc of ih uncou iOIl\ 1I1111d 1\1,1/ vpicd by 1 c Ih ' ~1I1 horit i '~,Equ:llly, thcy .ould b ' syl11 ir 01' di ' hl1ll 01 111 ( I I li ~I.II(' 11 boi til! udcr Sovl'l dOllllI,iliol1, dI(' (illll 1)('11' 11I,ld('111 I"r ,11111011"1,1111'1.11 ('/1'(" 1',IIVI'1111I1I'1I1. 1'111dll I tllI 11 I 11111111111)' '"PPI('N

"I" hisiory, A~ :.111' -ady Mal xl, , vankrnajcr's work afcer 1968 is undoubtedly POliriCal'l ""'1 II, SUl'!'',liism i~ WI Y 11111i pnn 01' Iluu pol ir i ':11SI:111 , to I h, 'Xl '111ih.u man 11 riSI l . l'II'I1I('III~11l('III~,IV\', 1I11'111'1('IIII,III,lilllll'd 11110 polltl .rl ,1I1dMII'I'(,;III~Il'prl'~('llI:ili()lIs. r 111 111 ,I W.I v 1111 11.11'1' li"\' 11' 111 11("(1 1111'1/ 111", 1110111111'1 1(, 1.111IH' li 1 li \1 'I

een

in a much more positive light. Thar is to say, it is a form which he managed and Surrealism became of the sarne piece. further his fragmenting tableau. lhe movernents

to

money), his loved one's father and eventually returns to haunt marionettes him and promises

his own brother.

His loved one's father into Hell. lhe relationship that of the lhe

transform ~

into a progressive facet of his work. Ir would seem that, under the irnpact of of reality. berween and

that by midnight

he will descend

politics, Mannerism

are life-size and, in fact, actors dressed as marionettes. by the film, is used quite shockingly. lhe characters tableaux without

lhe opening sequence ofIabberwocky epitomises urban landscape, and then cuts to a theatrical

bcrween the space of the film and that of the theatre, rcality constructed
.IS 10

and subsequently

Ir begins with a pixilated sequence of a wardrobe in a forest, juxtaposed with a modern

different narcissistic types of space and reality, in which neither seems to achieve any status over the tension, and at the same time signals the alienared depicrs a world which we cannot aspects of the filmo Svankmajer occupy Rather

move from the

SIage to the streets and then to constructed dominant.

the assertion of any reality berween

None of the spaces is supreme

to the other: each has as much reality, so

the other, exernplifies

speak, as the other. In fact, the power of rhe film relies on this movement and lhe mosr disrurbingly, rhe marionettes are actors and

and have never occupied, it is through documentary storybook. written mentary

except perhaps in drearn states. But this is not asserted by many films would qualify for such a judgement. the very materiality of the world and its theatGothic figures taken from a

'paces. Similarly, vimultaneously.

marionettes and comic

simple fantasy, for otherwise

ironic relarionship investment

ser up berween animated

beings qua wooden

the mix of the sensuous,

objects and disguised actors is a device which speaks intensely of alienation 11;lgedy. Emotional .uid represent unreasonable Svankmajer
\\ ti

ricality. In lhe Castle ofOtranto Svankmajer Ar the beginning

intercurs footage shot in black and white

is irrelevant to the actions of man; things are as they are remarks: 'his aim is to give an inexplicable, and however inscrutable,

mode with highly srylsed colourful cut-out

of each sequence he shifts the camera slightly - live-action

;'0 reveal

norhing

else. Speaking of Kafka, Hauser

the

.u count of life as it is lived in full wakefulness, it may be' (1986: 390).

text below each picture. lhe clash here is berween genres - fantasy and doeu- and berween different materialities actors and cut-out puppet texto lhe displacement of time and

barely awards status to any particular

event or character over any other the film is as much about by the very inexpli-

figures. He also moves berween voice and written space is subtly achieved. In Don Juan Svankmajer tion. lhe culled from Shakespeare,

hin the story. Even though

Don Juan is ar centre-stage, is attained,

Illl' inexorable chain of events which derermines pushes this project in a different and perhaps purer directheatre when plays were " urs. Ir is a poerics in which coherence , rliility and unreasonableness of the story.

the space and the nature of the charparadoxically,

rale is taken from the high period of marionette

the Bible and orher classical myths. Don Juan, a garnbler in

lcderico Fellini, much admired by Svankmajer 1\1"-urprised

and a surrealist of sorts, has remarked takes part, thus allowing him to This paradox of being produc-

love with a woman who is to marry his brother, kills his own father (who refuses him

tI!.11his films are dreams in which he, the filmmaker,

by the very world which he has in fact created.

uul.unilar with one's own creation seems peculiar to dream and to forms of psychopatll"logy, where the subject finds him or herself as a part of their own phantasy I" .11rcfreshing witness to this phenornenon, ~ther the opening I, ti. instead it creates a cinematic 1I.ivcllcr as well as a specrator, so that the drearnlike 11,111. ellini's own films, such as La dolce vita (1960) and Otto e mezzo (80, 1963), F quality is not literal is a is in up of a sensibiliry, a view of a world whose logic is not mechanand imaginary space in which rhe filmmaker Marcello Mastroianni In Fellini's films the use of a male protagonist sense. Perplexed, love through oflove through who takes

I [uurney signals Fellini himself; in rhe rwo films mentioned 1, IllIli in thar sim pie identificatory
li!

lost and almost abandoned a residual humanism,

IHTsistent failure t9 recognise

his own narcissism

and egoism, he is so that the

1I '"l"1lulrimately

by the restoration

Idlll' ncver collapse into sentimentality I' I l Rhode has pointed ti" pmt-neo-realist 1I11I1'ldioward l'lt"tll, work. Rhode
0("

or false tragedy.

