mondojohnson

Jan Svankmajer is the Czech animator/filmmaker who created a whole style of stop-motion animation. I had always enjoyed his weird little shorts, but have only recently discovered his feature-length films, which show that his talents are not confined to animation.

The first Svankmajer feature I saw was Alice, his free interpretationn of “Alice in Wonderland.” I sort of forgot about him for years until I happened upon Little Otik on the Sundance channel. That film — a disturbing fairy tale about a childless couple who raise a knotty log as their baby (only to find that it is a maneating monster) — haunted me, to say the least, and led me to get caught up on his other films.

Svankmajer’s Faust borrows freely from Goethe & Marlowe, but it is definitely all his own. His Faustus is some kind of lawyer or bureaucrat who summons Mephistopheles while visiting some freaky alternate universe that lies down drippy, dark alleys and dilapidated doorways.

You know the story. But don’t let that keep you from this original and hypnotizing (and often funny) exercise.