Fando y Lis

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Movie
German title Fando and Lis
Original title Fando y Lis
Country of production Mexico
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1968
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK unchecked
Rod
Director Alejandro Jodorowsky
script Fernando Arrabal , Alejandro Jodorowsky
production Samuel Rosemberg , Moshe Rosemberg , Roberto Viskin , Juan López Moctezuma
music Pepe Ávila , Mario Lozuá , Héctor Morely
camera Antonio Reinosso , Rafael Corkidi
cut Fernando Suarez
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
El Topo

Fando y Lis (German title: Fando und Lis ) is the feature film debut of the Chilean film director Alejandro Jodorowsky . The surreal plot is loosely based on a play by Fernando Arrabal , which can be assigned to the theater of the absurd . When it was released in 1968, the film caused a scandal in the production country Mexico .

action

The plot accompanies the young couple Fando and Lis on their search for the auspicious city of Tar. Lis is paraplegic and is pushed through a post-apocalyptic world on a cart by her slightly idiot friend . In the process, they encounter all sorts of grotesque figures and become increasingly alienated from one another and from themselves.

Her story is of a narrator from the off comments and can be divided into four acts (in the film as Canto - song called) are divided.

production

Before he thought about making a film, Jodorowsky had already staged several plays in his adopted country of France . One of them was the surreal-absurd story Fando et Lis by the Spanish-French author Fernando Arrabal . After only one year the production had to be stopped for financial reasons and Jodorowsky started planning a film adaptation.

The shooting took place largely without permission between July and December 1967 in Mexico . Filming locations included the ruins of a mental hospital, a cemetery and an abandoned mine . The film was shot exclusively on weekends and with a diverse cast, including numerous amateur actors such as Jodorowsky's wife at the time, a doctor and a group of transvestites . The dialogues are based on Jodorowsky's memories of his theater production and did not require a separate script. After filming was over, Samuel Rosemberg, who had served Jodorowsky as an assistant director, tragically died, whereupon his father retroactively contributed $ 100,000 to the production. Overall, the film was unexpectedly expensive for the production team at around $ 300,000. For example, a doll collection provided by a restorer was ruined in ink during a scene and had to be replaced. The film is dedicated to Samuel Rosemberg .

interpretation

In 1965, Jodorowsky caused a sensation in Paris with the artist collective Panique when he staged a one-off performance called Sacramental Melodrama . There was an excess on stage, including the display of bare skin and the slaughter of chickens. Jodorowsky summarized this action as follows: “Art does not need philosophers. Art just has to speak from soul to soul. That's what i believe That's panic . ”The influences of this spectacle are clearly noticeable in his feature film debut. Typical of Jodorowsky's work, it is bursting with symbolism . Essential motifs that run through the entire film are love , religion and death . According to Jodorowsky, Fando and Lis, who are trying to find their way in a broken world, radiate “childlike purity in a sadomasochistic world”. “On the other hand, Fando y Lis also describes the coexistence of a couple, a man and a woman. A neurotic relationship, sadomasochism ... and addiction. "

The play writer Fernando Arrabal said the following about Jodorowsky's implementation:

“The performance of Fando y Lis and the film Fando y Lis that followed are an absolute mystery to me. I never understood the film and I don't want to understand it either. From the day I understand him, I won't love him so much anymore. "

reception

The film was received extremely controversially at the time of its release in Mexico. When it was first shown publicly at the Acapulco Film Festival , it caused a real scandal in 1968. In particular, the casual approach to religious issues and the image of the mother caused severe headwinds in arch-Catholic Mexico. The audience was so upset by what was shown that Jodorowsky and his team were threatened with death. According to legend, the director escaped the angry mob in the car of his colleague Roman Polański , who was presenting his film Rosemary's Baby . As a result, Jodorowsky was even charged. The filmmaker was able to avoid conviction by claiming on the advice of a short film union that Fando y Lis were four short films cut together . The main actors of the film Sergio Kleiner and Diana Mariscal defamed the director in addition.

In the 1994 documentary La constellation Jodorowsky by the French filmmaker Louis Mouchet , Jodorowsky said the following about his feature film debut:

“I just saw Fando y Lis again. Even 30 years later, I'm still impressed by how relentless my creative urge was. Fando y Lis is pure art without any concession. I didn't care how the audience would react, whether they would be shocked or bored ... I also didn't deal with all the technical stuff. For example, to find a certain rhythm for a scene for the sake of the audience. I didn't think of the audience when I was working. I worked purely instinctively. And that's how this film came out. I am satisfied with the film. He is real. He's exactly how I wanted him to be. But nobody in Mexico expected such a film. It was Mexico, not Europe. People really and truly wanted to kill me! I had to escape from the Acapulco Film Festival in a car, huddled in the footwell, because they wanted to lynch me. "

He also noted:

"I didn't make this film with my mind, but with my subconscious."

The American dark metal band Agalloch uses an excerpt from the film as an outro for the track The Hawthorne Passage on their 2002 album The Mantle .

Further publication

In the United States, Fando y Lis was sold to Cannon Films after its initial release and was cut in New York in 1970 , but Jodorowsky did not recognize it. After that, the film was considered Jodorowsky's "lost work" for almost 30 years. After being rediscovered in the 21st century and shown at various film festivals (including the International Film Festival Thessaloniki 2013), the film was released for the first time on DVD in 2014 with German subtitles . The DVD box The Films by Alejandro Jodorowsky contains not only his short film The Tie, but also an audio commentary by the director.

Reviews

The first reviews in New York were extremely negative and compared the film again and again with Fellini's recently released - but subsequently created - Satyricon . Today Fando y Lis enjoys a certain cult status and is considered one of the first examples of the Midnight Movies that emerged in the late 1960s .

The film received an average rating of 7.1 out of 10 points in the IMDb film database . The Rotten Tomatoes website scores 67% based on nine reviews.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c James Hoberman & Jonathan Rosenbaum : Midnight Cinema. Cult films of the 60s and 70s. German edition, Hannibal-Verlag, Sankt Andrä-WIERT 1998, p. 90, ISBN 978-3854451587 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Alejandro Jodorowsky in the audio commentary on Fando y Lis . DVD box The films by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Image disturbance 2014.
  3. ↑ a b c d Alejandro Jodorowsky in La constellation Jodorowsky (1994).
  4. ↑ a b c Claus Löser : A mole in the holy mountain of the cinema - Alejandro Jodorowsky and his early cinematic work. Supplement to the DVD box The films by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Image disturbance 2014, pp. 5-6.
  5. ↑ a b c Fando y Lis in the IMDb. Retrieved November 21, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Alejandro Jodorowsky in an interview with Steve Roday et al. to his film El Topo . Supplement to the DVD box The films by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Image disturbance 2014, p. 14.
  7. ^ Fando y Lis at Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved November 21, 2015 .