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Two of David Lynch’s Early Films: ‘The Grandmother’ and ‘The Alphabet’

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A taste of things to come - two of David Lynch’s early films.

The Grandmother (1970):

The plot of the Grandmother centers around a boy who, looking for an escape from his abusive parents, grows a grandmother to comfort him. “There’s something about a grandmother…It came from this particular character’s need - a need that that prototype can provide. Grandmothers get playful. And they relax a little, and they have unconditional love. And that’s what this kid, you know, conjured up.”

The film has little dialog and combines animation with film, in its exploration of the “myths of birth, sexuality and death.”
 
The Alphabet (1968):

[David] Lynch’s wife, Peggy, told him of a dream her niece had during which she was reciting the alphabet in her sleep, then woke up and starting bouncing around repeating it. Lynch took this idea and ran with it. First he painted the walls of his upstairs bedroom black. Lynch painted Peggy’s face white to give her an un-real contrast to the black room, and had her bounce around the room in different positions as he filmed. This footage was edited together with an animated sequence where the letters of the alphabet slowly appear and a capital A gives birth to several smaller a’s which form a human figure.

 

 
The rest of ‘The Grandmother’ plus Lynch’s ‘The Alphabet’, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.15.2011
06:41 pm
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