Cinemafou

The 1955 film is an abstract expressionist take on a dark and disturbing subject. Not for all tastes, but I find it entrancing. A masterpiece. The original sound track is brilliant, with music that was composed by George Antheil, an American avant-garde composer who lived from 1900 to 1959.

Then some knuckleheads bought the rights to the film and decided it needed some histrionic narration thrown in here and there. The narration is a distracting annoyance and detracts seriously from the film. Many people on archive.org complained about this and despaired over what could be done. Several people claimed the narrator is Ed McMahon, the intro man for the old Johnny Carson show. I don't know how they came to this conclusion. One enterprising person created his own electronic musical soundtrack, but that eliminated all the original audio. So how can you watch it with the original soundtrack but without that imbecilic narration? I found a way.

I ported the video file to an audio WAV file (using freeware tools) and opened it in Audacity, a wonderful tool for audio editing, also available as freeware. Whenever that annoying voice appeared, I selected that portion of the audio stream and set it to silent. Then I copied a nearby portion of sound from the original sound track equivalent in time and pasted it over the silent portion. I used VirtualDub (more freeware) to apply the modified sound track to the video. The resulting sound track is narration free! We have the original Dementia back! Find it at archive.org.

A mysterious island, a mysterious doctor living in a mysterious old house with mysterious people. Three men in a plane crash land on this island and the mystery thickens. Dark, forbidding and ominous. And everyone in the cast of this dark tale plays it straight, except for Mantan Moreland.

Often classified as a horror film, Mantan Moreland puts on a bravura performance, turning this dark and forbidding tale into pure satire. Yes, he is relegated to the scared of everything role just like Stepin Fetchit. This is 1941, after all. And this a low budget, cheesy production. But his comedic talents are brilliant and make this film worth watching which, if he were not in the film, would be a forgotten throwaway.

I tend to like very old films, and this is a real antique. But age alone does not make it good. There was a good deal of trash produced in the old days, just like today. But when you have a gem like this, it is worth preserving and watching repeatedly after a suitable time. And I believe you can download this from the Internet Archive since it appears to have fallen into the public domain. Very funny and great fun. I give it an 8.

I don't need to repeat anything about the plot line since you have already read it, or should have. In any event I found this film to be a wonderful diversion. What we soon learn is that the two hit men are completely unsuited to the job. They are complex, morally conflicted and emotional, while their employer is a cynical psychopath. Having some time off with these two in the Belgian city of Bruges during Christmas allows us to move about the old city on a sight seeing tour, punctuated with serendipitous or chaotic encounters with other people and interactions between the two leads. Along with the Christmas lights there is some violence, but it is integral to the black comedy aspect of the film. Some of the violence is quite comical.

The addition of a film in production within this film adds another level. Two of the supporting characters come out of that inner film, in a certain way providing a connection between waking and dreaming. Bit parts played by people in fantastic costumes add to the magic of what might otherwise be a purely dark scene.

All the characters are very carefully crafted. As another review stated this is (in part) a character study. It is also designed to be very entertaining, which it is. I enjoyed it immensely. A bit slow moving at times, but this is a European film which holds the value of the stage very high, yet it does not appear staged. It puts you right there. The direction, the camera work and the acting all work together to give a real experience.