In this inaugural instalment of our new regular feature, we are looking back at Jan Švankmajer‘s underappreciated 2005 film Lunacy; but to be honest, we could just as easily be discussing any one of the feature films directed by the Czechoslovakian surrealist filmmaker. Švankmajer’s critical reputation is best summed up by Anthony Lane in the 1994 profile he wrote for The New Yorker:
“The moviegoing world is split into two unequal camps: those who have never heard of Jan Švankmajer, and those who happen upon his work and know that they have come face to face with genius”.
There are still far too many people in the former camp. Švankmajer directed 26 short films between 1964 and 1992, often using a combination of live-action and stop-motion animation before making his feature film debut in 1988 with Alice, which still stands as the definitive screen version of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice In Wonderland. He followed it with several more equally bizarre, disturbing and brilliant features – Faust (1994), Conspirators Of Pleasure (1996) & Little Otik (2000) – but though his films often contain horrific incidents, Lunacy was the first Švankmajer explicitly identified as a horror film. In a self-deprecating address to the audience at the beginning of Lunacy, Švankmajer describes the film as an “infantile tribute” to the works of Edgar Allan Poe & the Marquis De Sade. Infantile… maybe, but it’s also the director at his most subversive.
Jean Berlot (Pavel Liška), a young man trying to come to terms with death of his mother, wrecks the room of the inn he is staying in while suffering a nightmare in which he imagines fighting off two men in white coats who are trying to put him in a straitjacket. The innkeeper insists he makes restitution for the damages, but at breakfast, a man calling himself the Marquis (Jan Tříska) offers to pay his debt and then invites him to his home. That night Berlot witnesses the Marquis, his mute servant Dominik (Pavel Nový) and several other men engage in a blasphemous, sadomasochistic orgy with four women, one of whom happens to observe Berlot spying through the window while trying to escape. In the morning the Marquis, aware that Jean has witnessed the previous night’s events explains his anti-religious philosophy during which he becomes increasingly agitated, suffers a seizure and then dies. Berlot and Dominik bury the Marquis in the family crypt only for him to emerge fit and healthy the following morning. The Marquis explains to Berlot that it was a therapeutic exercise to cure him of his fear of being buried alive, and suggests that he voluntarily commit himself to an asylum to conquer his own fears of being institutionalised as his mother had been. Berlot agrees, but arriving there he realises the institution is run by Dr Murlloppe (Jaroslav Dusek), one of the men at the orgy, and his daughter Charlota (Anna Geislerová) who was the girl who tried to escape. Later, Charlota reveals to Berlot that Dr Murlloppe and the Marquis are actually deranged lunatics who have imprisoned the asylum’s original controller Dr Coulmiere (Martin Huba) and his staff in the cellars of the hospital after tar and feathering them. She then asks him to go along with a plan to release them.
Švankmajer was no stranger to the works of Poe, having previously adapted two of his classic short stories, The Fall Of The House Of Usher and The Pit & The Pendulum (filmed as The Pendulum, The Pit And Hope). The main inspiration in Lunacy is one of Poe’s lesser-known tales, The System Of Dr Tarr And Professor Fether* (Poe’s The Premature Burial also provides the inspiration for the Marquis’s ghastly story about his mother’s death, one of the most disturbing things in the entire film). The Marquis’s blasphemous philosophy is straight out of De Sade, and the sadomasochistic orgy is quite startling. The Marquis mocks the ineffectual nature of God while hammering nails into a statue of Christ before being dressed in a robe with an inverted crucifix on the front illustrated with images of hardcore porn before he and his guests enjoy slices of chocolate cake while being sexually serviced under the table by the female participants. It doesn’t go full Salò, as it is a real chocolate cake, but it is admirably debauched nonetheless.
Though the film appears to be set in the 18th century, trappings from the modern world are clearly present, suggesting that the scenario playing out is just as relevant to modern society. Just in case you missed this point, Švankmajer spells it out in the opening address to the audience almost as if he’s trying to strip the film of any sub-textual reading. It’s an odd moment as Švankmajer (like David Lynch) was a reluctant interview subject, not wanting to tell an audience how to interpret his films. As with Phillippe De Broca’s King Of Hearts (1967) & Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963), Švankmajer‘s thesis is that the world in which we all live is actually the lunatic asylum, constantly swinging between ideas of absolute liberty and Draconian oppression, both of which he believes to be equally oppressive. The idea of a country or people falling victim to the varying whims of a ruling elite may have specific relevance in the former Czechoslovakia (Švankmajer wrote the script in the seventies but couldn’t get it made) but the idea that the politics of a country swing so wildly is a universal theme, one that has become all too clear in the years since the film was made.
Interrupting the action at regular intervals throughout the film are stop-motion sequences involving animated meat which provide a second narrative running parallel with the live-action story that appears to comment precisely on this idea. Though Lunacy presents a bleak, resigned view of the world, these sequences – both humorous and viscerally revolting – stop the film from being a complete downer in the same way Pier Paolo Pasolini’s similarly themed De Sade adaptation Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom was.
In a misguided attempt to save Charlota (who he has idealised as the innocent victim in all this), Berlot ultimately sets in motion a series of events that do not go well for him or the inmates – but it’s hard to completely sympathise with his plight. Like De Sade’s Justine, he’s a pious fool but he’s also a hypocrite. After observing the Marquis and his guest’s blasphemous orgy he is indignant at their debauchery, even though he continued to watch the whole spectacle while refusing to intervene to aid the girl trying to escape. Grovelling for forgiveness afterwards, he is someone who seems to welcome his oppression, but his oppressors also revel in their own hypocrisy. In that sense, I would argue that Švankmajer is incorrect – it’s less a horror film than a documentary.
Lunacy was screened theatrically in the UK by the BFI without a BBFC certificate but didn’t make it to DVD until 2012 courtesy of New Wave Films who also released Švankmajer’s next film Surviving Life (2010), and his earlier Conspirators Of Pleasure (Švankmajer’s last film Insect, made in 2018, remains unavailable in the UK). As of this writing, the disc is still available and pretty inexpensive. You can also watch it on YouTube, though the video is age-restricted. It’s well worth rediscovering.
*The story was also the loose inspiration for S.F. Brownrigg’s Don’t Look in the Basement (as well as the delirious 1973 Spanish art/horror movie La mansión de la locura/The Mansion of Madness/Dr Tarr’s Torture Dungeon). It’s doubtful Švankmajer was aware of the film, but the parallel between Lunacy and the one-time Video Nasty is worth mentioning as both feature a lead character called Charlotte.
DANIEL STILLINGS
Like what we do? Support us and help us do more!
