'Trained as illustrators, the Brothers Quay's films give greater attention to mise-en-scène and the marginal, and are more associative than narrative: "We demand that the decor act as poetic vessels and be foregrounded as much as the puppets themselves. In fact, we ask of our machines and objects to act as much if not more than the puppets ... as for what is called the scenario: at most we have only a limited musical sense of its trajectory, and we tend to be permanently open to vast uncertainties, mistakes, disorientations (as though lying in wait to trap the slightest fugitive encounter).
'Their films reveal the influence of Eastern European culture: whether inspired by animators, composers, or writers, a middle European esthetic seems to have beckoned them into a mysterious locus of literary and poetic fragments, wisps of music, the play of light and morbid textures. Certain films can be considered homages to filmmakers whose work they admire (The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer), others present their own intuitive and visionary encounters with authors, artists and composers whose writings and compositions are transformed into the cinematic medium: Street of Crocodiles, is loosely based on Bruno Schulz's short story, "Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies," and was inspired by a print by Fragonard.
'In scenes of elusive cinematic and literary reference which identify the Quays' films, one is obliquely reminded of silent filmmakers Kirsanov, Murnau, the surrealist Buñuel and the Russian film poet Tarkowsky; of Kafka (who was greatly influenced by Walser) and of essential myth and fairy tale. Continuing collaboration with the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski supports and counterpoints their careful visual choreography, whether of puppets, exquisite objects or actors. Like Lisa Benjamenta, the images are simultaneously fragile and immortal. The films evade a postmodern context or interpretation, and their epiphanic moments and dreamscapes provide a momentary orientation, but are themselves even greater enigmas within the film's poetic fabric.
'Seen as a whole, the Brothers Quay's works are independent of any definable genre; indeed, the imitation of their unique style which can be observed in films of other animators are a complimentary gesture to the auteur style they have developed. Throughout their opus, a continuity can be observed Quays' devotion to the marginal, the nobody and the unnoticed, elevated into the sublime.' -- Suzanne Buchan, Shifting Realities
Interview (3:51)
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from The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984)
'The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer is the Quays most explicit interpretation of influence as it is a direct homage to the Czech master animator. Constructed as a sequence of nine lessons, the narrative features a puppet Svankmajer who teaches both a puppet child and the viewer “the importance of objects in [the animator's] work, their transformation and bizarre combination through specifically cinematic techniques, the extraordinary power of the camera to 'make strange', the influence of Surrealism on [his] work, and the subversive and radical role of humour”.' -- Senses of Cinema
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The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
'The film takes some of its key visual motifs and develops them into a series of complex constructions: the use of drawers and tables as devices and as mechanisms, the transformation of meaning within an object through juxtaposition and the influence of Surrealism to create a psychosexual drama. Unlike Svankmajer's ordered, clean white library of objects and meaning, the Quays describe Gilgamesh's kingdom as one that is “an entirely hermetic universe literally suspended out of time in a black void”. The pale yellow shadow-mottled walls are inscribed with calligraphic text and its seemingly vast expanse is randomly broken up by square holes from which medical hooks occasionally project. A table – a mechanism and a trap – concealing female genitalia within one of its drawers, stands at the centre of Gilgamesh's domain. High above this space are strung high-tension wires, vibrating in the wind, one caught with a broken tennis racquet.' -- Senses of Cinema
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The Street of Crocodiles (1986)
'The Street of Crocodiles is a piece of unsurpassed filmmaking. Aside from the delicate and disturbing movements of this ghetto's inhabitants, it demonstrates the Quays' reflexive approach to the process of animation itself. Often referred to in articles and interviews as the liberation of the mistake (for example, in Suzanne H. Buchan's “The Quay Brothers: Choreographed Chiaroscuro, Enigmatic and Sublime”), the brothers developed a range of visual strategies which not only seek to complicate the physical space in which the characters move but also to extend the mise en scène of the narrative. The Street of Crocodiles develops their use of the camera as “the third puppet” by creating a parallel between the protagonist and the camera itself. Through a combination of macro lenses, shallow focal planes and fast pans, the majority of the images within the film appear as point of view shots. By allowing the camera to become the protagonist's vision, the environment and its inhabitants slowly shift into uneasy forms, where the furtive glance of the camera echoes the protagonist's sharp turns, catching glimpses of occurrences that hover on the edges of the frame: unsure of his – and, by implication, our – position within this darkened warren, the film has a palpable paranoia.' -- Senses of Cinema
