Eraserhead. (18.)
Directed by David Lynch. 1977.
Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near and Jack Fisk. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. Black and White. 89 mins
In Heaven everything is fine. You've got your good things and I've got a Criterion Collection Eraserhead disc. I was pestering and whining to the PR people for weeks to get a disc of this and was devastated when a parcel from them arrived containing only Topsy Turvy. But now I have it and I reckon it'll be at least two or three weeks before I start sulking about some new toy I haven't been given.
This is the beginning, the start of a great adventure, the first David Lynch film and the only one made without any concession to commercial pressures. The key thing about Eraserhead is that you watch this disturbed, demented, unique vision and realise that he was going to get four decades of use out of this. No subsequent Lynch film is quite like Eraserhead, but they all have something from it.
-------------------------------------
The inspiration is taken from a bleak time in his life when he was living in a rough part of Philadelphia, studying art and dealing with the birth of his daughter Jennifer. Henry (Nance) is a printer who is “on vacation” and living in an oppressive industrial wasteland. Invited to dinner with his girlfriend's family he discovers that he is the father of a premature baby. “Mother! They're still not sure It is a baby." For a while, he and Mary (Stewart) try to make a go of living together in his one-room apartment caring for the creature they have produced. A Beautiful Girl Across The Hall (Roberts) offers up an exciting alternative. A woman who lives inside the radiator (Near) dances on a stage as sperm-like organisms drop onto the stage and later sings a song about heaven. A deformed man on a planet (Fisk) pulls levers that may have an influence on Henry's fate.
Mostly though Eraserhead is sound and vision. Working with Alan Splet, Lynch came up with an audio assault of industrial noises to accompany the oppressive black and white visuals (shot by Herbert Cardwell initially, and then Frederick Elmes when Cardwell had to drop out) of this abrasive terrain. It's a tight little world, but the shooting of objects in extreme close up makes them look like separate worlds, so it seems like the whole universe might be at play in Henry's room.
People try to work out what it all means, which seems to me to be a damn silly thing to do. Eraserhead just is. It may not have any logical narrative but it clearly isn't just an exercise in random weirdness. It's ugly certainly, but also incredibly seductive and far more alluring than repelling. In the way it shows that there is something more than surface reality, it is almost soothing. Certainly, the experience of watching it is harsh to a certain degree but what it leaves you with is a sense of enrichment. Existence has been added to, not detracted from.
-------------------------------
Personal tale. I first saw this on December 27th 1984 at a cinema outside Baker Street station showing with This Is Spinal Tap. Go on, beat that for a double bill. Whose idea was it to put those two together? Inspired. Entirely random and yet completely perfect. Not sure I properly appreciated either film at the time but that is a cherished memory.
--------------------------------
I said before Eraserhead is the source of all that followed from Lynch but none of his other films is like it. This might not have been the case if Lynch had been able to find a way to continue to make films in black and white, or had got funding to make his Ronnie Rocket script. Instead, he made Elephant Man which is almost the complete opposite of Eraserhead but, because of the black and white, is the one that most closely resembles it. Eraserhead establishes the prevailing Lynch obsession with electricity and oppressive industrial noises. Little moments from it reappear throughout his work. One of the most thrilling scenes in Eraserhead is when the Beautiful Girl Across The Hall's face emerges out of the darkness into a tight close-up, and that's an image that is repeated with Laura Dern in Blue Velvet, though not in close up.
(Most of episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return is taken up with regurgitation of ideas and images from Eraserhead and Dune, a blissful full circle that is an apotheosis for fans.)
It is basically a student film, perhaps the most despised of all genres. We hate student films because they are desperate appeals for attention; they offend like Youtube ads that beg you not to click the skip button. So, what makes this so different from all those other student efforts?
