Street of Crocodiles

Directed by Quay Brothers


The Quays’ masterpiece, STREET OF CROCODILES is adapted from a short story by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, and was their first film shot on 35mm. A museum keeper spits into the eyepiece of an ancient peep-show and sets the musty machine in motion, plunging the viewer into a nightmarish netherworld of bizarre puppet rituals among the dirt and grime.

“On display in a deserted provincial museum is an old viewing Kinetoscope machine with a map indicating the precise district of the Street of Crocodiles. Lodged deep within this wooden oesophagus lie the internal configurations and mechanisms of the Street of Crocodiles like some quasi-anatomical exhibit. The anonymous offering of human saliva by an attendant caretaker activates and releases the Schulzian theatre from stasis into permanent flux. Myth stalks the streets of this parasitical zone where the mythological ascension of the everyday is charted by a marginal interloper who threads himself through this one night of the Great Season. No centre can be reached and the futile pursuit concludes in the deepest rear rooms of a slightly dubious tailor’s shop.” –The Quay Brothers

STREET OF CROCODILES is available on DVD as part of the PHANTOM MUSEUMS: THE SHORT FILMS OF THE QUAY BROTHERS box set. It will be touring on 35mm as part of the QUAY BROTHERS IN 35MM series and will be released on a Quay Brothers Blu-ray on October 20, 2015.