to the use of Baroque effects in Fellini's work, particularly cites I vitelloni (lhe Spivs, 1953), where Baroque 311I states that in La dolce vita Fellini 'had already (1979: 575). For

tllI IIIl'r cs with the neo-realisi, a mobility

11111 rh.u rcscrnblcs Rornan baroque' 1 i 111' 01 h,IIIHI"I' 1I

Ft'llini's 'instin .tivc ~ylllp,lIhy' 101 111' n,ll'Oll'l' nllowcd him an insight in rhat
'S Ih:lI

r' I" 11I oglli"

rhc Ou(w,lld"n

J""

ti\(" olltl';l(li lory ,(f, t of rcniing

I I ml 111llly,\1 'I'iou,' pOli '111'( h ti) "ti 111til!' II)(\()~ Ih.11 11111 I llli I1I

11,I f'.11I1",tI 11.lIlIqU' IIIOVl'Il1l'1l1 01"F '1lilli's

1"11111111 111 v IId 11"1/'" Wlt 1'1 til!' 11,1111'1"1' 1 i,

quite distincr from Mannerism,

rhey do share an overwroughr

sensibilry and a flam-

rhe concerns that Svankmajer cffigies (dolls, puppers, in objects; his animarion

shares wirh rhat tradirion. a dedicarion

For example, rhere is his use of

boyant flourishing of technique, crearing an aesrheric of excess and dense or contrived visual composirion.

marionettes):

to the associarive power of tactility method:

of inanimare

objecrs, and vice versa; his sado-masochisric of childhood

I"

In sumrnary,

the mannerisr

sensibility

so crucial

to Svankmajer's

filmmaking

violence, which contains elements his black sarcasm, sremming via fantasy-memory constitute which Surrealism a ser of defining embraces,

akin to Salvador Dal's paranoiac-crirical

involves an entire ser of interrelated his films, Mannerism image. Ir also means mar emphasis rhe desire for particular exhilararing

ideas and images. ln rerms of the visual aspecrs of density of elements wirhin me of rhe filmmaking, by is given to me sheer virtuosity effecrs; Svankmajer's composirion,

from Prer; and his obsessive exploration characreristics of Surrealism.

means an eclecric, disconcerting

and dream. Ir should be said, however, that rhese thernes do not The wide variety of work revision of its printogerher with Breton's own continual

in borh its images and its consrrucrion

or formo Subjecr matter is ofren dicrared

move afrer 1968 to more dominared Mannerism visual sryle in

acerbic social criricism in his work tesrifies to that shift from filmmaking by special effecrs and dense aesthetic to a srripped-down which the rheme is never a peg for ostentatious in Hauser's account also deals implicitly rhrough rhose overwroughr is Hauser's second main ascriprion an egotistical characrerisrics
l-

cipies, make it extremely difficult and perhaps foolhardy ro articulare any such definin~ lcatures. Svankmajer's own films are rhemselves irreducible to a ser of principies. In rhe lighr of recent wriring on Surrealism like to discuss ideas pertaining in Svankmajer's films. ofPaul Eluard in abour Svankmajer's city in an essay on rhe Czech artisr by Hal Fosrer and Rosalind Krauss, I would also as rhey are found to the marvellous and the outmoded

visuality. More profoundly,

wirh a form of alienation - narcissism,

expressed precisely

and manic visual rendencies. to Mannerism

Parallel wirh this alienarion which is expressed in is afIiliared in many of the self. None of rhese

Many years afrer Breton's famous visir to Prague in rhe company 1934, he wrote the following Toyen: Prague, sung by Apollinaire; Prague, wirh rhe magnificenr

attack on the orher and an aggrandisemenr is alien to Surrealism

irself, for rhe latter movemenr

I ways to irs historical precursor rhrough irs sharing of rhese very fearures.

bridge

flanked

by srarues, leading

out of yesrerday

into forever; rhe signboards,

lir up from

* * *
In order to attain aurhentic Iyrical exisrence rhe poerry of cinema demands, veering towards

wirhin - ar rhe Black Sun, ar rhe Golden Alchemisrs; and above all, the fermenr else, the passionate

Tree, and a hosr of orhers; the clock rhe streer of rhe

whose hands, cast in the metal of desire, turn ever backwards; more rhan any orher, a traumaric and violent disequilibrium concrere irrarionality. (Dal 1991: 70) In discussing fMannerism. \ configurarion wharever Mannerism I have drawn freely from art hisrorians, Mannerism manifestos was nor a self-conscious and dedicared than anywhere Moldava especially Hauser, relarion to wirh which, was Its hisrorical li was Prague rhar the proro-surrealisr I':lIrope after a visir in 1902, situating '/.onl Apollinaire described in order to give flesh to rhe bones of rhe claims made abour Svankmajer'in Unlike Surrealism, is much official members, regular purges, journals. atrempr

of ideas and hopes, more intense rhere to forge poerry and revolution the warers of rhe

into one same ideal; Prague, where rhe gulls used to churn [sic] [Virava] to bring forth srars from irs deprhs.

(I978: 287)

as the 'magical capital' of of modernism in his poem by the most importanr

movemenr

it in rhe topography

(1912). Svankmajer

has always regarded

Prague as one ofhis of Rudolf

more conjecrural

rhan is rhe case wirh Surrealism, economic and intellectual

liTTi:f'ences. Ir is the Prague steeped in rhe Mannerism ( .olcm and redolent

.llld v

lI, haunted

ir is, seems to lie in part in rhe surrealisr movemenr

irself. Mannerism

of the alchemists

and the larer excesses of the Baroque sculptors his films. For Svankmajer, Prague is irself a one of the and of For rhis reason ir embodies

not a movemenr but a sryle of a particular fied mainly post facto.

period identido nor overlap of which

architects, that resonares rhroughour of Mannerism

ondensarion

and Surrealism. - rhe marvellous.

To a large exrent, rhe aspecrs of Surrealism concerned Svankmajer, spanning wirh rhe relationship as a pracrising

now under discussion

cutral ideas of Surrealism

wirh those covered in the above remarks on Mannerism.

