In light of recent events (the election results in the Netherlands) and having been sick with covid for quite a long time (and stuck with a lingering cough) I’ve been rewatching my favourite film over and over: the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew too Much, featuring Peter Lorre as the anarchist revolutionary, Abbott. This film was one of my first intense fascinations, and it’s comforting rekindling this old love, starting with puzzling out the architectural layout of the villain’s headquarters : a little church run by a cult of sun-worshippers that’s connected to a house.
Of course, the film itself was shot in a bunch of loosely connected sets, without much regard for spatial continuity, having the edit itself weave the spaces together into one. But I like thinking about these kinds of things, and I like how the effect is almost dreamlike in some cases - Abbott’s headquarters are a surrealist nightmare of interconnecting passages and stairs going through each other, and drawing it out like this really makes me appreciate this more.
(End note: I’m gonna reblog these in a chain because I have a lot more photos but cohost will only let me upload 4 at a time)
