The writhing on the wall

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Dracula (1992).

This is the closest you’ll get to a guest post here even though it’s been done remotely and I’ve changed things around a little. Following my mention yesterday of the Cocteau-derived lantern-arms in Francis Coppola’s Dracula, Jescie sent me an abandoned blog post which collected similar examples of the arms-through-the-walls motif. I’ve done this kind of thing here in the past so it’s good {feuilleton} material. Almost all these examples are fantasy- and horror-related which isn’t too surprising, and I’m sure there’ll be other examples in films I haven’t seen. If anyone has any suggestions just remember that hands grasping through doors and windows don’t count with this, it’s through the wall or not at all.

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La Belle et la Bête (1946).

Jean Cocteau sets things off in 1946, a perfect piece of fairytale Surrealism and one of the many memorable aspects of this film.

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La Belle et la Bête (1946).

Continue reading “The writhing on the wall”

Passage 11

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Ed Jansen writes to let me know that the latest edition of his web magazine, Passage, is now online. Once again, most of the features listed below are in Dutch but that doesn’t exclude all visitors here. David Britton has been recommending Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones to me so I guess I’ll be reading that soon.

• Sylvia Plath, a biography.
• Ingrid Jonker, poet from South-Africa, essay on her life and work.
• Jack Kerouac & William Burroughs, a review of And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks.
• William Burroughs in Texas, a review of Rob Johnson’s, The Lost Years of William S. Burroughs.
• Aleister Crowley, an article about Crowley’s possible involvement with the Secret Service.
• Rudolf Hess, double agent? A view on his flight to Britain.
• Jonathan Littell, an in-depth review of his work The Kindly Ones. War as hallucination.
• Enrique Marty & Maurizio Cattelan, a review of the work from two conceptual artists.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Passage 10