Heaven and Earth Magic

Heaven and Earth Magic (also known as Number 12, The Magic Feature, or Heaven and Earth Magic Feature) is a 1962 American avant-garde cutout animation film directed by visual artist, filmmaker and mystic Harry Everett Smith.

Heaven and Earth Magic
Film still from Heaven and Earth Magic
Directed byHarry Everett Smith
Produced byHarry Everett Smith
Edited byHarry Everett Smith
Production
company
Mystic Fire Video
Distributed byMystic Fire Video
Release date
  • January 1, 1962 (1962-01-01) (United States)
Running time
66 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Plot

Heaven and Earth Magic centers on an unnamed heroine, whose journey after the loss of a "very valuable watermelon", results in various bizarre situations including a visit to the dentist, being transported to heaven, and return to earth after being "devoured by Max Müller on the day Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London".

Reception

Fred Camper from Chicago Reader praised the film's artistic style, calling it "a mysterious world of alchemical transformations in which objects suggest a multitude of possibilities."[2] Time Out Magazine offered the film similar praise, comparing it to the works of Max Ernst and Georges Méliès.[3]

Legacy

It is listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, noting the film as director Smith's magnum opus, and saying "Incomplete, deeply idiosyncratic, rearranged from materials taken largely from an earlier period —a Victorian-era catalogue— it is explicitly "folk" in nature."[4]

See also

References

Citations
  1. Marcus 2011, p. 106.
  2. Camper 2020.
  3. TimeOut 2014.
  4. Schneider 2013, p. 392.

Sources

Books
  • Marcus, Greil (April 26, 2011). The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. Picador. ISBN 978-1-4299-6158-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Steven Jay Schneider (2013). 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Barron's. ISBN 978-0-7641-6613-6.

Websites
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