Whar follows is much more

As Fosrer points out, Breton celebrared

two prime examples of rhe inanimare togerher - rhe mannequin

between quire specific surrealisr concerns,

tI,t animare as rhey are juxraposed

Iwcntierh-century
111lI. '

and even merged

surrealisr artist, is largely aware. Hauser's views on Surreand placed wirhin a much larger hisrorical context, one I believe rhar many of the aspecrs of Surrealism broughr id ':1 of urrealism i~t tradiand fragment:1liol1, surr
'~liNI' 111 1111 \11/111 wh,11 plll

consumerism and the natural'

and the 'rornantic

ruin', Foster remarks that rhese are rhe second a mixing

alism are more broad-sweeping o~er rhree centuries. to bear on Svankrnajer's vankmaj
t

IDp .crively 'firsr a crossing of the human historical s x.unpl f thc rnarvcllous.

and rhe non human,

work refiect Hauser's views, especially rh

expressing a modern form of alienation r has ion of

alled hirnseif a 'militaru

(2000: 21). Breron offers rhese two phenomena as Thcy borh provoke a disturbing relarionship. Narure, IIVl'I!-\I"OWnnd unruly, is in .orp rat d into ihc edif e f an hi torical object - rhat a ,..)" IlIt' 'rornnrn ic ruiu'. )11 ihc olh 'I' hand, rhc mnnn .quin, ror FOSl '1', is thc hurnan
',1,1111t'lld
'I

nr '1011'SofTi 'i:d

III-"j,11I1I11P(\II'I

IlH1V '/lI, nhhonuh hb OWI1.dl'/'. ,11111 111111 '111 dll' ',II~,"1ll of 1,1111 '1111,11110 111('10"','I di .tl SlIIlt'd 1111I 1'11 I,I! 11111,11 "0/1\1' o(

'd ,I

(1I1l1ll1ldll hlllll,llI

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101,'1 Il,dbl
'~(,1lI1'1

<l1'm,IIH"-

111~v;lnkm:\j '1'\ 1i ,I' '"

a't~

di ,

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til<' 1II,IIIII('qll

I.

!tlll ~

by other effigies - the doll, the plaster bust, the day figure and, most irnportantly, the puppet eighteemh and the marionette. cemury, Svankmajer In the use of anrique-Iookng merges the characteristics ruin'. But Svankmajer marionettes frorn the of Breton's 'mannequins' imo his work

century. For example, cars, household goods, and rhe domestic life of urban Prague ar~ hy and large absent from his work prior to the 'Velvet Revolution'. His film Faust, on lhe other hand, opens in the busy streets of contemporary 1he 'real' world than his previous work. The seventeenth-century Imy illustrations,
\lI"

Prague. Muin

hry (Virile
to

with the marvel of the 'rornanric literal 'rornantic the lengthy stricken rationa!.

does incorporate

Games, 1988) also has sequences from football matches and seems more connected marionettes of Punch and Judy and the nneteenth-cenfragmems

ruins', especially those of the old city of Prague where, for example, examples of the 'rornantic as in the povertyit is primawith the

sword fight takes place in Don [uan. Further

ruin' reside in his early films with their air of decay and dilapidation, interiors rily through their negation persistem

toys and newspaper of the 'outmoded'.

of Jabberwocky are also suggestive Svankmajer's marionettes, originais, as found in Don Juan and ruins'. Chipped and worn away to of a restoraof of

of lhe Flat. If these are examl?les of the 'rnarvellous',

this concept

As already mentioned, of 'rornantic

of the real, where th latter term is synonymous reference to the role of the 'concrete in revealing comradictions much ofBreton's in Mannerism, irrational'

mcriculously

copied from the seventeenth-century

l'unch and Judy, are the equivalem in his work the Hegeliantowards the real per se, and the importance in the realthinking. he gives to the

Svankmajer's

.1 ppear as if they have survived the period in which they were made, they fulfil rhe same luuction as ruins, evoking the ravages of time. Such objects are projections Ii vc nature through 11 medem' Ic which psychical space is constructed. Aragon's interprerations

marks both his antagonism principie

'role of the surrealist imagination curn-Marxist related to the role of the irrational tion is achieved in Svankmajer's rhe contingencies things, which, nevertheless, rhe leap imo the marvellous. Bazin and photography, simultaneously to disdose

that dominated

This is quite dearly act of acceptance of of

II'l' Parisian arcades is suggestive of such a recovery, what he called the 'mythology (quoted in Watson Taylor 1987: 14). the use of the surrealist 'outrnoded' to various psychoanalytical The uncanny and psychical reproduction compulsion. Foster connects

as already discussed. But this nega-

work by what seems a paradoxical so intensely

of the world of objects and simple events - the sheer 'thereness' are 'perceived' As Dick Hebdige has remarked in relation

, Illlcepts - namely, the uncanny Ili" IS, again through his authentic

looms in and

by the camera that they make to Andr consisted in its ability to know exactly

/ )"" Juan and Punch and Judy. Svankmajer

evokes the 'magically of the marionettes

old' in these rwo and puppets

'the mystery and the joy of phorography reality and to puncture perception (1988: 13; emphasis in original).

11 !llIgh the props he uses. In Don [uan, for exarnple, he breaks the film's narrative flow li 1,\, i userting images of the original scripts of the plays. Typically, the words shown are "IICII exclamations and not particularly meaningful moments of the dialogue. Again adverts and a man Ili l'unch and Judy the coffin's interior is decorated III'w'paper fragments. with early photographs,

our pretensions

r I

what it is that's been disdosed'

The intensity persistem although exploration

of Svankmajer's

of this often ruinous

reality is part of his since the mid-1970s, 'I am becoming of sensibiliry in This critique by something

of tactiliry in his films, most consciously

In lhe Flat are found battered

utensils, old photographs,

ali ofhis films embody this tactile quality, He has remarked: the sense of touch may play a very importam

more aware of the fact that, to revive the general impoverishrnent our civilisation, of the visual in our culture is then supplernenred

111ninereenth-century clothes, and a general state of ruinous poverty. Like Breton'l 'w.mkmajer is celebrating the uselessness of these old objects. Discussing his obsession \\111, lhe flea markets """ ~rnajer filrn): broken, useless, almost photographs, incomprehensible, worthless even perverse ... of Paris in his novel Nadja (1928), Breton reveals his fascinaI()r what he finds there (all of which could find and have found their place in a

part."

of the dominance our mothers'

different: 'Since our birth emotional

security has always been associated with touching contact wirh the outside world,

bodies. That was the very first emotional

even before we were able to see, smell, hear or taste ir' (1992: 45). It is only a short but perhaps invalid step to understanding tion of the tactile often with the ruinous, an unconscious relationship to the mother It is as if those surfaces, once damaged, 'I \ understood Svankmajer, marginalised restoration lost in by the 'outmoded', there is a political and rendered although Svankmajer's associathe decaying and the abandoned as a sign of to with

ld-fashioned, (1~60: 52-5)

ycllowed nineteenth

century

books, and iron spoons.

that is not entirely benign but depressive.

