"Castle of Otranto" is another unusual early work of the great Czach animator Jan Svankmajer. While he would later create numerous weird and entertaining stop-motion films (as other reviewers have pointed out) this one, like many of the director's earlier shorts, is very different visually and stylistically from what would become his norm. Instead of utilizing puppets, clay figures and dolls to create a film, Svankmajer takes a different approach telling his film here by using Terry Gilliam-esque animation to tell the story, interspersed with live-action. It makes for an interesting work at least - but nothing like the much more engaging stuff I have yet to see that he would later prove to be a master at.
"Castle of Otranto" is adapted from a novel from the eighteenth century - the first Gothic novel, actually. Unfortunately, being Czech, the entire film is made in his native language - and so all dialogue spoken in the film by what appears to be some sort of historian telling the story is incomprehensible for the average viewer. Even worse, the only available complete copy on YouTube has captions that are in some sort of Russian apparently - so either way, understanding everything was impossible. A brief summary of the book did help me some, but if I'd known what was being said to begin with it would have made it much more easy to follow. The most memorable part was the unexpected twist he threw in at the end, not an original but an almost humorous one. Very nice old Gothic-looking art and the story presented quite nicely yes, but not the greatest Svankmajer film I have yet seen and from what I know, the filmmaker's golden years were still ahead.
"Castle of Otranto" is adapted from a novel from the eighteenth century - the first Gothic novel, actually. Unfortunately, being Czech, the entire film is made in his native language - and so all dialogue spoken in the film by what appears to be some sort of historian telling the story is incomprehensible for the average viewer. Even worse, the only available complete copy on YouTube has captions that are in some sort of Russian apparently - so either way, understanding everything was impossible. A brief summary of the book did help me some, but if I'd known what was being said to begin with it would have made it much more easy to follow. The most memorable part was the unexpected twist he threw in at the end, not an original but an almost humorous one. Very nice old Gothic-looking art and the story presented quite nicely yes, but not the greatest Svankmajer film I have yet seen and from what I know, the filmmaker's golden years were still ahead.