A Quiet Week in the House: becoming a voyeur to view, record and pass on news of desperate attempts to be free

Jan Svankmajer, “A Quiet Week in the House / Tichy tyden v dome” (1969)

A strange little film even by my standards of strangeness, this combines live action with stop-motion animation that also features cross-fades which give the film a rough and crude look that befits the plot and its setting. An unknown man on the run takes refuge in a deserted and decaying house in the Czech countryside. Each day for six days he drills a hole in the wall and peeks through it to observe the activity in the house. After observing the activity, he scribbles off that day on a wall diary. On cue over six days, objects come alive: nails unwrap themselves from candy wrappers and arrange themselves like erect steel phalluses; a slug-like tongue minces itself into long screws; a mechanical toy chicken frees itself from its leash only to be buried under falling piles of mud; a feathered chair attempts to fly to freedom but smashes itself onto the ground; a jacket sucks up water from a vase of flowers and ends up urinating on the ground; and a pair of dentures binds pigs’ feet with wire. All of these scenes suggest hope that is dashed by an unfortunate accident.

On the seventh day the man plugs up the holes he has drilled with dynamite, wires it to a remote control and a timer, takes his equipment outside the house and is about to run away when he remembers he has forgotten one last thing. While the clock is counting down, he rushes back inside the house …

The sepia-toned look of most of the film when the man is active gives it a fresh and rough-hewn appearance; only the animated parts have some colour. These sections are also completely quiet so as to give the suggestion that they might be projections of the man’s imagination as he peers voyeuristically through the holes. He is rewarded with rare treasure indeed: small everyday objects yearn for freedom and to determine their own identities but end up being thwarted by their ambitions and their nature or by something beyond their control. A psychosexual message is hinted at when the man plugs up the holes with phallic dynamite, intending to blow everything up.

As with most Svankmajer films, “A Quiet Week in the House” can be creepy and puzzling, and the animations and the man’s actions at the end of the film can be interpreted in very different ways. The man may be a spy and the secret activities in the house, not the house itself, may be the target of his bombing attack. We ought to feel lucky then that we have seen what goes on in the house and are able to remember and pass on the knowledge to others. Having been made a year after the Prague Spring, this little film could be about as politically subversive and biting in its comment on then-current events in Czechoslovakia as the authorities allowed.

 

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