The Amputee

1974
TV-MA
9min

NOTE IMDb

MA NOTE

Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueA double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.

Réalisation
- David Lynch
Scénario
- David Lynch
Casting principal
- Catherine E. Coulson
- David Lynch

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

NOTE IMDb

5,5/10

5,2 k

MA NOTE

Réalisation
- David Lynch
Scénario
- David Lynch
Casting principal
- Catherine E. Coulson
- David Lynch

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

Photos9

+ 4

Rôles principaux2

Modifier

Catherine E. Coulson

Amputee
(as Catherine Coulson)

David Lynch

Nurse

Réalisation
- David Lynch
Scénario
- David Lynch
Toute la distribution et toute l’équipe technique
Production, box office et plus encore chez IMDbPro

Avis des utilisateurs18

5,55.1K

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mastyrmynd

An intrigue...

While it is not as deep or impressive as some of Lynch's other works, I believe that this film breaks new ground in terms of camera work and how a scene is put together. I think it is important that this film is shot twice, once to capture the story, the other to capture what is happening. If you view simply the woman, you will grasp what her letter is all about, however, if you view the nurse, you will take in only what the nurse is doing. Viewing it once just staring at the woman, and then again viewing only the nurse gives quite a contrasting look at the same exact picture. It may very well be an experiment only, but the fact that it has this effect is intriguing on its own. Try it yourself!

6Groverdox

A small nightmare

A double amputee sits on a lounge chair smoking a cigarette and writing a letter. What she writes is read to us in voice-over, and is seemingly just the minutiae of social interactions the woman is obsessed over.

A nurse, played by Lynch himself, comes and unwraps one of the stumps left by her amputation, and snips at sutures of the wound on the end. Fluid starts to come out, he attempts to stem the flow, fails, and runs out, while the woman's ponderous voice-over continues, though we've long since stopped paying attention.

"The Amputee" was allegedly made by Lynch to help a guy he knows test film stock for the American Film Institute. I'm not sure what the outcome of the test was, but having just watched the test itself, I can't imagine they were too happy with the stock. The movie looks like it was shot for a CD-ROM game made in 1993. It's black and white, heavily letterboxed with black bars on all sides, and is extremely grainy.

I'm not really sure what to make of it. I'm surprised it turned up on the "Short Films of David Lynch" DVD, because it feels like kind of a joke between him, his star Catherine Coulson (who sounds exactly like Frances Conroy on the voiceover), and maybe the guy he made it for.

At least it's pretty short, and it's not boring. There's a dark sense of humour at work here as well.

4Quinoa1984

meh, but it goes without saying...

Maybe the lesser of the bunch of David Lynch shorts I've seen, the only real interest are in some seconds here and there within the four minute un-broken shot of some nasty, black-death humor that's ingrained into the material. Unfortunately, it's almost a waste to watch the film as it is by admission of Lynch himself a technical 'throaway', something to just get onto film to bite back at the AFI for possibly switching to video. Therefore we get what could be comparable to what Godard did around the same time- tool around with the possibilities of video by just going for something off-putting within the frame. It could've worked maybe as something worth watching more, but it's really a bit too un-pleasant even in its own biting sense-of-what-the-hell way. It's just an amputee who writes a confessional letter (heard in voice-over) as a wacko doctor plugs away at one of her stumps. He also, at the end, just runs away in a hurry, perhaps as to just add that last bit of "whoa" for Lynch to work with. That part is actually a nice bit of surreal whimsy, but the work is just too simplistic and deranged to really give any sense of visual amazement like in the other shot works of Lynch, or to build on the outrageousness like in Eraserhead. Worth a watch, once, then never again unless you have a thing for, well, stumps, and confessional letters written during their upheaval.

8shellykachua

Simple, Comic and Ironic

For the non-intuitive, the film is just a grotesque, confusing image but think of it again. A woman in an absolutely pitiful state (blood and puss spewing out of her stump) is lost in her thoughts and memories of Love and Romance! It's just a simple ironic image with no plot, back story or message. How one can entirely neglect the present no matter how rotten it is and choose to dwell in the past. So lost! So Engrossed!

The film was made for the sole purpose of helping the American Film Institute decide between two stocks of black and white film. David Lynch, soon to emerge as one of the greatest directors ever proposed to shoot a short film twice. One can imagine David Lynch getting excited on the thought of the imagery he was to put to film "An amputated woman in an extremely deteriorated state lost in the days of her romantic endeavors!"

I understand that only a handful of people would appreciate the concept, leaving the majority confused and disgusted but The Amputee is a simple masterpiece open to interpretation

4Red-Barracuda

A little throwaway short from David Lynch

David Lynch made this short during a troubled time when filming of Eraserhead had come to a stand-still due to lack of funds. He volunteered to make a short film twice as a test for a couple of stocks of black and white videotape that the American Film Institute wished to compare. As a result he made a film called The Amputee twice. Both versions are more or less the same and consist of a woman who is a double-amputee reading aloud to herself the contents of a letter that she has written while a doctor tends one of the stumps on her legs. It ends with the stump gushing blood, the doctor fleeing and the woman completely oblivious.

In truth it isn't very interesting. It's shot in one take with ugly composition. The quality of the videotape is poor in both versions; while the content is a combination of the repulsive with the mundane. It was written and filmed over the course of one day, and it is throwaway stuff that is of limited interest. It's more an example of the director's bizarre humour than anything else. It stars Catherine Coulson who would go on to play the part of The Log Lady in Twin Peaks.

Anecdotes
This short came about because the American Film Institute was testing two different kinds of black and white video, and they hired cinematographer Frederick Elmes to shoot the test footage. David Lynch convinced Elmes to shoot a short film for the test and stayed up all night writing the script. As a result, the short exists in two different versions, being shot once on each of the types of video being tested.

Citations
Woman with amputation to the legs: This isn't what I am telling you. You weren't in the room when Jim said that. And I was. And he really did. He told me that everything was fine between Helen and him. And I knew that even if he didn't say it, that it was true. He knew it then. No one else did. You maybe thought you did but I knew you didn't. And it makes me furious when you tell me I didn't know about Helen. She was my best friend. She even told me about that time she drank gin with you. So maybe now you'll believe me. After that I got sick of the beach. Harry turned on all of the burners on the stove before we left the cabin. He said he wanted to set fire to the whole row. Made me sick. Everything was bad between us. And that was it for me. I never said one word to him on the way back. When he stopped and we saw Joann at Jim's, he bought some cigarettes and told Joann that I was a flirt, a dumb flirt. I never was a flirt. I was not flirting with Jim. I didn't flirt then and I don't flirt now. And you started this that night Jim told me. You have never understood Jim. After the way you treated Helen it isn't a wonder that he feels the way he does. And you know it. And you know that even Paul isn't the same. You have never understood Jim. You had it all wrong, honey. You and Joann. Now you know what Paul is really talking about. By the way, where were you when Paul got home at three in the morning?