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63 years ago...
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Director: Jack Arnold
Country: United States
Length: 81 minutes
Type: Sci-Fi
'The Incredible Shrinking Man' has a B-picture title, premise, cast and budget but an A-picture script and clever FX that mostly hold up six decades later. They employ every trick in the book, like outsize props, forced-perspective, doubles, split-screen and back-projection. Obviously I was expecting this to be about a tiny man in a giant set but I hadn't realised it would be an intelligent study of mental illness, emasculation and the general existential nightmare that very, very slowly shrinking would be. It starts with his clothes not fitting, then having to reach up to kiss his wife, then his wedding ring slipping off and only at the end is he battling giant spiders with a sword made from a sewing pin. As he shrinks down his makeshift clothes begin to resemble the tunic of a medieval knight on a classic quest, then as he shrinks further they appear to become a monk's robe, as he faces God and what Marvel's Dr. Hank Pym calls "The Quantum Realm".
Another Satyajit Ray film next.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Director: Jack Arnold
Country: United States
Length: 81 minutes
Type: Sci-Fi
'The Incredible Shrinking Man' has a B-picture title, premise, cast and budget but an A-picture script and clever FX that mostly hold up six decades later. They employ every trick in the book, like outsize props, forced-perspective, doubles, split-screen and back-projection. Obviously I was expecting this to be about a tiny man in a giant set but I hadn't realised it would be an intelligent study of mental illness, emasculation and the general existential nightmare that very, very slowly shrinking would be. It starts with his clothes not fitting, then having to reach up to kiss his wife, then his wedding ring slipping off and only at the end is he battling giant spiders with a sword made from a sewing pin. As he shrinks down his makeshift clothes begin to resemble the tunic of a medieval knight on a classic quest, then as he shrinks further they appear to become a monk's robe, as he faces God and what Marvel's Dr. Hank Pym calls "The Quantum Realm".
Another Satyajit Ray film next.