1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 6: A close shave
Pale, bald, chatty Wallace lives with Gromit, his long-suffering pooch. Wallace invents gadgets. Every morning, his alarm clock triggers various mechanisms that lift him out of bed, dress him, and serve him breakfast.
Of course, as in any good Frankensteinian chiller, some of the machines will turn out to have minds of their own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
In this movie, beasts also are intelligent. Gromit reads the newspaper – and Russian literature. There is also a herd of sheep whose members act together with astounding complexity and precision.
(The joke is that all these intelligent machines and beasts are mute, and must endure Wallace’s prattle.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This 31-minute work of clay animation is a sequel to A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers (which should be viewed before A Close Shave). It precedes The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – which is of “feature” length – as well as another short movie, A Matter of Loaf and Death.
The four short movies can be regarded as a steadily darkening, unified whole. Reflect upon the titles. In the first movie, everything is innocent and, well, grand. In the second movie, something goes wrong: sin is introduced into the world, or at least into Wallace’s and Gromit’s household. In A Close Shave, things are nearly disastrous (but not quite). And in the last movie, things are downright deadly.
Wallace, the bumbling tinkerer, and Gromit, his loyal assistant, are basically unchanging. It’s the world around them that gets more sinister.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
At the heart of A Close Shave is Wallace’s courtship of Wendolene, a wool merchant. It’s a pathetic romance, the coming together of two sad sacks.
We smirk. We also worry: we’ve seen Wendolene commit a crime. We dread her designs upon her innocent lover. (Wallace may be tactless, but he is without malice.)
Wendolene’s dog, Preston, is much more ruthless than Gromit. What is his role in the crime?
Another character is Shaun, a sheep who unexpectedly comes to live in Wallace’s and Gromit’s house. It’s Shaun who’ll save the day.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The setting is pure British kitchen sink. (“Kitchen-sink fantasy,” we might call it.) Everywhere is urban grime. Houses are tackily decorated. Wallace and Gromit support themselves by washing windows. Wendolene can be inferred to have suffered a domestic trauma.
Thankfully, there’s wit in every detail. Gromit, unjustly condemned to prison, reads Crime and Punishment. There are deft jokes of physical movement, as when a machine-gun is used to shoot porridge. Newspaper headlines drily comment on events; they often feature farm animals as protagonists, as if to remind soot-choked England of the countryside.
There’s also a keen appreciation of previous moviemaking. The lighting is lurid, as in a Hitchcockian effort from the 1960s. The camera peeks around corners and out from hiding-places.
And the physical acting – well, there is none; it’s all done with clay. And yet Gromit is as compelling as any human actor.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. In the United States, A Close Shave was first shown on December 29, 1995 – and so it missed having a 1996 release date. But just barely.
I’ll stipulate that, as far as this blogging series is concerned, if a part of a movie’s initial theatrical run in some country occurred in 1996, the movie is reviewable. This is a sufficient condition; I reserve the right not to make it a necessary one.
Of course, as in any good Frankensteinian chiller, some of the machines will turn out to have minds of their own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
In this movie, beasts also are intelligent. Gromit reads the newspaper – and Russian literature. There is also a herd of sheep whose members act together with astounding complexity and precision.
(The joke is that all these intelligent machines and beasts are mute, and must endure Wallace’s prattle.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This 31-minute work of clay animation is a sequel to A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers (which should be viewed before A Close Shave). It precedes The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – which is of “feature” length – as well as another short movie, A Matter of Loaf and Death.
The four short movies can be regarded as a steadily darkening, unified whole. Reflect upon the titles. In the first movie, everything is innocent and, well, grand. In the second movie, something goes wrong: sin is introduced into the world, or at least into Wallace’s and Gromit’s household. In A Close Shave, things are nearly disastrous (but not quite). And in the last movie, things are downright deadly.
Wallace, the bumbling tinkerer, and Gromit, his loyal assistant, are basically unchanging. It’s the world around them that gets more sinister.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
At the heart of A Close Shave is Wallace’s courtship of Wendolene, a wool merchant. It’s a pathetic romance, the coming together of two sad sacks.
We smirk. We also worry: we’ve seen Wendolene commit a crime. We dread her designs upon her innocent lover. (Wallace may be tactless, but he is without malice.)
Wendolene’s dog, Preston, is much more ruthless than Gromit. What is his role in the crime?
Another character is Shaun, a sheep who unexpectedly comes to live in Wallace’s and Gromit’s house. It’s Shaun who’ll save the day.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The setting is pure British kitchen sink. (“Kitchen-sink fantasy,” we might call it.) Everywhere is urban grime. Houses are tackily decorated. Wallace and Gromit support themselves by washing windows. Wendolene can be inferred to have suffered a domestic trauma.
Thankfully, there’s wit in every detail. Gromit, unjustly condemned to prison, reads Crime and Punishment. There are deft jokes of physical movement, as when a machine-gun is used to shoot porridge. Newspaper headlines drily comment on events; they often feature farm animals as protagonists, as if to remind soot-choked England of the countryside.
There’s also a keen appreciation of previous moviemaking. The lighting is lurid, as in a Hitchcockian effort from the 1960s. The camera peeks around corners and out from hiding-places.
And the physical acting – well, there is none; it’s all done with clay. And yet Gromit is as compelling as any human actor.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. In the United States, A Close Shave was first shown on December 29, 1995 – and so it missed having a 1996 release date. But just barely.
I’ll stipulate that, as far as this blogging series is concerned, if a part of a movie’s initial theatrical run in some country occurred in 1996, the movie is reviewable. This is a sufficient condition; I reserve the right not to make it a necessary one.