The Green Fog (2017) is a mind-bending walk through the iconic narrative arc of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Commissioned for the closing night of the 2017 San Francisco Film Festival, director Guy Maddin (with co-directors Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson) pays a wonderfully subversive tribute to Hitchcock’s San Francisco-centric film by stitching together footage from movies and tv shows filmed in the Bay Area. Through the scrim of cut up and reworked scenes, the emotional peaks and valleys of Vertigo’s plot materialize. However, this approach never turns into a trivia game for cinephiles. Indeed, a particularly precocious cineast could spend the entirety of The Green Fog recalling the classic films that appear on screen (over 100 in total), pulling each title from the recesses of her mind. However, in traditional Maddin fashion, a more conceptual and active level of movie watching is required.
Tag: Guy Maddin
By Chelsea Spear
Equal parts expressionist horror film, childhood reminiscence, crime procedural, and Grand Guignol reverie, Brand Upon the Brain! is the story of a teenaged girl detective investigating eerie abuses at an orphanage wracked by unseemly youthful desire. The juvenile sleuth befriends an adolescent brother and sister, and, lusting after the latter, goes into drag to seduce her. The young brother, meanwhile, falls under the spell of both the female and the male versions of the detective, forming a love triangle from just two people – dangerous geometry for children!