Firstly, time and craftsmanship. It took around half a decade to complete, which seems absurd given the small number of scenes and locations. Most of the time appears to have been taken up with him and his small crew experimenting and working out how to do things. Lynch is good with hands; he can fix things. He could have done well for himself in a proper job. There's not a lot to this film, but every inch of it is immaculate. It still looks amazing. Included on the disc is a set of instruction from Lynch to check that your TV is correctly calibrated. Apparently, almost all TVs are set at the wrong brightness level. Recalibrated and watched in this new print, you can see how precisely every shade of black and white is applied
The other thing is Jack Nance in the main role. It's not a great performance as such, because it is all in one note, bemused and awkward. But he embodies the whole film, he ties it altogether. He's like an amalgam of Laurel and Hardy, helpless innocent, awkward buffoon, trying to deal with the fine mess he's gotten himself into.
-----------------------------------
Eraserhead transcends the student film because it isn't pushy. Parts of the scene where Henry is invited to dinner with Mary's family are a bit overly weird, trying too hard. Mostly though Eraserhead is very comfortable in it discomfort. I think this is the key to David Lynch, it never feels forced. Even his bizarre lockdown Youtube missives work; done by anyone else they would be the worst kind of wacky.
The Lynch that made this was a proper arty fop. In photos, he looks like Oscar Wilde with a Dadaist dress sense. With his floppy hat and two ties worn simultaneously, he looks totally punchable. I am disturbed by this because it suggests that the eccentricity that now seems so natural, so innate, must have been acquired, affected. Its telling perhaps that over the subsequent years he has gradually taken his look from the Eraserhead title character: vertical hair and black suits. The more Eraserhead he becomes, the more assured.
I've said it before, but God Bless Mel Brooks. What kind of eyes must he have to look at this and see in it a director for a sentimental 19th-century melodrama about John Merrick? Without Mel, we would probably never have got Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive.
Supplements.
“Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by Lynch on the making of the film
Directed by David Lynch. 1977.
Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near and Jack Fisk. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. Black and White. 89 mins
In Heaven everything is fine. You've got your good things and I've got a Criterion Collection Eraserhead disc. I was pestering and whining to the PR people for weeks to get a disc of this and was devastated when a parcel from them arrived containing only Topsy Turvy. But now I have it and I reckon it'll be at least two or three weeks before I start sulking about some new toy I haven't been given.
This is the beginning, the start of a great adventure, the first David Lynch film and the only one made without any concession to commercial pressures. The key thing about Eraserhead is that you watch this disturbed, demented, unique vision and realise that he was going to get four decades of use out of this. No subsequent Lynch film is quite like Eraserhead, but they all have something from it.
-------------------------------------
The inspiration is taken from a bleak time in his life when he was living in a rough part of Philadelphia, studying art and dealing with the birth of his daughter Jennifer. Henry (Nance) is a printer who is “on vacation” and living in an oppressive industrial wasteland. Invited to dinner with his girlfriend's family he discovers that he is the father of a premature baby. “Mother! They're still not sure It is a baby." For a while, he and Mary (Stewart) try to make a go of living together in his one-room apartment caring for the creature they have produced. A Beautiful Girl Across The Hall (Roberts) offers up an exciting alternative. A woman who lives inside the radiator (Near) dances on a stage as sperm-like organisms drop onto the stage and later sings a song about heaven. A deformed man on a planet (Fisk) pulls levers that may have an influence on Henry's fate.
Mostly though Eraserhead is sound and vision. Working with Alan Splet, Lynch came up with an audio assault of industrial noises to accompany the oppressive black and white visuals (shot by Herbert Cardwell initially, and then Frederick Elmes when Cardwell had to drop out) of this abrasive terrain. It's a tight little world, but the shooting of objects in extreme close up makes them look like separate worlds, so it seems like the whole universe might be at play in Henry's room.
People try to work out what it all means, which seems to me to be a damn silly thing to do. Eraserhead just is. It may not have any logical narrative but it clearly isn't just an exercise in random weirdness. It's ugly certainly, but also incredibly seductive and far more alluring than repelling. In the way it shows that there is something more than surface reality, it is almost soothing. Certainly, the experience of watching it is harsh to a certain degree but what it leaves you with is a sense of enrichment. Existence has been added to, not detracted from.
-------------------------------
Personal tale. I first saw this on December 27th 1984 at a cinema outside Baker Street station showing with This Is Spinal Tap. Go on, beat that for a double bill. Whose idea was it to put those two together? Inspired. Entirely random and yet completely perfect. Not sure I properly appreciated either film at the time but that is a cherished memory.
--------------------------------
I said before Eraserhead is the source of all that followed from Lynch but none of his other films is like it. This might not have been the case if Lynch had been able to find a way to continue to make films in black and white, or had got funding to make his Ronnie Rocket script. Instead, he made Elephant Man which is almost the complete opposite of Eraserhead but, because of the black and white, is the one that most closely resembles it. Eraserhead establishes the prevailing Lynch obsession with electricity and oppressive industrial noises. Little moments from it reappear throughout his work. One of the most thrilling scenes in Eraserhead is when the Beautiful Girl Across The Hall's face emerges out of the darkness into a tight close-up, and that's an image that is repeated with Laura Dern in Blue Velvet, though not in close up.
(Most of episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return is taken up with regurgitation of ideas and images from Eraserhead and Dune, a blissful full circle that is an apotheosis for fans.)
It is basically a student film, perhaps the most despised of all genres. We hate student films because they are desperate appeals for attention; they offend like Youtube ads that beg you not to click the skip button. So, what makes this so different from all those other student efforts?
Firstly, time and craftsmanship. It took around half a decade to complete, which seems absurd given the small number of scenes and locations. Most of the time appears to have been taken up with him and his small crew experimenting and working out how to do things. Lynch is good with hands; he can fix things. He could have done well for himself in a proper job. There's not a lot to this film, but every inch of it is immaculate. It still looks amazing. Included on the disc is a set of instruction from Lynch to check that your TV is correctly calibrated. Apparently, almost all TVs are set at the wrong brightness level. Recalibrated and watched in this new print, you can see how precisely every shade of black and white is applied
The other thing is Jack Nance in the main role. It's not a great performance as such, because it is all in one note, bemused and awkward. But he embodies the whole film, he ties it altogether. He's like an amalgam of Laurel and Hardy, helpless innocent, awkward buffoon, trying to deal with the fine mess he's gotten himself into.
-----------------------------------
Eraserhead transcends the student film because it isn't pushy. Parts of the scene where Henry is invited to dinner with Mary's family are a bit overly weird, trying too hard. Mostly though Eraserhead is very comfortable in it discomfort. I think this is the key to David Lynch, it never feels forced. Even his bizarre lockdown Youtube missives work; done by anyone else they would be the worst kind of wacky.
The Lynch that made this was a proper arty fop. In photos, he looks like Oscar Wilde with a Dadaist dress sense. With his floppy hat and two ties worn simultaneously, he looks totally punchable. I am disturbed by this because it suggests that the eccentricity that now seems so natural, so innate, must have been acquired, affected. Its telling perhaps that over the subsequent years he has gradually taken his look from the Eraserhead title character: vertical hair and black suits. The more Eraserhead he becomes, the more assured.
I've said it before, but God Bless Mel Brooks. What kind of eyes must he have to look at this and see in it a director for a sentimental 19th-century melodrama about John Merrick? Without Mel, we would probably never have got Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive.
Supplements.
“Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by Lynch on the making of the film
- New 2K digital restorations of six short films by Lynch: Six Men Getting Sick (1967), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970), The Amputee, Version 1 and Version 2 (1974), and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1995), all with video introductions by Lynch
- New documentary featuring interviews with actors Charlotte Stewart and Judith Roberts, assistant to the director Catherine Coulson, and cinematographer Frederick Elmes
- Archival interviews with Lynch and members of the cast and crew
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an interview with Lynch from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s 1997 book Lynch on Lynch
