An Evening of Films by Jeunet & Caro – The City of Lost Children & The Bunker of the Last Gunshots

The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995): Long before Jean-Pierre Jeunet had his American mainstream success with Amélie, and even before his venture into Hollywood filmmaking with Alien Resurrection, Jeunet was known for making dark, ideosyncratic French science fiction movies with his collaborator, cartoonist Marc Caro.

Following the reasonable international success of 1991’s Delicatessen, a blackly comic post-apocalyptic film about cannibalism, circus clowns, and family life under pressure (and which garnered for the duo, among other things, a ringing endorsement from Terry Gilliam), they set their sights on an even more ambitious, and somewhat less comic final product. The result was this film, which generated glowing international  reviews and developed something of a cult following (as well as a Playstation tie-in game) here in the US.

The film presents a strange night-time world — seedy, wet, filled with rusting Modern machinery, the unnamed City is a hyper-stylized mix of the Dickensian metropolis, and the bad part of town from film noir. A sinister cult preaches that through blindness, sin can be purged. A gang of elementary-aged children run a successful pickpocketing ring. Desolate opium-ridden ringmasters live out their lives in run-down trailers. And, somewhere out in the water, an oil rig has been transformed into the lair of a mad scientist who tries to steal the dreams of kidnapped children… Much of this is background texture or prelude; the main action of the plot comes from this, but is more than the sum of the setting and visuals.

There’s plenty to go on and on about — Jean-Paul Gauthier’s costumes, Ron Perlman’s monosyllabic performance in French, Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score — but I’ll let you watch for yourself.

City of Lost Children works so well because of how fluidly its many parts are able to work together, both at the level of its contributors and at the level of its influences.

as well as:

The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (Le Bunker de la Dernière Rafale) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1981):

Not nearly so well known as the other productions of Jeunet & Caro, this short relies almost exclusively on its visuals. Its dedication to recreating the stylized visuals of a ’20s UFA production almost anticipates the work of Guy Maddin some ten years later, but to a much different effect: here, Jeunet & Caro are interested in a claustrophobic element that the open (though soundstaged) vistas in Maddin’s work do not seem to take on at all.

In the world that this short investigates, a war rages on (or perhaps no longer does at all) in the world outside a monolithic bunker. The soldiers left inside — all shaved bald, many sporting nasty facial scars — are getting stir-crazy, and are plotting Machiavellian schemes, or else letting their latent sadism leak out unchecked. In the midst of this, a short circuit starts a countdown clock that no-one has seen before. Is this the work of saboteurs? Is there a spy in their midst? The paranoia runs high, and all parties involved scramble to put their own plots in motion before the countdown reaches zero…

An Evening of Vintage Experimental Animated Science Fiction: Fantastic Planet b/w “Mars and Beyond”

FANTASTIC PLANET (La Planète Sauvage) (1973): Those who stuck around some after KISS last time saw the first minute or so of this one, and a trailer, and thus know some of what to expect; others may remember the trailer when I showed it before TRON in the spring. Regardless, the rather deadpan preview doesn’t quite prepare the first-time viewer for this one. This is the first full-length film from French science fiction animator René Laloux (who would go on to make the films Time Masters and Light Years before dying a few years ago), in collaboration with French cartoonist Roland Topor (the French Ralph Steadman, collaborator with Laloux on “The Snails,” also shown last time, as well as the force behind the infamous Marquis). Fantastic Planet is often called a political allegory (about the Russians invading Czechoslavakia in 1968), though it’s best remembered for its surreal, almost hallucinatory visuals and attention to zoological detail, as well as its both ethereal and break-ready soundtrack. This is one of the few science fiction films out there that lives up to the high bar set by its print counterparts.

Here’s how Anchor Bay’s release from a few years ago describes the film:

“Winner of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Award, Fantastic Planet is an allegorical tale about the struggle for freedom of a race of humanoid creatures called Oms. The Oms live on the far away planet of Ygam, ruled by a society of blue-skinned giants called Draags, who keep the Oms as domesticated pets for their children. But when [an Om named Terr] manages to escape with a Draag knowledge device, he unites a society of wild Oms to use the knowledge and revolt against their exploitative treatment.”

to be preceded by:

“Mars and Beyond” (1957): Originally aired in 1957 as part of the quasi-educational “Man in Space” series on the Disneyland TV show (later the Wonderful World of Disney), this segment contains both serious “educational” content, and more wheimiscal slapstick material. Of particular interest is that the program is almost entirely (and quite lushly!) animated — in styles ranging from the comical, to deco-abstract, to pulp-magazine glossy, and most stops in between. This one’s a real treat. Directed by Ward Kimball, the Chuck Jones of the Disney studio. Watch for the cameo from everyone’s favorite Nazi rocket scientist himself, Werner von Braun!

An Evening of Film About Being Trapped in Video Games: TRON b/w “Bishop of Battle”

TRON (1982): The geek-friendly early ’80s Disney space opera set inside a computer takes on a rather different light twenty five years on, and after the advent of the internet. What movie can go wrong with David Warner as the villain? If you haven’t seen this since your age was in single digits, you deserve to give it another chance.

to be preceded by

“The Bishop of Battle” (1984): This is a segment of the mid-’80s anthology horror movie Nightmares. It stars a pre-Breakfast Club Emilio Estevez as an apathetic punk with a video game jones. This is one you likely haven’t seen, but that makes a natural bookend with the feature.