I

now need to be restored and attended

111 i, lhe. detritus h

of a civilisation.

Svankmajer

recuperates

and, in a Kleinian sense, a critique of modern forms

love. This restorative act is very much at the centre of what Breton and Louis Aragon

" oIlIl\,Srhese rejected objects into a system of meaning 1111111 life. Ir is also, as Foster argues (lI" '"lIlIlllIdification, whether capitalist 1111IIIIIIllOd ity production, Svankmajer (see 2000: recoups or communist.

in which they can have some 159-62), Rejecting contemporary pessimism

II

with rhern, and perhaps to some extent with of objects that have been (and cornmunisrn).
LO

aspect to this restoration

useless by consumerist

capitalism

In

the marginal,

the useless and the and black

other words, Svankmajer's onrernp rary

tactiliry, linked to the ruinous, SlI h objc

'IS

rcfcrs
lIll'h'

boih the psychi ai which h (" 'Is is ,/

li ~I'I.I\nl - in other words, the past - in a rnood of cultural

1'1111 lu-rrnor "
I h,

of the 'good' object and 'the rcstoration ivilisation.

of a sl'nsihilily'

IIIII~III, 'I hcse objects havc both a historical and psychical role in his films. old m:lgi :,1 ohjc
'IS

hnvc losl

/'llm'lio!) :llId survivc

of his 'nnrrativcs'

are obje ts that speak.

'mOI

nwkwnrdly :111<1 rnurvcllously in 'Olllt'll1POI'UI'y 1111111'1'. I (di' 11Sv.lld IIHlj,'1'n'1l1illds So \ lI' 01' dll' 1:111111.11H' I, 111,ddlll',lihl1\ ln 1111IlIIII~ld,tl ,li 1111111111 I I 111111' 1111'IWI'IIt!rll,

11 11'"1.1 'I' hus r -murk 'ti 01111 j 1('wn i11wh i h nhjn'ls 11/11111',1' wlrh WIIOIII li\('

im hi h ' I h '

ions :lIld moods

,111' 11111111111. I111 ',IIIIII',III~ 111I'!'I I"1', !110M'('1I1(1I11l1~ III~ '''"

l.nst Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar. In a fascinating

cncompass nearly alI of his subsequenr while ar rhis point just to see how far this is the case.

way his first rwo films worth-

rhemes and visual styles. It is perhaps

For example, his first film, TheLast Trick ofMr Schwarzwald andMr Edgar, contains various elemenrs - marionettes
[unn);

who are actually acrors dressed as marionertes breakdown

(see Don

the rheme of communication

(most of his films, bur particularly

Dimensions of Dialogue); the tenrative optimism of the finale (The Flat; Do pivnice sklepa) (Down to the Ceifar, 1982; rhe role of a natural being in a mechanical <ystem (Jabberwocky);violem aggression (rnost of his films), the fragmenration of the hody (Jabberwocky;Don Juan; Dimensions of Dialogue); and, lastly, the rechniques of
(/)0

IlIontage and use of music, which are common In his second film,]

ro most of his work.

!Ir

'lhe Fali 01 the House 01 Usher

S. Bach:Fantasy in C Minor, there are the themes of animating 11:Il11ral ateriais, particularly srone (Came with Stones; Tbe Flat; The Fali of the House m Usher;Dimensions of Dialogue); the categorising of the world (Et Cetera; Historia iutt urae (suite); rhe use of entrances and doors (The Flat; The Fali of the House of I lslrer; A Quiet Week In a House; The Ossuary;Don Juan); and the hand-held subjective I'0illt-of-view shot (Don Juan; The Ossuary; The Flat; The Fali of the House of Usher). Ilolh films srrongly suggesr rhe pasr - through the use of marionettes and music in /11/' Last Trick of.Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar, and through the ancienr dilapidated ' w.rlls, doors and locks which form rhe main images of] S. Bach: Fantasy in C Minor.
vv.inkrnajer stamped his arristic aurhority and personality on these films, making rhem IlIlegral ro his work and nor simply early experiments with a new medium.

and moods. Animarion,

he claims, should exisr 'to ler objecrs speak for rhemselves' a rhe original srory of of objecrs Usher. Svankmajer treatrnent of a

(quored in Svb 1987: 33). This idea informs much of his work, bur parricularly
film such as The Fali of the House of Usher,where he has stripped any characters has described srory is found and instead, and natural rnatter ro express the torrnent of course horror, unmotivated horror' and horror of Roderick raking Poe's lead, allowed the very materiality

the film as being abour 'a swamp in morion

and rhe life of srones. And

(ibid.), The same minimalisr

in Kyvadlo, jma a nadje (The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope, 1983). to be made in rhe types of rhings thar Svankmajer ourmoded is fascinated graphics, such

There is a distinction

by - cultural arrefacts; old dolls; tin soldiers; phorographs; as rhose used largely in Jabberwocky; and narural marerials, and such natural objecrs as crystals (autornatisrn this marvellous can manipulate

such as srone, wood and and

mudo Breton shows a parallel concern wirh arrefacts he finds in the Paris Hea markets in irs puresr form, he claimed) locomotive overgrown of rhe 'outmoded' figures and objecrs. by mcans of rhe body ;Ind 1I1lIs .xcmplary planrs. His famous image of the old, abandoned and foliage condenses nature. mud which Svankmajer Svankmajer mannequin, rcndcring juxtaposition imo funher wirh vines arrefacr with into primeval

