User Reviews

I like the Brothers Quay work in small doses, and all at once with one film coming after another it becomes too staggering an experience to handle. But seeing Street of Crocodiles really made it for me in terms of connecting it to other Quay brothers work, in terms of how their surreal representations and obsessions and neuroses come into their work, and how it pulled off so well this time. A lot of time their avant-garde impulses almost get the better of them, and many a fantastic image and sound is presented but without much context, leaving it almost impenetrable. I didn't get that this time around with this film- which happened to make Terry Gilliam's top 10 favorite animated films of all time- as it presents its ideas a little more coherently, and unlike other Quay work it ends not on a sudden beat but on one that actually makes sense, in its own non-sensical form.

It's really just one of the most pure visualizations of a nightmare world envisaged, as a puppeteer opens up a box and looks in at a figure moving around in this run down slum of a city, where screws continually keep unscrewing from their places and deformed dolls go about as they please performing grisly tasks. This animated figure (who really is anything but animated, as the character doesn't move around too much, except to continually look at things that perhaps he shouldn't, or doesn't understand at first) gets embroiled in the dolls' plans, which may or may not involve unscrewing his own head as well. At times it seemed like the Quays could go off again into the wormholes of their own visions, but they resist the temptation to go completely with the narrative- whatever there is of it anyway. Disorder and decay were words that kept floating in my mind, and all amid an atmosphere of not necessarily despair, but one that lacked much hope for any of its minions. Featuring some of the most inventive production design I've seen in any stop-motion film, and cinematography that still stuns me hours after watching it, it's a real little marvel of what can come out of the darkest corners of the mind, put to light and molded with the utmost care.

Devotees of Jan Svankmajer and Kafka, identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay distill every disturbing dream you've ever had into a decidedly unsettling short film. American by birth, the twins seem European by sensibility and have settled in London to make their films. Street of Crocodiles is one of their better known efforts and is obliquely influenced by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who published the memoirs of his solitary life under the title, Sklepy Cynamonowe (literally translated as The Cinnamon Shops, although generally known in the English speaking world as Street of Crocodiles). The Quay's short follows a gaunt puppet who is released from his strings as he explores his bizarre surroundings: rooms full of dark shadows, unexplained machinery and strange eyeless dolls. Everything has a sense of decay and Victorian melancholy. There is a notion of a plot, possibly dealing with sexual tension, but really Street of Crocodiles is about establishing a mood and a nightmarish and deeply sinister world. The Quay's use of tracking shots and selective focus is unparallelled in the world of stop motion.

The animated films of twins Stephen and Timothy Quay succeed more as art than entertainment, drawing heavily on ideas and imagery made popular by the Surrealists, adapted to fit their own highly individual obsessions. Using found objects (broken dolls, scraps of cloth, odd bits and pieces of junk) the Quay's create abstract and obscure short narratives noteworthy for their incredible precision and fluid mobility. The craftsmanship is startling and inventive, the mood haunting and dreamlike, but like most Surrealist art the meaning is often infuriatingly oblique. Like many other of their films I've seen, 'Street of Crocodiles' achieves a hypnotic flow of miniature detail torn straight from the subconscious mind.

Although the imagery is familiar, I'm pretty sure that this was the first film from the Quay Brothers that I had seen and this is why I think it will stick with me. I will not pretend to understand the full commentary or relevance of it but the end titles do help with the portrayal of a soulless world and its outcome. What the makers have succeed in is creating a crushingly animated world where even the puppet freed from his strings comes to misfortune and perhaps looks back to wish he had never been able to break free from his mechanised controls/shackles.

This seems to be the thrust of it from what I can understand and in this regard I found it darkly satisfying and disturbing. With the theme in the background the foreground gets filled with disturbing images of decaying machinery and puppet figures, the doll-headed ones being an image that many viewers will find themselves recognising even if they are not entirely sure why. It is the creative images and movements that drive the film and even when I was not sure what I was watching, i was still very much held by what I was seeing. It is a dark and nightmarish piece of animation and I enjoyed it very much for that – even if it was not the most comfortable viewing ever.

