Vertical Features Remake1978
What makes this film worth watching?
"Peter Greenaway has the most inscrutable, brilliant and possibly deranged mind in modern cinema." - Desson Howe, Washington Post
3 members like this review
I am forever going to be re-assessing Vertical Features Remake (1, 2...). I swear Mr. Greenaway is having way too much fun with cinema.
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Member Reviews (5)
What can you say? It's Peter Greenaway who, after all, spent part of his career making educational films for the government.
I am forever going to be re-assessing Vertical Features Remake (1, 2...). I swear Mr. Greenaway is having way too much fun with cinema.
A great early experiment from a great filmmaker. We still can't decide whether we like version three or version four better...
Peter Greenaway has a pretty wicked and strange sense of humour. This short is a "documentary" about a film his alter ego Tulse Luper was going to make featuring a series of shots of vertical standing objects. The film was never made before Luper died, so the filmmakers recreate the film. But then further information is revealed that changes what their perceptions what the film was supposed to be is revealed, so they make a new version ... and so on for 45 minutes. If that sounds great ... yes, yes it is.
On the one hand, it's a hilariously dry and obtuse skewering of an academic approach to art and also outsiders' attempts to dissect and understand its intensions, and on the other hand it's a gorgeous piece of abstract filmmaking. A masterwork, fantastic.