Dark Sentiments – Day 26
Posted By Randy on October 26, 2010
The darkest sentiments don’t come from the realm of the supernatural, the outer limits, or the twilight zone. They spring from the human mind where all things truly diabolical are born. Today I’m presenting a short film titled Neighbours by Norman McLaren that was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1952. The film itself is not diabolical. Keep reading, and then watch.
The film you are about to see won a Canadian Film Award, as well as being nominated for an Academy Award in the Short Subject (One Reel) and Best Documentary (Short Subject) categories. Interestingly, it won its Oscar in the latter, resulting in a press release from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences describing it as, “… among a group of films that not only competed, but won Academy Awards in what were clearly inappropriate categories.”
Neighbours has been designated a “masterwork” by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, and as recently as 2009 was added to UNESCO’S Memory of the World Programme. This latter accolade is, to my view, more than a little ironic. While I believe Neighbours to be deserving of the highest honours, the film’s subject matter highlights the seemingly bottomless human drive to end up with just what the award describes – nothing more than a memory of the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present all eight minutes and seven seconds of Neighbours …
1952..Remarkable ! Definitely ahead of it’s time. Thanks, Leroy.
This has been a favourite of mine ever since it came to my attention as a time filler at the end of a movie I watched back in the dark ages. It also seriously creeped out a friend of mine from my university days, especially when the actors assumed their war faces.