This is one odd but possibly interesting animated film--depending on your tolerance for the avant-garde. The intention of the film is not to tell any sort of a story and it looks more like an experimental film, but it is watchable nonetheless. It consists of lots of complex moving geometric images that are best described as looking like moving Spirograph drawings. Now this may not sound very interesting but considering how complex and hypnotic they are, you probably will be left wondering how the heck they did this! On top of that, you may also wonder if perhaps they were experimenting with drugs or using this to intensify the high! I am not exaggerating--it's very mind-bending and unique---but not bad and I can certainly appreciate all the time and energy it went into making it. I am just not sure how much of an audience there really is for this sort of thing.
3 Reviews
Strange and engrossing abstract journey
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx14 February 2009
This abstract short film by Oskar Fischinger silent in black and white and is meant to be played without music. It's certainly not the labour of love that some of the Fischinger's later works are, but I liked it a lot. You have the basically travelling down these tunnels made of spirals, there's an odd sci-fi feel to it, like you're moving towards some sort of bizarre revelation. You're not always travelling down tunnels, at one point you are being subjected to strange rays and emanations. Kubrick could have had some of this stuff towards the end of 2001 if he'd have made a silent version in 1926.
For me there are really two periods for Fischinger, very personal and experimental films he made in the 1920s, Wax Experiments and Sprititual constructions being the high points, followed by the crowd pleasing and much more jaunty colour movies (generally juxtaposed with music), many of which financed by the Hollywood studios. It's hard for me to choose which period fascinates me the most.
For me there are really two periods for Fischinger, very personal and experimental films he made in the 1920s, Wax Experiments and Sprititual constructions being the high points, followed by the crowd pleasing and much more jaunty colour movies (generally juxtaposed with music), many of which financed by the Hollywood studios. It's hard for me to choose which period fascinates me the most.
The medium wasn't ready for Fischinger yet
Horst_In_Translation21 September 2016
Warning: Spoilers
"Spirals" is a short film from 1926, so this one has its 90th anniversary this year. It is a pretty early career effort from German animation and experimental filmmaker Oskar Fischinger. The title already gives away what you see during the entirety of the film, so no need to further elaborate on that. Fischinger really shines in his later works through his use of color and music, most of the time very bright and colorful and the music very fast and fun too. Here he does not have these two mediums available yet. It is a silent black-and-white film and honestly I found it really boring and bland, also in terms of the animation. this is possibly the weakest I have seen so far from Fischinger. I cannot really blame him. He needed films like this to be improving and from this perspective it is okay he made it. i just would not call it a creative achievement really, which is also due to the year when this was made to and the (lack of) technical progress. Final note: It says on IMDb that this one runs for 6 minutes. I am not sure if parts of it are lost as all the versions I found only ran for roughly half of that stated runtime, so the one I watched only went on for 3 minutes too.
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