I saw "Street of Crocodiles" on my first Filmfestival in 1991. Its darkness and sadness, its brutality and decay, this strange feeling of being somewhere else and someone else who does not understand the rules of this world. The world of the genius brothers Quay confirmed my urge of being a filmmaker. It's a kafkaesque journey into your subconsciousness. It is unique. 10 of 10.

We feel as if we're in a completely different world watching this -- and not necessarily just because of the animation, which is spectacular. It has more to do with the architecture of the images, and the way the camera investigates the space -- you feel as if you're in a shoebox, tinted with brown-gold sepia tones of rot. The way the camera moves is really very striking. For the comparisons to Kafka, I think it's specifically in the dislocation of the image that the Quays bring out his influence. This film is as if Jack Skellington went down the wrong tree. (The eyeless dolls must have influenced "Toy Story"'s horror sequence.) We're in this strange, unfamiliar place, and the camera slides around in very smooth yet jittery movements as if our eyes. We see objects like screws move around on their own, and objects drop calmly as if the sky is falling; our vision is distorted as images of our hero are stretched. I haven't read the Bruno Schulz, so I'm pretty much limited strictly to experiencing this visually. 10/10

I've seen this three times, once in 35mm, once in 16mm (or through a dim projector bulb) and once on video. The first time it impressed me, short as it is, as one of the best horror films I'd ever seen, if not the best. The second and third time, to my disappointment, it didn't work very well because I couldn't see it properly. Some of the detail is gossamer-fine and must be seen in a clear print on a theatrical screen (or perhaps a large-screen TV) to be seen at all. The film is elusive enough anyway. Like many of the Quays' films it takes the viewer inside a world of cracked dolls and pieces of antique machinery, where the dolls are victims of totalitarian control. Of the Quays' short films I've seen, this is the most disturbing. It's best seen, I think, apart from the others, as I first saw it. The other major ones are of a piece with it and become somewhat redundant taken in a group. The slighter ones are also somewhat tedious. The general meaning of this is clear enough, but the exact topical application, if there is one, and if it isn't explained by the quotation given, which I didn't recognize, is obscure to me. I also wonder how serious the filmmakers are when they use, and use up, their style and technique on music videos. I prefer to think of this film as I came to it originally, as one of a kind. It's an unnerving experience.

This is an incredibly powerful work. Using stop-motion animation, the brothers Quay produce a dark, claustrophobic universe of animated detritus. The events of this universe seem to have meaning, but that meaning is altogether withheld from the viewer.

This is truly one of the creepiest movies around. The gloomy atmosphere builds and builds until you can barely stand it. There's something about it that reminded me of the helpless childhood nightmares we've all had, even though all you're seeing is animated junk. I've known several people who were unable to view it all the way through.

The most celebrated work of the brother Quays', this adaptation of Bruno Schulz's "Street of Crocodiles" is an amazing work of imaginative genius that's enthralling, alluring and hyper-cinematic.

I really want to be able to dream like this. Or perhaps I do but I can't remember. It's like "Finnegans Wake", really, where everything is loaded with meaning on multiple levels simultaneously. The Brothers' imagery is just like this, it seems to explode to all directions, all the time, and one is breathless in trying to keep up.

The brothers' work is also deeply referential. The tennis rackets and ice cube are straight from "This Unnameable Little Broom" (1985), and this internal connectivity brings a sense of integrality, where we reassemble the things we see — much of what is incomprehensible for us — in a wider frame of reference, as if resuscitating the images from our unconsciousness with fresh connotations to other films, somehow becoming even richer and more meaningful.

It's also utterly awe-inspiring how they make the camera move and inhabit the world. It moves effortlessly and fluidly, examining the smallest of details and then cleaving the particle-filled spaces framed by the brothers' exquisite knack for interior design.

This visually amazing achievement in clay animation begins with a live action man closing up a lecture hall and reaching into a box in which he snips the string holding a scrawny, almost skeletal puppet. Unconstrained, the puppet cautiously wanders the darkened rooms in the world of the box. The dismal vibes and infectious musical score suggest a tone of seclusion and senselessness, constraining us into direct empathy with the puppet as he deals with a domain of his reality, which is full of simple machines and mechanisms and man-made amusements. As he seeks to conform, or is coerced, of which we are never quite sure, the film little by little bares how fruitless the environment essentially is. Soul and strength are slowly reduced to expose the phase of life as a macrocosm.

