Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Street of Crocodiles" is an almost 30-year-old movie by brothers Stephen and Timothy Quay. And even is this is just a short film that runs for 20 minutes, it is among their most known works, probably top3. I cannot really see why though as the only thing that I found memorable about this short film is how creepy was occasionally. So yeah, it is animation, but certainly not the kind that you want your children to see with these scary little dolls everywhere. Even if the Quays, who are identical twins, were already almost 40 when they did this it was still fairly early in their careers. They certainly have been much more prolific afterward. I just hoped they stepped up their game a bit. This one is nothing special. Not recommended.

adamfineman02 Much has already been said about this piece, but I am currently reading "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass" by Bruno Schulz--a Polish Jew (author, artist, teacher) indiscriminately killed buying a loaf of bread by the Gestapo during the Second World War. After completing "The Street of Crocodiles" in 1934 and "Sanatorium [...}" in 1937 (currently rumored to be the Quay Brothers' next and third feature film after "Institute Benjamenta" and "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes"), along with the lost manuscript of "The Messiah", the hallucinatory imagery of the books, where metaphor almost supersedes its subject, is captured exquisitely by the Brothers. My recommendation, having seen this film in two versions of the Brothers Quay collected short films, is to get the Region 2 BFI collection from Britain if possible. It features a more comprehensive body of their works in general along with excellent interviews and commentary (i.e. down to discussions regarding the logistics of working with thick layers of dust on the elaborate "Street of Crocodiles" set, while maintaining the illusion of seamless movement in single-frame animation). Parts of it are like a film course in themselves, regarding topics such as lighting, set building, and ball-joint armatures. Even in other Regions, it's worth getting a special player for the BFI Collection, if you are a serious fan or creator of stop-motion animation, art, experimental or surreal filmmaking.

Michael Neumann The animated films of twins Stephen and Timothy Quay succeed more as art than entertainment, drawing heavily on ideas and imagery made popular by the Surrealists, adapted to fit their own highly individual obsessions. Using found objects (broken dolls, scraps of cloth, odd bits and pieces of junk) the Quay's create abstract and obscure short narratives noteworthy for their incredible precision and fluid mobility. The craftsmanship is startling and inventive, the mood haunting and dreamlike, but like most Surrealist art the meaning is often infuriatingly oblique. Like many other of their films I've seen, 'Street of Crocodiles' achieves a hypnotic flow of miniature detail torn straight from the subconscious mind.

galensaysyes I've seen this three times, once in 35mm, once in 16mm (or through a dim projector bulb) and once on video. The first time it impressed me, short as it is, as one of the best horror films I'd ever seen, if not the best. The second and third time, to my disappointment, it didn't work very well because I couldn't see it properly. Some of the detail is gossamer-fine and must be seen in a clear print on a theatrical screen (or perhaps a large-screen TV) to be seen at all. The film is elusive enough anyway. Like many of the Quays' films it takes the viewer inside a world of cracked dolls and pieces of antique machinery, where the dolls are victims of totalitarian control. Of the Quays' short films I've seen, this is the most disturbing. It's best seen, I think, apart from the others, as I first saw it. The other major ones are of a piece with it and become somewhat redundant taken in a group. The slighter ones are also somewhat tedious. The general meaning of this is clear enough, but the exact topical application, if there is one, and if it isn't explained by the quotation given, which I didn't recognize, is obscure to me. I also wonder how serious the filmmakers are when they use, and use up, their style and technique on music videos. I prefer to think of this film as I came to it originally, as one of a kind. It's an unnerving experience.