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Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988)
'As a subtle theme within the Quays' work, insanity quietly drifts through their narratives. Appearing in both a physical form, as in Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, and as source material itself, madness seems to further the emotive quality of their work. It almost appears as another texture, another layer in the abstraction of the images and the narrative. This is, perhaps, most evident in RfEA; the film is shot in a combination of black and white and colour, live action and animation, and features another lone figure, this time a woman who repeatedly writes a letter with a broken piece of lead. Outside her window, the constantly changing lighting conditions intimate her emotions. In conclusion, the Quays dedicate the film to "E.H. who lived and wrote to her husband from an asylum."' -- Senses of Cinema
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Stille Nacht I, II, IV, V (1988- 2001)
'Of these works, the Quays have said that they are, in some way, connected to their personal output with “just the same dark drift, basically inscrutable. It's gently mysterious”. Michael Atkinson describes the Stille Nacht series of music videos as “shorts [which] seem to function as working junk drawers, using up whatever the Brothers couldn't squeeze into their larger films”. Atkinson continues by stating that the music video Can't Go Wrong Without You (Stille Nacht IV) “may be one of the Quay's most disturbing pieces, a bizarre Easter suite with the resourceful stuffed rabbit from Stille Nacht II battling the forces of evil (a pixillated human in horns and skullface) for the possession of an egg”.' -- Senses of Cinema
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The Comb (From The Museums Of Sleep) (1990)
'The Comb opens in the shadowy bedroom of a sleeping beauty and seems to enter her mind and burrow into her dreams. Based on a fragment of text by the Austrian writer Robert Walser, The Comb is an exploration of the subconscious visualized as a labyrinthine playhouse haunted by a doll-like explorer. A mesmerizing and resonant blend of live action and animation, The Comb is set to a sensuous score of violins, guitars and attic room cries and whispers, and bathed in a gorgeous golden glow.' -- Zeitgeist Films
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The Calligrapher (1991)
an ident commissioned for the BBC2 television channel, but never broadcast
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from Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
'For their first live-action film, the Quays adapted Robert Walser's novel Jakob von Gutten into Institute Benjamenta. Apart from the obvious relationship between Jacob's lessons and the physical act of animating an object for film, Institute Benjamenta's sublime moments once again play out the obsessions of the Quays. Like the Unnameable Little Broom, the Institute is a symbolic structure that is infused with latent sexual tension, most obviously, within the growing attraction between Jacob and Lisa Benjamenta. Further moments lie within a vial containing powdered stag semen and in the anamorphic representation of rutting deer on one of the Institute's walls. To return from the dead, to be reanimated, is the essence of the Quays' work. Taking found objects and constructing them into new forms with new meaning is only the beginning of their dark material. In their fictions narratives need not move as smoothly as we would like and nor should their imagery be as obvious. In all, these films are like their makers: identical enigmas, a life within a life, and a dream within a dream.' -- Senses of Cinema
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from The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2006)
'Their second live action film, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005), satisfies this possibility in many ways. Like a true auteur, the Brothers consistently return to similar themes, similar narratives and to similar techniques, with each film not necessarily being different from but an extension of their primal narrative. For the Quays that primal narrative is tragedy, a failed attempt to escape from beautifully sinister and arcane mechanisms. When such a narrative is sited within a world constructed and populated by the lost, the lonely, the rejected and the damaged, then an intense melancholy descends and the dream becomes a complex shifting of realities: narrative is given over to imagery and story dissolves into timeless myth. It is here that The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes exists, a film that surrenders its narrative to the beauty of the image in order to create the mythical.' -- Senses of Cinema
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Trailer: Inwentorium śladów ('Inventorium of Traces') (2009)
'In the Renaissance castle of the Polish count - Jan Potocki - in Lancut, the modern traces of a past glory persevere and become visible again at the tones of Krzysztof Penderecki's music and Brothers Quay's imaginary animation.' -- ligotti.net
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Wonderwood (2010)
'To mark the launch of the latest fragrance from Comme des Garcons, entitled "Wonderwood", the Brothers Quay have produced an exclusive short film.'
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p.s. Hey. It's cleaning/exile day on my end. The usual consequences. ** Kiddiepunk, Maybe if I'm very lucky, my exile today will coincide with yours, and our lighting cigarettes will collide under the Recollets' overhang, and, if not, let's phone each other later on. ** Oscar B, I hope you didn't catch that cold. Share vocal cord-related noises of an articulate nature later? ** David Ehrenstein, Epperson is here partly to try to schmooze together a Paris Lypsinka gig. Apparently, he's never performed here before, which quite surprised me. Have to disagree with you about Nicolas Cage. I think 'Adaptation', 'Face/Off', 'Rumble Fish', and 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' are all first rate films for instance. ** Colin, Hi, Colin. The temperature dropped there too? It's still a brisk and kind of refreshing chill here. Chilled soups are a current fetish of mine. It's one of those 'where have you been all my life' things. ** David, Very, very best of luck getting through the sleep study tonight without an excess of nightmares or physical discomfort. Report back post- snooze with the good word, if you don't mind. ** Im not an asbo im your next Prime minister, Hey. Oh, I've seen that Greer book 'The Boy', not in forever though. If my memory is serving me, I'm kind of surprised to hear that a library carries it, but my memory might have juiced it up. I wonder if it's in print? Thanks about my chronology. I think I'm going to test that love pretty furiously in the new novel. How's stuff, and what does that stuff consist of? ** Pilgarlic, I'm shit with money. I save and behave as stingily towards myself as I possibly can, but it still drains away. And I'm shit at getting it. Been turned down for every grant I've ever applied for. Tried a few times to get anyone to fund my dream of writing and directing a porn film, and it was an on-the-cheap porn too. But then Gisele got offered 400,000 euro to direct an opera recently. So, the money's there, it's just earmarked for things more high and mighty. Great story there, man. You know and tell the best stories. I'm sure everyone always tells you that. ** The Evil Ghost of JW Veldhoen, You really must be a ghost. Otherwise, how did you make your comment jet all the way over into the blog's no man's land on the far right? Never seen that happen before. I'm scared. ** Empty Frame, I'm going to a big runway fashion show this afternoon. I'll check every swank foot for buckle. Yeah, I recommend Michael de-la-Noy's 'Denton Welch: A Writer's Life' too. Oh, Frieze is back. The French Frieze aka FIAC, is in a few weeks too. I'll be in NYC, though. Hope that art buying dude with great taste buys big. Glad to hear the work's percolating, and even some writing work, cool. Ray Johnson, awesome. If you haven't seen 'How to Draw a Bunny', watch it as soon as you can. ** Sypha, You just need a magic can of soup. Hope your cold is frittering away. ** Changeling, What happened to 'moreblondsoup'? It's, like, gone. A ton of fake blood and latex is a great gift. I'd kill for such a birthday gift. My birthday is close enough to Xmas that my X&B gifts always got smushed in one gift. Oh, I should do a Halloween SPD, of course. Duh. You're right. I'd better announce it pretty soon. Thanks for reminding me. Oh, it was the gig itself on Saturday? I bet it isn't on youtube, you stingy band you. Will you do another? In Paris? Well, I can't possibly see how people saying your Lucinda Williams cover was astonishing could be anything but good. I mean way good. Which song? The Butt Magazine photographer didn't get what he wanted in the slightest. He'd brought hair gel to give me some punk/Bozo look. He wanted shirtless. He wanted to drag some 'hotty' off the street and make me ogle him. All kinds of shit. What he got was me sitting at my desk and standing in the stairwell looking slightly paranoid. I blew my big chance, in other words. ** Plexus, Hey, Gabble-gabble. Dencyst is a good one, and so true! Okay, I'm awfully glad you