In Dimensions of Dialogue rhe artefacts are Iirerally pulverised does not deal with the animare and the inanimare

which in Surrealism or rhc animal'

is usually of a woman's

of irs commodificarion. t.dly 0prl.llnl

He does deal, howcvcr, wit h a p.1I1ic ul.u 1 1'1' 01 in.inirnate narncly, wiih IIw JlIIJl!, t. 111.11111111111 IIdll'l IlIn h.mi.\IId willl .1 1'11\I1 I" \11111/tll.1I 1I001l1.dly

dJi~il'" which .uv olil'll vnll'd

II/llvidl'd 11, 1I11'1i11l.llIll'ld.1I01. 'II\(, 1''''11ti " 11111 i li IJII" 11 1\ \ 1111 I1.lj I" 1/1(' 11111 1

Two different

and fundamental

conceptions

of animation

are active in these rwo of personthe rnanipu-

Ihere is here the strong sense of the uncanny which Freud also detected in the Romantic movernent's marionettes, dolls and autornara, when he discusses E. T. A. Hoffmann in his famous essay 'Das Unheimliche' " in Don Juan rhar the marionette 111many ways it is a homage ('1he Uncanny',

films. Firstly, there is rhe ancient ality, with its attendant lation of wooden (see Malk This tradition performed

art of marionettes,

where the impression

desires, beliefs and actions, is achieved through

1919).7 However, in The Last

figures. 1he role of puppet

theatre in Czech history is well known

1948; Malk & Kolr 1970; von Boehn 1972: 56; Holloway
dates back to rhe seventeenth against the Habsburg Empire. Marionette century and puppet

1983: 229).
rheatre has and

century when it was a form of protest and the tormented history of Bohemia (see Holloway

lric]:of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar the uncanny is not at all prominent; in fact it as uncanny is used by Svankmajer. The Last Trick [Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar was made using techniques from rhe Black 1heatre.
to that theatre bur impresses for its cinematic ones retaining a theatrical the diagonalline techniques qualities. point of Whilst the long and medi um shots are frontal ,11()t), the film contains
IIp,

revolt in Bohemia

a unique historical role throughout became national

what became Czechoslovakia, when puppets this light, the domination

even until the rwentieth heroes wirh a monument

1983)

vicw, as he has done in most of his films (eschewing the characteristic fast camera movements and heavy editing.

of shot/reverse of extreme close-

built to thern in Plze, In is of polrical irnportance.

Svankmajerian

of Czech anirnation

by puppetry

Svankmajer

has stated thar his style to painting in that was

The first Czech puppet film, Spejblovojilmov opojen (Spejbl on the Spree) was rnade in

manates from montage

and not composition.

He owes nothing

1931 by Josef Skupa. Svankmajer's

on the other hand, unnatural stop-frarne carnera techniques rwo basic techniques work is significant The marionette

protest, as well as that of orher Czech filmmakers tradition. In j. S. Bach: Fantasy in G Minor, of the natural are attained by of real ity. These are the

',I'llse, but more ro scenography,

graphics and cinema itself. His earliest influence disjointed sryle.

such as Trnka, has been in this puppet

Iht: montage cinema of Sergei Eisenstein.

It is also worth recalling that rhe mannerist

activities and properties throughout

1(',hniques discussed earlier relied very much on this fragmentary,

.J

together with the manipulation

r n Tbe Last Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar there

1'.11crns and shapes achieved by using intense close-up i 'I hoing Eisenstein's uucrpreted I',digures famous machine ,.I i Iing is so fast that it results in superimposition

are also shots which stress montage,

used by Svankmajer

his career and rhey suggest quite and other forms of efligy in his of his early career and comprise

and rapid staccato

different ideas. A discussion of the use of marionettes here. and puppet films are characteristic

gun shot in Oktyabr' (October, 1928) where the of the rwo images. 1his could be of the early work. 1he sheer energy the filrn's mannerist qualities. Ir also in the in The crawls. properties

as one of the Manneristic the concerns

The Last Trick of Mr Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar, Punch and Judy and Don [uan, although in rhe more recent film Faust, he returned to the marionette formo Unlike the manipulation of objects and materials to produce figures as in Dimensions of Dialogue and Jabberwocky, marionettes have a historical dimension and introduce a sense of
thearricality onette/puppet as a form of representation films are imbued outside film

1n- 1wcen and within

the shot or frame underlines

and form of Dimensions of Dialogue with its two protagonists there is less tendency seems to be ernbedded the theme. Surrealism

Iml rhe violence each enacts upon the other. However, , .u licr film to over-universalise umctcenth-cenrury l hcsc Ernst-like ',,~majer ~ic

rself

To this extent, the rnariPuppets appear also

/ ,/,/ Trice ofMrSchwarzwaldandMr

idealised women, images

Edgar in the use of old newspapers and images of

upon which at one point the cockroach to the Gothic) recur in his work - the of a dance song with

with the surrealist

'ourmoded',

in the later work, Nco z Alenky (Alice/Somethingfrom Alice, 1987). Their use is not peculiarly surrealist, although Jarry, a surrealist precursor, wrote for the puppet thearre. As Henryk Jurkowski points our, the puppet was recognised as part of the theatre by of the Craft Guilds, the 'classical mimes, Greek, Roman and Byzantine, the priests who organised comedians touring the Continent the members century'

(also owing much

.u.iil in the stone skull in The Ossuary, for example. 1he use of sound is fascinating: uses the collage effect of mixing an old phonograph sounds, plus exaggerated theatrical sounds. At one point towards the end of takes on a traditional theatre. Typically, their costumes, gloves. At alone, leaves

the Mystery Plays, Com media dell'Arte players, the English in the seventeenrh

11,(lilm, the record sticks and a phrase is repeated. In his next marionette ''lV,111 krnajer embraces 111'1(' rcveals knowingly 1111' \1age. His disclosure , IIn I ofironically film, Punch and Judy, Svankmajer I"1J1P<;! story, one which still survives in Europe in open-air the theatrical
I

(1988: 1). In more

wrote for the puppet and Johann

recent times, Federico Garca Lorca and Michel de Ghelderode theatre. In Germany Wolfgang in the nineteenth in particular, century the Romantic von Goethe

puppet

movement,

space of the original play and, as in The Last Trick putting on the puppet

were decisive in reviving interest in the puppet

"fll/r Schwarzwald and Mr Edgar, where he shows the actors donning the hands of the puppeteer of theatrical mechanics

theatre, For Goethe, the puppet theatre was a metaphor for an alienation which was both social and ontological. In Die Leiden desjungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young

li,, cnd of the film we see the hands leave the gloves and the guinea-pig, distancing
SL

Werther, 1774) are the following lines:

I stand as before a peepshow, a magic box. I see srnall p opl . nnd liu l horses
nOI

is also found in Don Juan and has the

rhc play itself. Ir allows the film to be the arena ofillusion

11) lI\lIrping its ihcatri .al subjcci rnaucr, Ihcrc are iwo
,... 1/11

passing in front of me and ofcen a k my c1f if il is I play with rh n , or rarh r rh y play wit h m " Iil Ih '11 I l,rI . ,I Iwighhollr 11111II10w\l\ II)HH: I) h
t'

,111oJlli ,ri illusion.

rikillg nsp x ts o( Ihis fllm, as in 'file L{1St Trick of Mr

,I

chwarzwald
incm.u k IIH',II

.1 1ll,IIII1II1'III':IHlW nnd

11 Ir /:'r<Ci,IIr. ih ' II,W01'

live

(I

',llIlIr ,11l10ng rh ' in.minuu

. pllppCIS and rhc .hnr,,'.11"

hi\ wood '11 h.1I111 .uul I 1111 II 111111111 )lIolnl (

11lI'Ii\li\ \'ditillf' ,IIHI \ ,IIlH'I,IWCII '111111111\" (,11111'1,1 1 til\' SV,lllklll,lj'l' '[1.111 .lIld dllH', 1111,1[1,1 "1' til w til

.uul, ,111111' \.11111 111111', IIdl'lIll1 1111'. 11 "

rical space and time. 1he camerawork Similarly, the soundtrack sounds emanating

and editing are striking and decidedly

visible. the

mixes a musical chorus of sighs and exclamations

with actual

from the blows struck by the protagonists. the coffin, piercing

Atmospherically,

tone is much more akin to the uncanny, pardy because the violence at times is crueller - a nail is driven through the mouth of a woman in a picture Dimenone. For pasted to the inside lid and then through rhe puppet's mouth. 1his oral aggression and sadistic eroticism also surfaces repeatedly sions of Dialogue. 1he example, relationship between this violence and tacriliry is a fascinating Luis Bufi.uel's infamous eye-slicing scene in the surrealist c1assic, Un chien as a viscous jelly-like opening of in the films - The Flat, jabberwocky,

andalou (An Andalusian

Dog, 1928), derives much of its force from the tactile quality is physically determined

of the eye - its vulnerability his tactile structures. rational concrete. where hard materials

the body. Svankmajer's stress on tactile values in materials is explored funher by him in Tactile shock and exposure relates to the surrealist notion of material beco me soft and the academic way than in Dal's work. films is the fact that the tactile Svankmajer comments on the
11011

of the

Dal's development

tactility is obvious in his paintings sryle of the paintings gives soft this quality of film represents

things a hard edge. However, the intrinsic photographic tactiliry in a less contrived

1he violence that meshes with the tactile draws us back to the idea of restoration, for it would seem that a powerful aspect of Svankmajer's rarely succumbs sive violence of the editing and camera movements.
[unn

to being a gesture of nostalgia; this is achieved largely by the aggres'.I.lIlSof psychosis (see Ades 1988: 119-49). Dal wanted For Dal the method was advantageous 1111 s active character u where the mind, as in the paranoid, to the total discrediting perceives reality according in

eaning of such images: 1he whole process of eating can thus be made intensely erotic. Or it can be translated misanthropy into a cannibalistic and aggressive act through which accumulated can be released. In any case such activity can become ludic, and as

I" mental states and associations. , tlllrllsion and contribute

rhe method to be used to 'systematize

of the world of realiry' (quoted was difficult;

such is no longer perceived merely as an act of filling the belly. (1992: 47) In Jdlo (Food, 1992) this cannibalistic out sequences Dialogue). irrational quality is achieved through fast editing and and spewingof figures (Dimensions

through film, wirh 11' .uiirnation rnethods and ability to speedily mesh images through fast edring, the 1',II,lIlOiac-critical method can achieve much, as shown by Svankmajer's films, with
~rapid 111.uldition, accumulation the dissolving of objects, connected through the most arbitrary means. of one object inro another, as in Arcimboldian collage, is

,\,b

1988: 121). Such a method used in painting

close-up shots used associatively. In earlier films the cannibalistic-eating always involve dolls (Jabberwocky) or animated on this oral aggression Petr Krl has commented

''(Iollgly connected to Dal's rnethod and indirecdy to Mannerism. 'I hc third marionette film is Don [uan, an ambitious rendering , '111h-cenrury 11, h.umring marionette opening play as performed by the troupes ',1<11'S fram Shakespeare i IlI'ltI .nrnera, establishing 1,IIor cnters a building 01,11 kcncd orridors

of a typical eighrgreat films.

in his article on Larry

of players who toured use of a handthrough

Semon (1991: 180). But it is not simply the cannibalism, systern that makes it a surrealist characteristic. Dal states that there is 'a desire for systematic 'delirious, pessimistic aspiration 1his systematising Dal's ide~ of paranoiac-critical ates ir wiih 'th towards gratuitousness' the perversity activity as a rnethod

bur rather its presence in an

irrationality latent that the is close to

and the Bible. Ir is perhaps one of Svankmajer's by his own idiosyncratic

seqllence is established through

and concrete

a rather giddy and nervous subjective viewpoint as the specthe bushes and main gateway and proceeds of the stage. He uses the same type of shot

in alI comedy films' (1991: 74). Ir is in comic films of concrete irrationaliry of the real through of rhe imagination in m:lking :11'1.Owing

is fulfilled for Dal (1991: 73).