The idea of a puppet being cut loose from its string inside of a box of dark rooms to wander about without aid is fascinating, but lots of people could make a movie that basically revolves around the idea of a wasteland where nothing ends, nothing concludes. It's quite easy. It's basically an excuse to trail off on a stream of consciousness. However the Quay brothers have done something organic and beautiful by telling a story with images. The understanding of cinema intrinsic in Street of Crocodiles is important and exceptionally valuable. Its concept is in truth a very deeply imagined allegory for a mind-shiftingly objective philosophical, perhaps existential, perception, taking life as a whole and putting it in the context of another impression of it, a smaller sort of spin-off of human life, causing us to rethink our existence.

Street of Crocodiles is an accomplished short film that achieves a dark, eerie mood. The stop motion figures inhabit a dusty house where all the intricate details of decayed strings, nails and glass make everything seem discomforting. The plot (if you can call it that) is disjointed and mysterious, leaving one in wonder.

I have seen this film numerous times before buying it on dvd this year and I have to say that it's impact has not wavered in the slightest.

Wonderful set design to house the strange, almost nightmarish characters and bodies that only the Brothers Quay could bring to life. The legitstics and reality of this world are unimportant and have no baring on the minimal plot. One is simply asked to believe that this place exists for the ungodly creatures to inhabit. To say that this film brings up moments of some childhood nightmare wihtin us is not far from the truth. But what the Quay Brothers manage to do (for me, anyways) is open up the possibility of worlds never explored within the sub-conscious, to allow oneself to be absorbed by the rust and decay and follow the trails of strings into the darkness, hoping to find some answers to questions you forgot you had.

As soon as I saw this I knew that they had tapped into the dreams that some of us wished we didn't have, but would have been upset had we not had them shown to us to begin with. This is probably the best work by the brothers that you could possibly see.

Not an imitation, rather an homage to Jan Svankmajer, the Borther's Quay can be a little unsettling to the uninitiated. They are well worth the price of admission and then some. Always a rich tapestry of the imagination gone wild, this collection of short films is effective both for the heart and the head. That these brothers have not gone on to blockbuster status is either a testiment to their great artistry or a testiment to La La land's great stupidity in not scooping up the brightest minds in the business. Here is somthing new.

It's interesting to notice how many other film makers have been influenced by the Quay visual aesthetic. The movie The Cell has a few scenes with sets obviously inspired by Street of Crocodiles. And of course, just about every Tool video borrows heavily from the Quays. It's both a weakness and a strength that Quay films seem to wander aimlessly in a stream of conscious. The weakness is that it can get somewhat tedious and can result in the loss of ones attention periodically. I tend to drift in and out, especially having seen their shorts numerous times on DVD. But this experience also serves the function of the films. The Quay's seem intent on more accurately recreating a dream experience and to chronicle an aimless journey through the human psyche. It takes some courage and trust to abandon a standard coherence and to risk giving up the attention of the audience in order to keep your intentions pure. If nothing else, I can appreciate and admire the artistry involved with these films. Street of Crocodiles is probably one of their stronger shorts.

So far, I have visited the demented world of the Brothers Quay's most famous work "The Street of Crocodiles" twice, and I am still not exactly sure what the film is "about" per se, but there is no denying that has had a profound effect upon me. This is a striking and majestic glimpse into the demented corners of the universe crafted inside the genius minds of the Brothers Quay. Deserving, this is their most praised film, a film known for its beauty, magic, horror, and surrealism.

This film does not take place on Earth. Of course, such is never explicitly stated and I do not even think that that was the Brothers Quay's intention; however, I shall firmly defend such a theory. NONE of the works of the Brothers Quay ever takes place on Earth, at least not the dimension that is known to us. These films take place...somewhere. In the darkest depths of the creative mind, in outer space, in the same universe that all brilliant and demented stop motion films come from. To watch a Brothers Quay film is to be swept away, brought on to a distant planet, and showcased some of the most dazzling and disturbing material one could ever witness. Several times during this film, I felt an inescapable, sinking feeling creeping up and down upon my body (mostly in the stomach area, to be exact), and this feeling was due entirely to the masterful, brooding, and angelic imagery before me (or perhaps I just ate too much for dinner today, one of those two).