liked your prize. I worked my fingers to the bone to make it, I'll have you know. Not really. I worked something else into a bone though. Sort of. Since I can't imagine what writer you're referring to, clearly your writing has taken nothing of importance from anyone who isn't you. Not until October? Well, that's only, like, what five or six days away? My writing goes good. I just started working on the last section of my novel finally. It's as raw as hell, but I think everything I need is hiding in there somewhere. I just need to fish and schmooze it out. In truth, my novel kind of is going to be like the world's first pop-up book that doesn't have pages that actually do physical calisthenics when you open them. I'm not kidding. You'll see what I mean. So, your dream was futurist. I thought you were my Gunt soup already. So, now you're saying you're not? Ha ha. Take some love on your way out, G. ** Bill, Yes, yes, on the Paul Thek retrospective. I'm incredibly excited, and I'm going to catch it in LA too or die trying. ** Wolf, Yeah, I think the chicken broth in most of those could be x-ed out and replaced with vegan whatever without missing a beat, right? That shitty video you described makes it seem like the band looked like Sunn0))) if not even sounded like them too with just a fiddle of the speed control, come to think of it. I'd settle for that. That was my thought: Lynch is here raising dough. He's lecturing here on the 13th at the Cinematheque. re: 'Fire Walk With Me'. ** Steevee, Well, X-ray it is then. Yeah, you might as well know. ** Misanthrope, Misanwho? Good good good on the d.l. splendors of your NYC trip. Yes, those Mans Best and Bel Ami models were very kind to pose for me, weren't they? And the former three could still fit into their old Renaissance costumes, although it did take a touch of Photoshop to get the snaps snapped. ** Marc Vallee, Thanks a lot, Marc. Very, very best to you. Hope you get over Paris way one of these days. ** Statictick, Hey, N. Six weeks? It takes a village to be you, man. You are the toughest guy ever. I hope the old 'no news is good/no news' truism holds true for your mom and you. ** Nb, Well, unless you think a carcass has to be floating in a soup to qualify it as non-vegetarian, and it seems you do, only 1 or 2 of those soups were actually vegetarian, smarty pants. And hippies ate meat like it was going out of style, grandchild. And, furthermore, ... ** Pisycaca, Wow, that is a miracle. Do they have those pills in France? Uh, wait, I guess I'm asking what the pills are called. Anyway, victoire, my pal! ** Armando, Hey, man. 'In My Skin' ... aka 'Dans Ma Peau' ... you know, people have recommended it to me, but I don't think I've ever seen it. Shouldn't be too hard, it being French and all. Thanks! 'Pigpen' is actually in (or referred to prominently) in my novel, so that's why my rush to watch it again. Pierre Clementi is a really big semi-behind the scenes component of the novel. Thanks again, A. You take care too. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Sir. The knowledge that your last two days were heavy with suck is regretful news to me. My commiserations. I saw an exciting looking email from you in my in-box this morning, and I will fill my hungry maw with it a little later on. Thank you, maestro. See, now, don't you want a custom-made post prize too, you being the grand prize winner and everything? Sky's sort of the limit. I hope your today is everything you've ever wanted from a day. ** Okay. Between the d.l. attrition yesterday and my need for speed today, I got through that before the cleaning crew's ugly knock on my door. Halloween's countdown is up to two now thanks both to the Brothers Quay and to the hours it took me to rob their oeuvre then arrange the loot in my window. Like it or don't. I have no control over that. Just do what you're going to do. I'll see what you did, assuming you did things here, tomorrow, and then I'll say something about what you did. That's what I do.
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