Street of crocodiles

A decrepit caretaker enters a museum and, by accident or design, lets a drop of saliva fall into the eyepiece of an ancient peep-show kinetoscope. Inside the aged projector, mechanisms are activated, wires are drawn by pulleys, hatches open. The puppet figure of a man is conjured into motion. The man severs the wires from which he hangs and begins an exploration of the Street of Crocodiles, a suite of abandoned rooms where screws turn of their own volition at his approach. In a strange workshop, he observes robotic figures. He is harassed by a small boy and eventually finds himself dissected, remodelled, and re-clothed. The Quays utilize three-dimensional puppet animation and use the techniques of expressionism and surrealism to capture the echo of Central Europe's wars and the repression of the ruling classes as evoked in a quote from the Schulz story: In that city of cheap human material, no instincts can flourish, no dark or unusual passions can be aroused. The Street of Crocodiles was a concession of our city to modernity and metropolitan corruption. The misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Obviously, we were unable to afford anything better than a cardboard imitation, a photo-montage cutout from last year's mouldering newspaper.
, Watches a decrepit caretaker of a run - down museum activate a kinetoscope, conjuring into motion a puppet figure of a man. Follows the puppet's exploration of the rooms where he encounters a strange workshop, harassed by a mysterious boy and eventually finds himself dissected, remodelled and reclothed by a dubious tailoring shop. Topics: Motion-Pictures-Animated-Short; Horror-

Credits

Directed by
Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Written by
Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Weiser Quay
Music
Lech Jankowski
Edited by
Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Weiser Quay
Complete catalog record
A decrepit caretaker enters a museum and, by accident or design, lets a drop of saliva fall into the eyepiece of an ancient peep-show kinetoscope. Inside the aged projector, mechanisms are activated, wires are drawn by pulleys, hatches open. The puppet figure of a man is conjured into motion. The man severs the wires from which he hangs and begins an exploration of the Street of Crocodiles, a suite of abandoned rooms where screws turn of their own volition at his approach. In a strange workshop, he observes robotic figures. He is harassed by a small boy and eventually finds himself dissected, remodelled, and re-clothed. The Quays utilize three-dimensional puppet animation and use the techniques of expressionism and surrealism to capture the echo of Central Europe's wars and the repression of the ruling classes as evoked in a quote from the Schulz story: In that city of cheap human material, no instincts can flourish, no dark or unusual passions can be aroused. The Street of Crocodiles was a concession of our city to modernity and metropolitan corruption. The misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Obviously, we were unable to afford anything better than a cardboard imitation, a photo-montage cutout from last year's mouldering newspaper.
, Watches a decrepit caretaker of a run - down museum activate a kinetoscope, conjuring into motion a puppet figure of a man. Follows the puppet's exploration of the rooms where he encounters a strange workshop, harassed by a mysterious boy and eventually finds himself dissected, remodelled and reclothed by a dubious tailoring shop. Topics: Motion-Pictures-Animated-Short; Horror-NOTE: Two (or more) records have been merged together to create this data.

Related films

Sources

  1. 16mm Filmography (legacy record) — title, year, creator, length, format, color, sound, genre, description, catalog record
  2. Wikidata · Q7623033 ↗ — country, credits