Director – Gerald Fox – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m
**1/2
A journey through the dream imagery of silent cinema and its cinematographic effects, augmented by present day stagings before the camera – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th
Long fascinated by dream imagery in cinema, director Fox attended the Harvard course run by its Professor of Film Studies Vlada Petrić (1928-2019) to which this documentary essay is dedicated, being based on and quoting intensely from the latter’s theories.
Additionally, it just about works as a useful primer in silent cinema for the uninitiated provided you’re aware of its inherent biases and limitations. These may well be linked to the films (or film libraries) for which producer-director Fox secured rights, because there’s a far greater amount of French movies than you might expect. Or, these may may simply reflect Petrić’s theories and tastes.
Either way, the selection of movies here also leans towards the avant-garde in not only France but also the US. Then it throws in specific films from Griffifth (Edgar Allan Poe, 1909; The Avenging Conscience / Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1915) and Hitchcock (The Ring, 1927), China’s Romance of the Western Chamber (Hou Yau, 1927) and Japan’s A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926).… Read the rest