This is a banner weekend for movies at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Not only are they unspooling a retrospective on the Quay Brothers but they are also unreeling a bona fide classic war (or anti war if you’re reading the signs) movie, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers.
Pontecorvo broke the mold on war procedural movies with Battle of Algiers (1966), a film that examines France’s war with Algeria in the late ‘50s. A film on urban guerilla war, Battle of Algiers exists as a blank canvas of battle that can be read two ways. In one sense it’s used to prime troops that are about to occupy a foreign country, and on the other hand it shows conclusively that an invading army can never really conquer people entrenched in their own homeland. Everything you heard about Iraq where insurgents used bombs to create terror was going on in Algeria during their war with France (1954-1962). Battle of Algiers documents how a backpack bomb could be used in a crowded coffee shop, or how a superior and heavily armed force could achieve short-term victories against terrorists with torture and attack strategies only to fail in winning the hearts and minds. Eventually France got the hell out and Algeria won their independence. But it’s not like future generations have learned a lesson.
Pontecorvo also helmed the film Burn! (1969), which arguably contains the best performance ever from Marlon Brando, and is a film that also depicts revolution albeit in the 19th century. Burn like The Battle of Algiers is an Italian made film and the European version has Brando’s voice dubbed. If you get a chance obtain the American version as it contains Brando’s original dialogue. The Battle of Algiers unwinds Friday, December 7 (6 pm.) and Sunday, December 9 (5 pm.).
The Quay Brothers, identical twins Stephen and Timothy, are some of the prime proponents of stop motion animation. Perhaps without realizing it you’ve seen their work pop up in feature films like Frida (the hospital puppet sequence) or the just released Jack and Diane where the Quays supply the animated title sequence.
The Brothers Quay retro features their two feature films, Institute Benjamenta (Thursday, December 6 at 7 pm.) and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (Saturday, December 8 at 4 pm.). While the majority of the Quay’s output are short films featuring their unique stop motion technique a couple of short subjects show another side of the Quay Brothers where they present images from museums, a style still steeped in macabre themes. Showing Sunday, December 9 at 1 pm. is the program Through the Weeping Glass and other shorts.
In Through the Weeping Glass (2011) the Quays objectify and fetishize medical anomalies from the Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. Some of the items on display include remains of the most famous of Siamese Twins Chang and Eng Bunker, the ossified skeleton of Henry Eastlack and bizarre medical instruments from previous centuries like a device for bloodletting called a scarificator. The Quays penchant for the bizarre and twisted comes full circle as they present mummified feet from the barbaric practice known as Chinese foot binding and a series of skulls where the cause of death is written in black ink on the bone.
– Michael Bergeron