into the underbelly

111 /11/' Ossunry anel lhe Fall of the House of Usher. Such a shot is strongly suggestive 1111'111 'l'ing :1I101h r world, anoihcr ...-'IIIIIIHIIhl'OlIl'holll tllIllIll'.h tlH' rcaliry - one suflused with anxiety and probable 1\ 1101,MIh as Allc ,'s 'IIII'Y t!lI'ollf1,h t!ll'lookil1f1, glass hb lillll\, 11 ,1"0 \11/'/'('\1\ 'Id 1.111\1I "
ti\('

much to

the idea of objects 01' even parts of objcct

b ing tal .n as difll'l' '111IlIil1~~, Dal a$50 iIII0wll'dl\I", '111, mct ho I I ,li ,111WIi IIVlIlVI'd 111111' II'I'l':dbl M

and in this way doorways are

t

d liriurn of int .rprctut ion' :1I1d 'ill,ltioll,i1

lilllllll,dll'!"S OWIl id 'nlfi xu ion wit h ,~holll'd, 01 I 011IM" wilh ,I wotid \ I ',lll'd hv ~p('tl.llor

wus :11'1.ulnt ,d dlll'illg Ih ' Y 'ars whcn );1 qll" i

til\' ,IIIIHI 111011,\ poll\l 111v 'W ~I\III, ,111Idl'lltll

11 IIIVI'III('II ,llId 111, p,lI.1I101.1I\ "til ,ti 1III'Iltll.lllWI' '11111111111 I dll

'1" li til"

111111 l\l.tI

h.uul h

11PI'IIII1 ,\h

SV,IIt1II1,ljl'l 1111\

not quite controlled levels without Svankmajer

by him; what happens

is as likely ro surprise, shock and disturb of space and narrative diction used by the

him as uso The film is a tour de force of subtle manipulation ever losing control has explained of rhe story. the particular and instructed how he researched

\\ lurcby his own highly person~1 associ~tions stemming from c~ildho~d and wha~ hel , " .IS its natural ally - dream lfe - actively construct the films 111 which such pro)ej
I " ""

are given shape. ( )ne of rhe most important

of Svankmajer's

surrealist

films is Down to tbe Cellar from a young girl's

original puppeteers the marionettes costumes. to a tradition the 'outmoded',

for their characters

his actors to use it in order to practice as possible. Similarly, heads and with purely

\\11" its political allegory and exploration " 1111 begins wi th a door being opened n I" r oirte, during which she encounters ,,1.1 woman scrubbing the communal

of childhood

psychology

make the play, on one level, as dose to the traditional are copies of original eighteenrhadmired by Svankmajer, This meticulous _accuracy in replicating Ir would be simplistic,

1,,,,"1 of view. In many ways ir is a precursor

of Alice. As in many of his films, the

and nineteenrh-century

and a descent down a staircase by the young an old man who offers her a sweet, and a sour floors; both figures takE on even more sadistic she illns to collect are kept. - have a place in this strange world, as do like rats, and a giant cat. At

the original at once pays homage

and also reflects the surrealist obsession for example, to treat these marionettes estrangement

l.u mx in her fantasies in the cellar, where the potatoes I l.uural materiais - coal, rnost memorably I" H'~ with flapping, mouth-like licnd of this waking nightmare "\\'11 projected """ . optimistic

\ "'"

as symbols of cultural alienation the facile psychologism vacuous modernism concreto'.

and psychological

from others in the especially and

modern world. Rather, the film can also be seen as a critique of the modern, of much contemporary fication. Artfice, for Svankmajer, is a means ofboth denying

soles that scurry around

Western art and film and its cornrnodithe dead naturalism what surrealists called the 'irrational

the girl rests at the top of the stairs with the cat and act of bravery, of facing up to her the girl does not seem cut off from a in mood.

1111"11 ollows it back down the stairs, a deliberate I" 'I, \In like the man in the menacing apartment,

of much art, and establishing

fears. Like the hero of lhe Flat, she does not lose her determination, future. The films are quite distinct due partially

Don [uan is a film of horror and tragedy shot through wirh humour. The murder
scenes, in which swords slice the wooden heads to reveal plain wood surfaces and Don Juan's sword pierces his brother Philip's head to release theatrical spouting blood, are comic in a grim, black way, much like real murder marionette and death. Equally, the distance of Svankmajer's films.

lhe Flat is anarchic and "" l.uicholic, whilst Doum to the Cellar is tense and menacing, and has a dsrurbng
u.i]
I!:!,

undercurrent,

to the association

made in our culture

with any her

girl under threat. Svankmajer

has made the nature of this threat more explicit, to haunt had rooted

created by such artificial means holds its force and meaning within the language of the theatre. This perfect pitch of feeling is characteristic aggression and violence can be compared The pronounced with that found in rhe early theatre

11I1\V<'vcr, the character in 11II hc cellar _ bribing ""1 lhe sexual subtexts

of the old man with the sweets who returns

her, it seems, for sexual ends. It is as if Svankmajer

of stories such as Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865) with

silent comic cinema of Hollywood. The systernatic and nursery should be reminded sado-masochistic inanimare. subject depicrion and cruel logic of such actions also recalls Sade, Jacobean rales, where such bloody violence is given the safety net of formo We and effiand

at this point of how Hans Bellmer's poupes and dolls are used by rhe use of inanimate

to portray bizarre scenarios of violent death and sexual attack. The fragmentation themes of such work are underpinned gies which relentlessly problematise

their subject matter, for in dearh we are doll-like, that allows the

Equally, the use of dolls sets up an ironic disrance berween spectator of horror

matter. To such an extent, efligies provide a formal element

in rhe same way in which the rhyme of nursery tales helps to returned to the therne of childhood, especially in

