Post by Admin on Sept 2, 2016 3:13:12 GMT
As mentioned in his 1998 interview with Annie Nocenti (The Black Doll: A Silent Screenplay), here recollected via this article by Ed Park:
The article also mentions Gorey's more well known obsession with Feuillade:
Interestingly, Gorey has also envisioned a number of directors, whom he would have liked to see put his screenplay for The Black Doll on the screen (we can gather that these must count among some of his favorite contemporary filmmakers):
Other films Gorey mentions in this interview:
- Stephen Elliott's "Frauds" (1993), starring Phil Collins as an insurance agent, which Gorey describes as "a very odd movie, and quite brillant".
A sort of fantasy Netflix queue can be assembled from the films Gorey mentions to Nocenti: Chaplin’s swansong, The Countess From Hong Kong; “endless numbers of D.W. Griffith two-reelers”; The Lady Vanishes (“my favorite thriller of all time”); The Perils of Pauline; Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (“my favorite horror movie”) and Judex (“one of my favorite movies”); Jacques Tourneur’s The Curse of the Demon (“a marvelous low-budget movie”); Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz; Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (“one of the truly great films”) and La Prisonnière (“one of the great goofy movies ever made”); and much more.
The article also mentions Gorey's more well known obsession with Feuillade:
Gorey also claimed to have exhausted the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art. There he immersed himself in the multipart crime epics of Louis Feuillade (not just the famous Fantômas and Les Vampires but the all-but-unseeable Tih Minh and Barrabas, “the greatest movie ever made”) and encountered one of his “great influences” [which is The Grey Rats from 1918--]“a film that no one ever put together”
Interestingly, Gorey has also envisioned a number of directors, whom he would have liked to see put his screenplay for The Black Doll on the screen (we can gather that these must count among some of his favorite contemporary filmmakers):
Gorey lists a few directors he could dream helming a production: Werner Herzog, Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodóvar, Francis Girod (The Infernal Trio, “one of the great dippy movies ever made”), Jean-Pierre Mocky, and Stephan Elliott, of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert fame. (The perfect director for The Black Doll, of course, might be the title-card-carrying Guy Maddin.)
Other films Gorey mentions in this interview:
- Stephen Elliott's "Frauds" (1993), starring Phil Collins as an insurance agent, which Gorey describes as "a very odd movie, and quite brillant".
- Pedro Almodóvar's "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" (1984). "(Almodóvar) made a wonderful film about a woman who sells her little boy to a dentist. (...) It's all very bright and vinyl, with tacky décor, crêpe paper and God knows what--it had a great throwaway quality to it." -Edward Gorey
- Fritz Lang is also mentioned as "another of my great influences"
- The film that features the scene Gorey misattributes to "Danse Macabre" is actually "Les Vampires: Episode Ten – The Terrible Wedding" (1916). He says of the scene: "It's so shocking, it's out of nowhere and it only lasts a couple of seconds, but you never forget it."
Gorey also mentions a silent film called "The Two Orphans", supposedly by Feuillade, but I can't find a film by that name directed by him. There are a couple other films by that name, however. If anyone has any more info on which this could be, a comment would be appreciated.