Black Moon

1975

Action / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Sci-Fi

9
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 42% · 12 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 53% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.1/10 10 6461 6.5K

dream dreams brother allegory shot to death surreal

Plot summary

There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.

Director

Louis Malle Photo
Louis Malle

Top cast

Alexandra Stewart Photo
Alexandra Stewart as Sister Lily
Joe Dallesandro Photo
Joe Dallesandro as Brother Lily
Cathryn Harrison Photo
Cathryn Harrison as Lily
Therese Giehse Photo
Therese Giehse as Old Lady
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
921.03 MB
1172*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
1 hr 40 min
Seeds 2
1.67 GB
1744*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
1 hr 40 min
Seeds 12

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Aditya_Gokhale 7 / 10

Malle's surreal experiment is commendable but falls short

A lot of avant-garde filmmakers experimented with Lewis Carroll's classic novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Some features that come to mind are Jaromil Jires' wonderful film, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders", Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and Jan Svankmajer's "Alice". Louis Malle's surrealist experimental film "Black Moon" could very well fit into this category of the directors' own interpretation of the novel giving it their own "free form"! Written by Louis Malle in collaboration with Joyce Bunuel (Luis Bunuel's daughter-in-law!) and directed by Louis Malle, "Black Moon" is devoid of any central plot as such. Set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop of a "war between the sexes", this film simply chronicles the weird happenings as experienced (or imagined?) by a teenage girl, Lily (Cathryn Harrison) who has narrowly escaped being killed by men seemingly out to wipe out the entire women populace! Having been lucky to have escaped, she just speeds away in her car deep into the woods only to come across an isolated property, a huge manor house and its strange inhabitants. The house is dwelled in by a cantankerous, bed ridden old lady (Therese Giehse) with a weird fetish, who talks to animals, especially a big rat-like creature "Humphrey" in some language that's gibberish, and every once in a while speaks on a radio kept by her bed. There is a brother-sister pair around the house to take care of stuff. They don't speak a single word. They only hum some songs as they work around the property. Some snakes tucked away in unlocked drawers also share the space with them! The most bizarre of all though, is the presence of about half a dozen naked children running around playing with a gigantic pig; they keep interrupting Lily's path every time she chases a not-so-graceful Unicorn that seems to be a regular visitor around the property…..Everything sounds very interesting for film lovers who love their films rife with surreal dreamscapes but frankly it doesn't go much beyond this. The film surely holds our interest for most of its modest running time of about 95 minutes thanks to the splendid camera-work by the genius cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the rather awe-inspiring sound design. In a fabulous close-up of a crawling centipede, you can actually "hear" the little thing crawl on a surface! In another hilarious scene (repeated twice), amidst near dead silence, a pig sitting at a table, apparently guarding a large glass of milk kept at the center of the table, lets out a loud grunt every time Lily gulps milk from it! These are just some of the really jaw-droppingly outlandish scenes in the film and there are a good number of them. There are some scenarios that are so absurd, they are comical and that's a good thing, but after a while the same devices are recycled instead of bringing in some novelty factor. Once one gives in to the idea of absurdist fiction, then there are no limits to what one can do! But surrealism not being Malle's forte, he leaves a little to be desired in his product. If a premise that automatically creates endless possibilities starts to get repetitive then there is a problem somewhere! Malle even tries to infuse some allegorical allusions to the Indian epic Ramayana (a particular episode involving "Jatayu", the demi-god possessing the form of a vulture, who tries to save Sita from Raavana's clutches!) but it doesn't necessarily create a huge impact in the overall proceedings.This is an English language film and Cathryn Harrison, portraying Lily clearly speaks in English. However Therese Giehse's (Old Lady) speech sounds dubbed in English and her lip movement is ridiculously out of sync. It is unclear whether this was intentional or a technical glitch, a bad dubbing job or a bad lip-synching job! At times even Harrison's dialog seems out of sync. Some of it sounds really dumb as well! If one thinks from a certain angle, there certainly is an interpretation that gives the happenings on screen some meaning and a vaguely fitting explanation which could even reflect religious themes! I would not like to adhere to any theory or interpretation though. I think it is safe to assume that Louis Malle didn't want to make a deeply thought-provoking or metaphorical film. He merely wanted to compile some dream-like visions into a motion picture laced with themes of civil war and futuristic dystopia and a teenager's coming-of-age, and that's fair enough. He wanted his film to be more a visual experience than a cerebral puzzle. Only Luis Bunuel or David Lynch could've done a much better job with the material at hand.Score: 7.5/10.
Reviewed by

Reviewed by czar-10 7 / 10

What the heck is Louis tryin to say here?

Weird movie by Louis Malle, Which was filmed at Malle's own Manor, with Joe Dallesandro acting in his first (and only), non speaking role, Playing the brother of a twin sister. The film starts off with a girl, played by Cathryn Harrisson (Actor Rex Harrison's granddaughter, who was only 16), driving in her car in the dark and runs over some kind of beaver or something, later on down the road she encounters a road-block, put up by men with army suits and gas masks. The men in masks with machine guns mow down about 6 women in plain view of her. One of the guys in the masks starts approaching her car, she's dressed like a guy with a hat and her long hair tucked underneath it. The guy in the mask pulls off her hat and her long blonde hair streams out, alarmed, she suddenly pins the gas and gets away. Later she encounters men in more masks killing more women, and things get even weirder from here. Almost too weird. The movie no doubt, has a very surreal tone to it, very ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Trying to comprehend what really this movie is about is impossible. Only Louis Malle knows what king of message this movie was intended to give. And that just suits me just fine, because I find the imagery of the different scenes and various characters keep me occupied through-out the film, and interpretations are mixed with each time I watch it.

Read more IMDb reviews

1 Comment

Be the first to leave a comment