Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > The Brothers Quay - Michael Atkinson (essay date September-October 1994)

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Michael Atkinson (essay date September-October 1994)

SOURCE: "The Night Countries of the Brothers Quay," in Film Comment, Vol. 30, No. 5, September-October, 1994, pp. 36-8, 40-4.

[In the following essay, Atkinson presents an overview of the Quay's career and discusses various influences on their approach to puppetry and film animation.]

To watch, indeed to enter, the impossible, haunted night of a Quay Brothers film is to become complicit in one of the most perverse and obsessive acts of cinema. We're suspended in our own need to see (as we were meant to be at, say, Cocteau's falling chimney) as random, tiny, decaying objects and relationships are fetishized beyond the point of simple imagery and into alchemy. Street of Crocodiles, The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, Nocturna Artificialia, The Unnameable Little Broom, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, The Comb from the Museum of Sleep, and the Stille Nacht pieces are all...

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1. Introduction
2. ∗Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Mark Le Fanu (essay date Spring 1984)
   2. Tony Rayns (review date June 1986)
   3. The Brothers Quay with Chris Petit (interview date June 1986)
   4. Julian Petley (review date June 1986)
   5. Raymond Durgnat (review date June 1986)
   6. Michael O'Pray (review date June 1986)
   7. Peter Greenaway (review date Summer 1986)
   8. Richard Combs (review date July 1986)
   9. Roger Noake (review date July 1986)
   10. Vincent Canby (review date 29 April 1987)
   11. David Edelstein (review date 5 May 1987)
   12. Amos Vogel (review date May-June 1987)
   13. Terrence Rafferty (essay date June 1987)
   14. Georgia Brown (review date 2 April 1991)
   15. Jonathan Romney (essay date March 1992)
   16. Jonathan Romney (review date May 1992)
   17. Denise Tilles (essay date January 1993)
   18. Michael Atkinson (essay date September-October 1994)
   19. The Brothers Quay with Ryan Deussing (interview date 9 February 1996)
   20. Stephen Holden (review date 13 March 1996)
   21. J. Hoberman (review date 19 March 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright