Litan

This isn't really a horror film per se so much as a surreal waking nightmare in which a married couple visiting a rather Gothic town are increasingly sucked into irrational goings-on. They quickly become fugitives, though exactly why (or from what) is murky. There's a sort of Day of the Dead celebration going on, so people are already wearing masks and fake blood-making it hard to tell there's anything wrong when real accidents, fatalities and supernatural events occur. (Also, an increasing percentage of the population seems to be getting reduced to a catatonic state.)

The whole place seems to be a kind of shadowy laboratory, or perhaps a madhouse, in which (naturally) the inmates have taken over. The conventional thriller-protagonist performances of the leads (Marie-Jose Nat, director Mocky) as they constantly flee or pursue various phenomena, and the conventional early 80s suspense music (with a bit of Goblin influence) doesn't really help this vision cohere as horror, allegory or eccentric fantasia. But its sheer eccentricity holds attention.

Nothing here makes a great deal of sense, nor is it supposed to, and frankly the very prolific director's approach to this kind of semi-fantastical material (not his usual thing--he usually made acerbic comedies) is so matter-of-fact, there's not a lot of atmospheric seduction, let alone terror or uncanniness, despite frequent striking imagery. It's definitely an offbeat film, but it's hard to make out just what the intended point is. There are some arrestingly odd ideas, like experiments on dogs that apparently give them human voices, darting glow-rays in water, crimes that occur without anyone nearby seeming to notice or care...even if few of them actually lead the story anywhere in particular.

Of course, you could argue that the story isn't supposed to "go somewhere," really-it is, like the village itself, a kind of labyrinth without formal beginning or end. And "Litan" is indeed arresting as an alien environment mixing Olde Europe charm/creepiness with hints of sci-fi, horror, and a little "Eyes Wide Shut"-type perversity. It's not quite like anything else (unless you count similar surreal one-offs like Louis Malle's "Black Moon," Moctezuma's "Mansion of Madness," etc.), and thus worth seeing even if there's not much to hold onto beneath the busy, inventive surface.

I have watched a film in a language I do not understand, without subtitles and still managed to follow it and I have dropped off for a section of film and still managed to make sense of it and I have watched films that only partly made sense but this is the first film in which absolutely nothing, from beginning to end, seemed to make any sense whatsoever. The captivating look, complete with masked villagers, a hillside village with tottering buildings and underground caves, is visually entrancing and the constant chasing, being chased, attacks, killings and survival help maintain a level of interest even if we know not why. There are hints and pointers toward dream and the afterlife and of the uselessness of the bureaucratic administrations, the hospital looks more like a prison and the inspector believes nothing and nobody. I notice that the director plays the hero, if that is what he is, at least he is still standing at the end.

I hadn't heard of the name Jean Pierre Mocky before. Taking a look at his filmography it seems he did extensively idiosynchratic cross-genre work that remains not merely obscure but fundamentally unseen. If Litan is anything to go by, I want to see more. This French film is like a distraught female protagonist running through the foggy cobblestone roads and patios of a small provincial town, now and then out of the fog strange masked figures emerge to peer at her, a brass band is playing marching tunes by the river, and the populace behaves in the grip of a demented festive amok. I like how the movie toys with the idea that the general hysteria may not just be part of the celebrating of a local festival, that something more sinister may be afoot, that this feels like a dream because it very well may be. The town hospital doesn't look like a hospital, it looks like the grotesque abstraction of a hospital someone would dream. The movie opens with fragments of images, then a woman wakes up feeling her husband is in peril. As the movie goes on we see those fragments play out as parts of larger pictures, like the dream is fulfilling itself. I also like how the movie doesn't settle conveniently on this point of predestination. All the while a doctor performs tests on a kid the victim of an accident, the kid seems to be clinically dead, yet it isn't. There's a reach to or from the beyond struggling to express itself here and the end may put some viewers off just as well as it may excite others. The only thing for sure here is that Litan is a cult curio that we're only now beginning to discover. It rightfully deserves a place somewhere between Lynch and Jess Franco of Venus in Furs.

This is probably the best movie from Mocky. There is his weird humor, a fantastic story. The images are also something you can't forget. I'm just waiting to find it on DVD, in a few hundred years. I would even settle for the VHS.

"Litan" takes place in a strange French town Litan full of masked citizens and off-beat characters.The coffins are flowing in the stream,the cemetery crosses are on the rocks and the funeral orchestra of silver masks is playing some weirdo music.Add also a lot of running and screaming and some bloody murders and you have a winner."Litan" is a surreal and dreamlike assault on viewer's perception.The script is utterly outlandish as it mixes black humour with some fantasy and horror elements.I'd like to spend some time in Litan among crowds of masked weirdos.I have seen other French surreal horror movies from early 80's like "Devil Story" or inept "Mad Mutilator",but "Litan" wipes the floor with these two.8 out of 10.