![]() But this was entirely impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he couldn’t get himself into this position. ‘Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this foolishness,’ he thought. The dreary weather (the rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge) made him quite melancholy. Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm disappeared. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur boa. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was spread out (Samsa was a traveling salesman) hung the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt frame. His room, a proper room for a human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-known walls. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is screening January 7 at 4:30 not only as part of MoMA’s “Lip-Reading Puppets: The Curators’ Prescription for Deciphering the Quay Brothers” but also in the annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films the museum believes will stand the test of time upcoming entries include Sally Potter’s Ginger and Rosa, Raoul Ruiz’s Night Across the Street, and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. This North American premiere - the project has been performed only once before, at Cité de la musique last March - reveals the Quays to once again be unique and exceptional interpreters of classic literature and music, resulting in another film that dazzles the senses. The music, performed live by Rudy - his piano was supposed to be onstage, melding with the visuals, but MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater cannot accommodate that - includes Janáček’s Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, “On an Overgrown Path,” and “In the Mists,” adding haunting beauty to the heartbreaking story, which the Quays and Rudy infuse with powerful emotion. The only color comes from bloodred streaks on the insect Gregor and the pieces of apple his father throws at him. ![]() But Gregor’s sister, Greta, shows compassion for him, playing the violin and bringing him food her humanity is emphasized in that she is portrayed by an actual living, breathing woman, not a puppet, a rarity in the Quays’ oeuvre. Black, white, and gray dominate the screen as Gregor’s parents, small puppets whose heads slightly bobble when they walk, have great difficulty dealing with their son’s new form. “The images need to float independently from the music to allow one to better ‘see’ the music and ‘hear’ the moving image,” the twins wrote in a correspondence with Rudy. In 1980, the Quays made the rarely shown six-minute short Ein Brudermord, inspired by the Kafka short story that translates as “A Fratricide.” So they jumped at the chance when Russian-born concert pianist Mikhail Rudy asked them to make a film set to a score he had put together featuring the music of Kafka’s fellow Czech artist, Leoŝ Janáček, as part of a special program for Paris’s Cité de la musique. ![]() In the 1970s, Philadelphia-born twins Stephen and Timothy Quay made a series of pencil drawings based on Kafka’s 1915 story about a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a giant insect. The magnificent Quay Brothers survey exhibition at MoMA, “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets,” comes to a close today with the third and final screening of their latest masterpiece, a forty-minute adaptation of Franz Kafka’s seminal novella The Metamorphosis. Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am LIP-READING PUPPETS: THE CURATORS’ PRESCRIPTION FOR DECIPHERING THE QUAY BROTHERS: THE METAMORPHOSIS BY FRANZ KAFKA (The Quay Brothers, 2012)ġ1 West 53rd St. The Quay Brothers adapt Franz Kafka’s THE METAMORPHOSIS as only they can
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |