Primarily in black-and-white with touches of color, the engraved artwork was filmed on color negative in order that subtle variations in tone are recorded.
The mood—enhanced by John Davis’ original music—is dream-like. It is both lyric and crackling, producing a kind of anticipatory tension. The scenes, in the usual Jordan manner, follow the surreal principle of placing objects and people where they ought not to be and making movements which, in the waking world, are impossible.
Each scene is a kind of drama from another world.
Despite its title, this brevity is somewhat romantic. We do see the ogre, however. He inverts himself into the action throughout the film. As usual, the action is partly symbolic, partly surreal (if those two can ever be separated). Toward the end, Eadweard Muybridge still-sequences are brought t...
"THE OLD HOUSE PASSING is, to me, more than just a 'great film' / 'a work of art.' It is, as a matter of careful thought, the only motion picture drama I have ever seen which engenders vision, rather than cutting it back to 'sights' of minded hieroglyphs in movement and / or shifts of symbol stas...
In many ways a more searching (and certainly a more complex) film than OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE. We are first presented a cobweb castle, filled with the haunting doubts of the young protagonist. Spirits appear on the screen and are heard on the soundtrack. Gradually a female guide emerges and escor...