MALPERTUIS
(1972; d. Harry Kümel, w. Jean Ferry)

"Open yr eyes + help me die, daughter of the gods…."

Ship unloads passengers (unconscious disgorging contents into sleeping mind, or vessel transporting dead souls across Styx), hero Jan materializing as tho newly born/created (on boat: in transit, from child- to manhood [boyish in sailor duds, mature in later period clothes], ambiguous figure conjured in order to provide bridge across life-realms) out of observer Uncle Charlie/Didelù’s mind; latter bowler-hatted Hermes escorting Jan to title underworld/castle via Venus Bar(dello; similar etymology as border: threshold back to womb, as to primal unconscious), libidinous partying + ensuing fight over woman preteen’s oedipal rivalry + the dream full-tilt, leading to castle’s more attenuated insanity.

Awakes naked from swashbuckler-fantasy to ship-model: return to infancy + being-w/-the-archetypes (or, conversely, moving from the mythic to the figurative/representational [as Jan finds inhabitants of castle gods themselves sewn into human skins: dreams giving archetypes flesh] à la opening materialization, he Odysseus in Land of Lotus Eaters/sleep) in title not-the-house of his youth (complete w/ loving-chaste sister + doting maid [preoedipal asexual not-the-mom, split btwn Venus Bar chantoozie, lusting vamp-Fury Electo + unapproachable Gorgon Eurylae, all played by same actress]) appointed à la childhood room (dream-reproduction of similarly conflicted Paradise), Mal(Bad/Evil)per(thru/because of)tuis(you: inheritance of evil, title also possible reference to president of Berlin Academy of Sciences ca. 1745, Maupertuis, who posited origin of all species in small set of ancestors, aka archetypes) master Casavius’ (Orson Welles, castle à la Citizen Kane Xanadu similarly stocked w/ oddball menagerie of types; C former friend of Cagliostro, whom OW also played in ’47 Black Magic) similar intention to pass role (carry on malediction) to him on imminent death (passing of torch as OW to Kümel, this latter dir’s 3rd film), situation of boy-world amid corrupt Malpertuis traditional borderland of fairytale maturation fantasies (named after f’tale fox-who-is-the-devil).

Voracious Casavius incapacitated upstairs earthbound ego/consciousness soon to expire, disenfranchised "Lampinest" Prometheus tending pilot-light of consc’ss à la similar second lights (of imagination) in Beast w/5ingers, Spider, Mole People, Tormented, Hound o/t Baskervilles, etc, in back corridors + passageways, rail trailing from tower to basement spinal cord carrying messages down from brain; sees action thru hole in painting à la Kümel’s softcore 3 Rakish Tales, art medium btwn consc’ss + mythical/eternal, as is Eurylae (made up like statue/painting: medium btwn real + iconic and asexual boyhood + "rigid" man).

After himself "erecting" then crumbling (detumescence + return to linear, conscious world, graduating to selfhood via self-obliviation, film likewise devolving into eternal-return of reiterated scenes + gestures [hand reaching for Eurylae as for boat in beginning, she similar vessel across planes; observing Uncle Charlie/Didelù as D had him; record in drawing-room stuck until sacred confrontation w/ E breaks history-cycle]), Jan transported to sterile hospital (adulthood +, for HK, Belgian TV-studio future) in Caligari epilogue where Jan, now John (cf source novelist Jean Ray [+ scrw JF], doc alluding to diary/book J has just completed), discharged to wife (Susan Hampshire again; as sister, Electo + Eurylae union of madonna, whore + combo, respectively), who leads him down uterine corridor (cf Uncle C’s opening, masculine "delivery") back to house, where iconic J-dbl approaches then freeze-frames (turning to stone, again), credit scroll over eye mise en abîme of audience viewing J viewing self viewing self, obliviating narrative as it turns own Medusa’s eye on spectator – apotheosizing us, too.

Film shares title w/ house, equating 2: both rundown + labyrinthine patchwork of types + ideas, Kümel’s work to keep Promethean fire going + give gods/archetypes human (tangible) form, eagle forever eating his liver scourge of critics/producers in house/Studio whose master’s idea of art is taxidermy (rather’n, say, alchemy).