La Cravate, a short silent film in which Jodorowsky stars and makes his directorial debut, was releasedin 2007 with “The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky” box set from Anchor Bay. Digitally remastered to HD from a print found in a German attic in 2006, this bizarre fantasy short based on Thomas Mann’s story, “The Transposed Heads – A Legend of India in Paris,” stars Jodorowsky as a sensitive young man seeking the attentions of a fickle woman. The short also features Denise Brossot, Rolande Polya, Raymond Devos, and Saul Gilbert.
Jodorowsky’s Directorial Debut
In the young man’s attempts to please the woman, he enters a unique store (with a lovely young lady proprietor) that offers new heads that will not only change his appearance, but his entire personality. On display in the store are male and female heads, each with a small hint as to why their owners traded them in on other versions. While the man’s body and various new heads continue to woo the woman, the store’s proprietor takes a fancy to the man’s original head and takes it home to keep her company.
Simultaneously grotesque and sentimental, La Cravate is not without humor. The music by Edgar Bischoff evokes a carnival atmosphere where surprises – both pleasant and unpleasant – are to be expected. The brightly colored costumes, garish makeup, and hand-painted scenery in this low-budget film also add to the childlike (but not childish) sense of cinematic adventure. Like any good carnival sideshow, La Cravate offers a freakish display of life that is not so far from the norm that we cannot identify with it. Who among us hasn’t longed for a different face, hair, body, or personality at some point in our lives?
Box Set Includes Three Full-Length Films
One of the cinema’s most controversial filmmakers, Jodorowsky has assembled his three groundbreaking films Fando Y Lis (feature-length debut based on a scandalous stage play about lost innocence and the search for paradise), El Topo (an ultra-violent edgy western that started the midnight movie phenomena), and The Holy Mountain (a boldly sacrilegious and decidedly existential quest for enlightenment) in a special box set released this year. The set also includes soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain, and La Constellation Jodorowsky (a 90-minute documentary on the life and art of the filmmaker).
Though always of interest to art house crowds and underground film fanatics, Jodorowsky’s films have gained more widespread exposure through this long-awaited, comprehensive box set and extensive coverage in the recently released documentary Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream. The 2006 discovery of the fascinating 1957 film La Cravate seems especially fortuitous.
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