Litan

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.

A maverick of the French cinema ,Mocky is an acquired taste indeed;he retains a small but strong cult over here.

It was not the first time he had tackled the fantasy and horror genre :in the sixties,his fans remember "La Grande Frousse" ,from Jean Ray's "La Cité De L'Indicible Peur".

"Litan " was awarded the critics prize at the Festival D'Avoriaz ,but reportedly booed in the theater;it was a big flop at the box office :anyway ,Mocky's approach is too oblique to gain a wide popular audience.

"Litan" is more painstaking than usual:here Mocky really creates an atmosphere ,with impressive pictures:probably influenced by the fetes he attended when he was a child in the east of France ;the movie begins with a nightmare and ....continues in a nightmarish area ,in The village of Litan (the spelling of which is close to that of Lithan ,spirit of evil);in fact,Nora is the only person in the whole movie to find the village she moves in eerie,maleficent,and threatening.Even her partner Jock tries to communicate,to react to events whereas she almost never does.That's why I sometimes wonder whether everything does not take place in her mind and/or whether she has gone crazy ...because Jock might be dead ,and as they sail on the subterranean river (the Styx?),both in the same coffin (which might remind one of Hergé whose dreamlike pictures are disturbing in" TinTin and Les Cigares Du Pharaon" ).The last sequence -the only one which is not pagan- shows Nora ,in mourning ,and in her eye ,we can spot a "vision" of her (lost?) love .

You have to search your memory to find something vaguely close to "Litan" :apart from Mocky's movie I mention above,we can feel,perhaps,some influence of indie American works such as "carnival of souls" or " seconds" and of his French peers' weirdest efforts ,stuff such as Chabrol's "Alice Ou La Dernière Fugue " and Malle's "black moon" .

The nightmare scene is particularly successful ,with these masked figures,this man standing on a wire with a motorcycle,and this sinister-looking guy who's doing a very strange work;these elements reappear as Nora's fear increases .

Marie-José Nat is ideally cast as this woman lost in a world she does not understand;Nino Ferrer,cast as the head of a research center,wrote a baroque ,but effective score which enhances this strange feast in this heathen town.

For all that,in spite of pictures which can put the viewer into a trance ,or at least mesmerize him,"Litan" ,in some respects ,is a botched job ,the weakest link being ,as it is too often the case with this director ,a desultory screenplay ;hence the commercial failure .

Although not accessible enough,"Litan" is part of the handful of Mocky's movies you should watch.

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.

I recently watched the French film Litan (1982) on Shudder. The story follows a couple on vacation in a strange seaside town when the husband suddenly disappears. As a mysterious festival begins, the woman encounters a series of bizarre characters-each one raising more questions than answers about what happened to her husband.

This picture is directed by and stars Jean-Pierre Mocky (Kill the Referee), alongside Marie-José Nat (Night of Destiny), Nino Ferrer (Delphine), and Bill Dunn (Double Team).

Litan is one of those films that seems to have all the ingredients for success but ultimately falls short. The foggy, coastal setting gave me strong Venice vibes, and the eerie costumes and masks worn throughout the city added to the film's visual intrigue. Some of the lab sets were a fun touch, and there's even a cool motorcycle high-wire act. The atmosphere is thick with mystery from start to finish.

Unfortunately, as the plot unfolds, the special effects start to feel dated, and the ending doesn't deliver the payoff the buildup deserves.

In conclusion, Litan had a lot going for it but couldn't stick the landing. I'd rate it a 4.5/10.