Het kwade oog Charles Dekeukeleire, 1937
The Evil Eye
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A vagrant mourning the loss of his wife unleashes a chain of strange events in a Flemish village community. In his first feature film, Dekeukeleire combines rural mysticism and avant-garde camera techniques to forge an uncanny love story.

Het kwade oog Charles Dekeukeleire, 1937
Language
Taal
Langue
Dutch
Subtitles
Ondertitels
Sous-titres
English
Available
Beschikbaar
Disponible
Worldwide
Duration
Duur
Durée
74'
Aspect Ratio
Beeldverhouding
Format d'image
1.33

With a purely commercial popular cinema developing in both Brussels and the Flemish region, Charles Dekeukeleire chose to plunge into fiction films in 1937 with a decidedly ambitious screenplay by the novelist Herman Teirlinck. The film was shot in Flanders with non-professional actors from the country and using funds collected together by Henri d’Ursel from a number of rich patrons. Teirlinck’s plot, drawn from one of his plays and centered upon an experimental treatment of time, is a piece of rural phantasy: a vagabond spreads panic throughout a village community, triggering a series of mysterious events which give him a reputation as a sorcerer and evil spirit. Flashbacks explain his dark secret - he tried to drown himself with the woman he loved and their illegitimate child, but he alone survived, half insane. Feeling that Maria too is still alive, he wanders in search of her and dies in peace when she grants him pardon.

In telling this story, Dekeukeleire mixes realism, in the shape of the Flemish countryside with its crops and fields, with a purely formal experimentation in the tradition of his silent films. This is best seen in the dreamlike drowning sequence, with subjective mental images and sound effects (Jean Painlevé supervised the scene), its double-exposures and slow-motion shots, the fluid blurring of time which corresponds to Teirlinck’s intentions. The result is a singular work combining folklore and the fantastic, bucolic lyricism and the refinement of the experimental, a film on the cusp between the silence and the talkies which confused audiences, of course, marking the end of Dekeukeleire’s brief association with fiction films.

At the time when Dekeukeleire’s films were made, the filmmakers’ sympathizers mainly defended them by pushing them toward abstraction (a poem, a sonata). His detractors, on the other hand, battened onto their incomprehensibility as narratives and their pointless repetitions. The failure of the films to fit into recognizable categories with which the spectators could cope probably contributed to his work’s current obscure position. Brought out again today and exhibited to wider audiences, Dekeukeleire’s experimental films could undoubtedly find sympathetic viewers.

Kristin Thompson

Press & Publications
Pers & publicaties
Presse & publications
Language
Taal
Langue
Dutch
Subtitles
Ondertitels
Sous-titres
English
Available
Beschikbaar
Disponible
Worldwide
Duration
Duur
Durée
74'
Aspect Ratio
Beeldverhouding
Format d'image
1.33
A Film by
Een film van
Un film de
Script
Scenario
Scénario
Herman Teirlinck
Image
Beeld
Image
François Rents
Sound
Geluid
Son
R. H. Eliot, Willem Rombauts
Producer
Producent
Producteur
Charles Dekeukeleire
Editing
Montage
Montage
Charles Dekeukeleire
Music
Muziek
Musique
Marcel Poot
Production
Productie
Production
PDK