I saw this film on PBS, probably KQED (Channel 9) in San Francisco, in
the late seventies or early to mid-eighties. I missed the beginning,
so I never saw a title, any names, or even a country of origin, and I
don't know the total length, but I think it was at least 30 minutes
and I would be more inclined to guess 60. (Before it was over, I
definitely thought it was too long, and I didn't even see the whole
thing.)
At first I had no idea why what I was hearing and seeing seemed so
strange. It was live action with two adult performers, a man and a
woman, the woman dressed as a young girl. Yet the movements seemed
unnatural in an indescribable jerky kind of way, and the accents were
extremely peculiar: they seemed in some ways like standard English
spoken by native speakers (though I can't remember whose flavor of
English that would have been), but in other ways the inflections were
bizarre, particularly a vocal drop at the end of syllables where
normal speech would never have a drop in tone, such as at the end of
the first syllable of "Daddy."
The characters were a man with an elderly appearance and a woman who
was evidently playing the part of a young girl, a sort of
Alice-in-Wonderland stereotype of a long-haired blonde, maybe even in
an actual blue dress and pinafore. What caught my attention at first
glimpse and kept me from changing the channel was this obviously more
mature person dressed as a child and repeatedly saying "Daddy" in a
very odd sort of way.
There must have been an interruption in the film (a pledge break??),
because before it was all over, I heard someone comment on how it had
been made, and then I watched the remainder of it with close attention
because it explained the weirdness. It was done completely in
reverse--not backwards in the sense of "Memento" but literally run
opposite to the direction of filming: the actors had to perform every
movement and speak every word in reverse of its proper direction so
that when the film was run backward, it came out right. To begin
with, they had filmed it all in the normal order, and then reversed it
so the actors could study it and learn to say the backwards words and
move backwards for the filming of the reversed reversal. The effect
was really, really strange.
And what made it weirder still was that somehow--we weren't told how,
and I was completely unable to guess--some irreversible actions were
performed in this reversed film. Actors walking backwards, setting a
table by picking up the dishes, rising from chairs as if they were
sitting down, and so on, were one thing. But how in this backwards
film did the man light a pipe and smoke it, did the woman light a fire
in the fireplace, or did the woman shuffle a deck of cards? It was
amazing. Even now I am still curious. And that is why I think it
would be interesting to see this film again.
Thank you,
Apteryx |
