Le château d'Otrante

"The Castle of Otranto" is animation/short/mocumentary based on "The Castle of Otranto", a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole, the first Gothic novel. The novel takes place in Otranto in southern Italy. In Jan Svankmajer's mocumentary, the amateur archaeologist Dr Vozáb has set to prove that the supernatural ghost love story takes place not in Italy but in Otranto Castle near Nachod in Czechoslovakia. The events of the story where the characters step out from the pages of the book and presented in animation, are inter-cut with the interview between the Dr Vozáb who is passionate about his findings that prove his idea and a TV reporter who is skeptical about the whole idea... until the very last shot in the movie.

"Castle of Otranto" is another unusual early work of the great Czach animator Jan Svankmajer. While he would later create numerous weird and entertaining stop-motion films (as other reviewers have pointed out) this one, like many of the director's earlier shorts, is very different visually and stylistically from what would become his norm. Instead of utilizing puppets, clay figures and dolls to create a film, Svankmajer takes a different approach telling his film here by using Terry Gilliam-esque animation to tell the story, interspersed with live-action. It makes for an interesting work at least - but nothing like the much more engaging stuff I have yet to see that he would later prove to be a master at.

"Castle of Otranto" is adapted from a novel from the eighteenth century - the first Gothic novel, actually. Unfortunately, being Czech, the entire film is made in his native language - and so all dialogue spoken in the film by what appears to be some sort of historian telling the story is incomprehensible for the average viewer. Even worse, the only available complete copy on YouTube has captions that are in some sort of Russian apparently - so either way, understanding everything was impossible. A brief summary of the book did help me some, but if I'd known what was being said to begin with it would have made it much more easy to follow. The most memorable part was the unexpected twist he threw in at the end, not an original but an almost humorous one. Very nice old Gothic-looking art and the story presented quite nicely yes, but not the greatest Svankmajer film I have yet seen and from what I know, the filmmaker's golden years were still ahead.

"The Castle of Otranto" was a novel by Horace Walpole which was published in Britain in 1764. This is Jan Svankmajer's version of the story--told in an odd fashion as those familiar with the Czech filmmaker would expect.

The story starts with a documentary style piece where a professor claims to have found the actual Otranto castle not in Italy but in Czechoslovakia. This is all fake...though it looks real. And, periodically, the film cuts back to this 'expert' as he talks about his supposed research. The rest consists of a retelling of the novel and it actually sticks pretty close to it...and it's told in a style very similar to Terry Gilliam's animations from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"...with cut outs moving about through the use of stop-motion. Unlike Gilliam's animations, however, this isn't funny...though occasionally it's pretty bloody.

All in all, one of Svankmajer's least enjoyable films. It lacks the goofy creepiness I love and folks looking for this might be disappointed by a story that is amazingly normal compared to Svankmajer's other films.