Adventures of Don Quixote - Trick Photography in The Film

Trick Photography in The Film

The film makes several striking early uses of trick photography. Immediately after the opening credits, we see a page of a medieval romance, and the figures on it seem to come to animated life. (This is deleted on some prints.) The windmill sequence, in which Don Quixote is lifted into the air by the sails, actually gives the impression that Chaliapin himself has been caught up by the windmill, not a dummy or a stunt double. It is an impressive achievement by 1933 standards, and was imitated both in the 1957 screen version of Cervantes's novel and in the 1972 film version of "Man of La Mancha". And the scene in which the pages of the novel seemingly arise from the flames has already been mentioned.

Read more about this topic:  Adventures Of Don Quixote

Famous quotes containing the words trick, photography and/or film:

    It’s an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.
    Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)

    Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.
    Don Delillo (b. 1926)