disrance their horror. Svankmajer and primitive has consistently

Jabberwocky, Down to the Cellar and Alice. His obsession with marionettes,
folk tales also relates to childhood which often use fear, horror as something thar rclai oursc
dll'

puppets - rales that

and its forms of representation and anxiety. He has remarked that I have left behind
wit h .hildhood
10

of the imagination

'I have never viewed my childhood nevertheless interested in a ser ofideas

me' (1987: as such, it is im:lgin:l ,111.POI

/111//'/1111 1/1

52). Whilst Surrealism is not renowned

rn .nral statcs, su h as parania, and

for its conccrn

.hildhood

iul.uu ilixm, primirivc

or

inno, '11 . ,1111111111 '"nl 'llI

~ioll which i, lypiCll or~':lI'lyhildl1()od

,llld \\'11,1111 11\'\01 o, ,ti 11'"I'dlldliw I

Sv,lIdulI,ljl'l, ItI, I'XpllH,l!i1l11 111," 1"1101111 1'1111111I I" 111111111111 '1Iill,t1I1I1'I"lId, I, ,I 11

t rll.

their barely veiled eroticism.

Childhood

is, according

to Svankmajer,

his 'alrer-ego' 24),

and Down to the Cellar his most 'subjective and autobiographical' 1987: 28). Ir relates to what he describes as 'mental morphology' being partly the result of discussions within

film (quoted in Krl (see Krl1987:

the Czech Surrealist Group with whom CHAPTER tale 'fermented (1987: 52).In by my own childthe filmmaker's commitTHREE

he explored other themes - such as fear (associated with Tbe Fall ofthe House ofUsher) and drearn (with A Quiet Wek In a House). Svankmajer'sAlice intensely peopled is an interpretation obsessions ofCarroll's and anxieties' 'irracional' hood, with ali its particular visual rendition by creatures

ir is a story of a child under world.

threat by her own fantasies, Ir is Svankmajer's

in an impossible

ment to that world of the imagination, and forms his own experiences, he ascribes to childhood. ence. More importantly, Dream, latter is formed by childhood,

of dreams and fantasies, a world which shapes and feelings, that explains the irnportance and the its influ-

Thinking Through Things: The Presence O/ Objects in the Early Films O/ Jan Suanlemajer

rhoughts

If art is gained rhrough an access to the unconscious ir is natural he should explicitly acknowledge he remarks: is being systematically produced

that natural well for the imaginarion, 'rarional' systems. (1987: 53)

filled in by

Reger Cardinal

and absurdiry our 'scientific', Svankmajer's

asserts irself in its place; an absurdiry

in quantiry

Surrealism

is a cornplex matter, and the lack of a srrong surrealisr and contrasts are difliculr

film

I conti~gency

tradition

means that comparisons

to make. The historical

a rnamstream

of a su.rrealis~ survi~ing in Czechoslovakia, cut off from based in Pans and America which has long since lost its force, lends workan individualiry where ir is impossible to sirnply read off the Surre111

"""?"?'.

Svankmajer's

~lism. His commitment to the.Czech tradirio~s of Mannerism, design and puppetry IS a further factor that feeds resistance to easy interpretations. What is fascinaring and ulrirnately enriching in terrns of his films is his audacious method which performs and persistent rapping of his of In this Svankmajer has given fresh evidence of the power of Dal's rhe function, among others, into no more rhan sryle. Much of rnodern-day of a sryle then traded as surre-

proposing

a new etiquetre cosmologies

for seeing, Surrealism

often harks back to Romantic benearh the discontinuities rypito creativiry

,H1(1 occultist ~e
I

which posit a latent harmony as a precondirion

'I own intemallife. neglected resisting Surrealism,

world's surface. Always eager to startle and often to mysrify, Surrealism .tll)' postulares bewildermem of insighr. Irs approach

paranoiac-critical

the collapse of Surrealism

1"lId~ to grapple with "jagged elemems

I XI

of dispariry, of prolixiry, of sheer unprocessed any revelation which lacks a comple-

or whar passes for it, is simply the adoprion

css, in the hope of eliciting

a more rhrilling - because delayed - vision of equilibrypically distrusts

alist, when strictly it is not. The crucial role of the 'outmoded' a fascinarion wirh rhe unconscious of approach in terms of the subject matter - or should we and distortion, memory, and are say objecr rnatter - of his films, tactility, aggressive fragmemation ali part of a merhod sense of fragmentation, surrealist characteristics and processo Mannerism, it somehow

IIHIll-..'1ndclariry. A surrealist

IH('lIlary aura of enigma: the naked truth cannot be embraced withour its veils. 'I hc carly films ofJan Svankmajer, steeped in a mixture ofSurrealism and Mannerism, I" Iivc on the paradox of graming VI'IIigo and bewilderment. 1111.1, h
TC,

as revealed in dream and childhood

insight only to those viewers prepared to non-verbal

to submir to presemation wirh the ar The

as we have seen, does not meshes with ir. Its own sensualiry fits well with the at thc cost

The visual artist's cornrnitmenr and optical confusion. lO making films, Svankmajer
'l'

stand against such a merhod; on the contrary,

as a seemingly

necessary corollary, an almost perverse compliciry

explosive tension and overwrought

and spirit to such an extent that rhey are in practice of one an analysis such as this only seerns possibl

1.1\I()r~ haotic proliferation I\y rhc Ii111 hc IUrt1 d , '011.'1" making, '-/loll.lJ',(' I

or

had long been adept hi. art i iic stratcgies.

piece. In the case of Svankmajer,

and lhis pra li

orn inucs

10 inforrn

lof t

aring apart what his art has trearcd brillianrly as a whol .

is illd . d ,I p,II".ldil\lI101' .ill IIlOd 'S 01 SlIl'l'',disl cr ':1Iiviry. FoI' ir, hy d finilion, 11I"111'1l 111,1.1, 1' 01.1 Ili'l "1'< \01111"1111'111', 1111"1 " lt '1t.111 in i hr ll1:d<iI1J.4' I 111\'1111\ 11pllll.d I , 1 111dll' 1,111, IIJII'~ 111IIPPI'I

I",

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