Watch Street of Crocodiles For Free

Wonderful character development!

Sadly Over-hyped

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Much has already been said about this piece, but I am currently reading "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass" by Bruno Schulz--a Polish Jew (author, artist, teacher) indiscriminately killed buying a loaf of bread by the Gestapo during the Second World War. After completing "The Street of Crocodiles" in 1934 and "Sanatorium [...}" in 1937 (currently rumored to be the Quay Brothers' next and third feature film after "Institute Benjamenta" and "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes"), along with the lost manuscript of "The Messiah", the hallucinatory imagery of the books, where metaphor almost supersedes its subject, is captured exquisitely by the Brothers. My recommendation, having seen this film in two versions of the Brothers Quay collected short films, is to get the Region 2 BFI collection from Britain if possible. It features a more comprehensive body of their works in general along with excellent interviews and commentary (i.e. down to discussions regarding the logistics of working with thick layers of dust on the elaborate "Street of Crocodiles" set, while maintaining the illusion of seamless movement in single-frame animation). Parts of it are like a film course in themselves, regarding topics such as lighting, set building, and ball-joint armatures. Even in other Regions, it's worth getting a special player for the BFI Collection, if you are a serious fan or creator of stop-motion animation, art, experimental or surreal filmmaking.

Although the imagery is familiar, I'm pretty sure that this was the first film from the Quay Brothers that I had seen and this is why I think it will stick with me. I will not pretend to understand the full commentary or relevance of it but the end titles do help with the portrayal of a soulless world and its outcome. What the makers have succeed in is creating a crushingly animated world where even the puppet freed from his strings comes to misfortune and perhaps looks back to wish he had never been able to break free from his mechanised controls/shackles.This seems to be the thrust of it from what I can understand and in this regard I found it darkly satisfying and disturbing. With the theme in the background the foreground gets filled with disturbing images of decaying machinery and puppet figures, the doll-headed ones being an image that many viewers will find themselves recognising even if they are not entirely sure why. It is the creative images and movements that drive the film and even when I was not sure what I was watching, i was still very much held by what I was seeing. It is a dark and nightmarish piece of animation and I enjoyed it very much for that – even if it was not the most comfortable viewing ever.

We feel as if we're in a completely different world watching this -- and not necessarily just because of the animation, which is spectacular. It has more to do with the architecture of the images, and the way the camera investigates the space -- you feel as if you're in a shoebox, tinted with brown-gold sepia tones of rot. The way the camera moves is really very striking. For the comparisons to Kafka, I think it's specifically in the dislocation of the image that the Quays bring out his influence. This film is as if Jack Skellington went down the wrong tree. (The eyeless dolls must have influenced "Toy Story"'s horror sequence.) We're in this strange, unfamiliar place, and the camera slides around in very smooth yet jittery movements as if our eyes. We see objects like screws move around on their own, and objects drop calmly as if the sky is falling; our vision is distorted as images of our hero are stretched. I haven't read the Bruno Schulz, so I'm pretty much limited strictly to experiencing this visually. 10/10

I've seen this three times, once in 35mm, once in 16mm (or through a dim projector bulb) and once on video. The first time it impressed me, short as it is, as one of the best horror films I'd ever seen, if not the best. The second and third time, to my disappointment, it didn't work very well because I couldn't see it properly. Some of the detail is gossamer-fine and must be seen in a clear print on a theatrical screen (or perhaps a large-screen TV) to be seen at all. The film is elusive enough anyway. Like many of the Quays' films it takes the viewer inside a world of cracked dolls and pieces of antique machinery, where the dolls are victims of totalitarian control. Of the Quays' short films I've seen, this is the most disturbing. It's best seen, I think, apart from the others, as I first saw it. The other major ones are of a piece with it and become somewhat redundant taken in a group. The slighter ones are also somewhat tedious. The general meaning of this is clear enough, but the exact topical application, if there is one, and if it isn't explained by the quotation given, which I didn't recognize, is obscure to me. I also wonder how serious the filmmakers are when they use, and use up, their style and technique on music videos. I prefer to think of this film as I came to it originally, as one of a kind. It's an unnerving experience.