Stephen Quay Movies

Czech animator Jan Svankmajer gained acclaim and notoriety for his eerie, nightmarish stop-motion animated pieces fashioned out of discarded dolls, battered marionettes, and pieces of junk. His films such as Alice and Faust delved headlong into the subconscious and dredged up images that were imbued not only with a woozy sense of dread but with a savage sense of wit. Svankmajer's third feature -- and his first (mostly) live-action film -- is an absurdist look at some very weird sexual adventurers. Peony (Petr Meissel) is a nebbish bachelor with a passion for porno mags and poultry. At the film's outset, he pulls a live chicken from his wardrobe and has his neighbor, Mrs. Loubalova (Gabriela Wilhelmova), cut its throat -- which she does with a fair amount of relish and glee. Using the head as a model, he fashions a papier-mâché chicken mask -- made from old pornography -- and an accompanying chicken suit. Later, in a bizarre backwater ritual, Peony dons his chicken costume and taunts and crushes an effigy of his neighbor. Mrs. Loubalova apparently harbors similar bloodthirsty fantasies for Peony -- in a similarly weird ritual, set in an abandoned church, she whips and then drowns a straw effigy of her fellow apartment tenant. Surrounding this unlikely romance of sorts are the onanistic obsessions of another quartet of very kinky characters. Mrs. Malkova (Barbora Hrzanova), the neighborhood postwoman, has a penchant for balling up pieces of bread for unlikely purposes. Kula (Jiri Labus), the guy who sells Peony his nudie mags, has created an elaborate autoerotic device connected to his TV, complete with robot controls and rubber hands, designed to, um, augment his enjoyment of the news -- especially when read by Mrs. Beltinska (Anna Wetlinska). Mrs. Beltinska, in turn, reaches the height of on-the-air bliss by having her toes sucked by a pair of carp hidden beneath her desk. And finally her husband, a police inspector, is much more interested in scrubbing his naked self with rollers spiked with nails or funnels filled with fur than in fulfilling his marital duties. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Can't Go Wrong Without You, part four of famed animators Stephen and Timothy Quay's "Stille Nacht" film series, revisits the basic compositional material of "Stille Nacht II" (Are We Still Married?). The Quays once again use animation to "orchestrate" the movements of a stuffed white rabbit and a tattered female doll to a pop song by the group His Name is Alive. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Anamorphosis is one of the few examples of an "animated documentary." The 15-minute film, richly laden with detailed English-language narration, actually constitutes a detailed lecture, where Stephen and Timothy Quay use animation to explore the now forgotten 17th and 18th century art form of the title. The Quays reveal how, in that practice, special paintings employ visual distortion to disclose hidden messages and symbols when viewed from different angles. Leszek Jankowski composed the score. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Adapted from a fragment of text by the Austrian writer Robert Walser, the 17-minute Quay Brothers short The Comb opens with the image of a sleeping princess and then delves into her dream world, where the tunnels of the mind literalize, and become a mazelike, labyrinthine playhouse patrolled and explored by a roving doll figure. Stephen and Timothy Quay shot the film as a blend of animation and live-action, enveloped in a mythic golden aesthetic. On the soundtrack, they overlay a haunting score of violin and guitar notes, co-mingled with the cries, murmurs and whispers of the subconscious mind. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Based on a novel by Bruno Schultz and directed by the Brothers Quay, The Street of Crocodiles is an animated 21-minute absurdist take on a war-torn Polish city made sterile after suffering mass industrial decay. Individuals feel alienated from the rest of society while the reigning bureaucracy consistently chooses to promote consumption and materialism rather than working for the greater good of its citizens. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

With The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, Stephen and Timothy Quay pay tribute to the Czech animator Svankmajer (their mentor) through a series of brief symbolic episodes featuring a literally bookish professor -- the pages of the book emerge from his open skull -- and a young child. In a dream-like room featuring multitudinous drawers, the professor teaches a series of lessons, including several which suggest learning stop-motion animation itself. Both pieces feature the Quays' trademark obsessively detailed, carefully orchestrated visuals in the service of mysterious, unsettling, dream-like narratives. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi