Slovakia,
1990, 80 min
Shown in 1991
CREDITS
- dir
-
Juraj Jakubisko
- scr
-
Juraj Jakubisko, Karol Sidon
- cam
-
Igor Luther
- cast
-
Phillippe Avron, Magda Vasaryova, Jiri Sykora, Milan Beran
-
COMMENTS
Shown as part of three-film tribute to Jakubisko. Juraj Jakubisko in person.
In Birds, Orphans and Fools two friends, Yorick and Ondrej, live in a bombed-out church, decorated with the detrius of life (old furniture, a bathtub, a tiny piano and lots of birds). They take in a young Jewish woman, Martha, and one of the cinema's stranger ménages à trois unfolds. Each has been orphaned by political violence, each is devoted to playing the fool as a measure of distance from the horrors the have already absorbed; they recreate a family and a home. This post-apocalyptic Band of Outsiders might have been set in any age, but a beautiful three-way love (not sex) scene in a gutted American convertible sets it firmly in our own. Completed in 1969, Birds, Orphans and Fools was banned from release by the censors until 1990.
FACTOID #97
Actor Franchot Tone, the former husband of Joan Crawford, was the master of ceremonies at the first festival in 1957.