All of those who enjoy being cast away into fantastic lands, whether they be of brightness or darkness, must enter the enchanted, but pitiful and grim, territory of the Brotehrs Quay and, more specifically, that of the film which may be their absolute masterpiece, "Street of Crocodiles".

The brothers Quay, like Jan Svankmajer, made dark, beautiful stop-motion/ puppet animations. The short film "Street of Cocodriles" is possible the best work of the Brothers Quay: The atmosphere is thrilling, beautiful, and all the characters that appear on it have a unique, fascinating appearance.

Inspired in the story written by Bruno Schulz, this short film manages to be disturbing and unsettling, without using blood or any kind of violence. Even without words, you could feel the fear of the main character while he is in the Street of Cocodriles, where he finds several mysterious beings. Heavily metaphorical, like the other shorts of the Brothers Quay, the music made by Leszek Jankowski helps a lot in order to portrait a bleak and mysterious realm.

This is one of the best animated shorts I've ever watched. I was more thrilling than any horror movie that I watched recently.

Much has already been said about this piece, but I am currently reading "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass" by Bruno Schulz--a Polish Jew (author, artist, teacher) indiscriminately killed buying a loaf of bread by the Gestapo during the Second World War. After completing "The Street of Crocodiles" in 1934 and "Sanatorium [...}" in 1937 (currently rumored to be the Quay Brothers' next and third feature film after "Institute Benjamenta" and "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes"), along with the lost manuscript of "The Messiah", the hallucinatory imagery of the books, where metaphor almost supersedes its subject, is captured exquisitely by the Brothers. My recommendation, having seen this film in two versions of the Brothers Quay collected short films, is to get the Region 2 BFI collection from Britain if possible. It features a more comprehensive body of their works in general along with excellent interviews and commentary (i.e. down to discussions regarding the logistics of working with thick layers of dust on the elaborate "Street of Crocodiles" set, while maintaining the illusion of seamless movement in single-frame animation). Parts of it are like a film course in themselves, regarding topics such as lighting, set building, and ball-joint armatures. Even in other Regions, it's worth getting a special player for the BFI Collection, if you are a serious fan or creator of stop-motion animation, art, experimental or surreal filmmaking.

This is an absolutely stunning-to-watch and well crafted animation. I was so intrigued by how it was done, I had to watch it again just to follow the story, never mind the incredible music by Tool ( song is from "10,000 Days"). This show reminded me of watching the Wizard of Oz, muted, while listening simultaneously to Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon. Fantastic!

This is honestly the single worst movie I have ever seen. The "brilliant" minds behind it are the hipster's Tim Burton. The level of disturbing is incomparable to even Human Centipede. The "explanation" at the end was not enough to justify the complete lack of tangible story. While I will admit the set pieces were amazing (sort of like I-Spy on meth), even that was not enough to rescue this shipwreck of a short film.

In short, I despised nearly everything about this movie. It was the worst $5 I have ever spent on anything (and I've bought some dumb stuff in my day).

The Brothers Quay are two of the most unique and visually surprising film makers in a long time. Street of Crocodiles is a short they made, and is full of unbelievable animation. An incredible mix of objects are used for the props and characters, creating strange effects and meanings. The visual style of Street of Crocodiles has been copied in many recent stop-go animation films, including many of the music videos for the band Tool. However, nothing can match the virtuosity of the Brothers, who support their impressive animation with political insight, dealing with the strife of their homeland in Europe. Truly amazing things are accomplished by the brothers in this film, such as using telephoto lenses to change focus in mid animation. The amount of detail and work that is put into this film is unbelievable, but the result is even more impressive.

Something that is impossible to describe to someone. It's like still surreal art where the viewer is invited in and then responds as best he or she can. The figures of decaying metal and dolls' heads and other bizarre images just keep coming. There is really no plot. But what is presented sticks in our memories.