"The Devil's Cleavage" Film

Light Industry

poster for "The Devil's Cleavage" Film

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Light Industry presents a rare screening of George Kuchar's low-rent melodrama The Devil's Cleavage. His byzantine saga—presented in pulpy chapters like a thumb-staining dimestore novel—chronicles the misadventures of slatternly nurse Ginger as she leaves San Francisco for Blessed Prairie, Oklahoma, a seedy hamlet populated by lovesick sheriffs, failed chanteuses, sexed-up Girl Scout leaders and other wayward creatures. Though never short on cheap thrills, The Devil's Cleavage is also a visionary study in the mechanics of genre. A closet formalist, Kuchar has fashioned a proto-punk fantasia that both reduces and exaggerates classical Hollywood idioms into a style that is variously threadbare and baroque. Forget Lubitsch, come feel the clammy grip of The Kuchar Touch.

"Kuchar's epic black-and-white 16mm tribute to Douglas Sirk weepies, with the lurid and the rancid aspects somewhat heightened. The almost nonstop dialogue seems like it was cut-and-pasted ransom-note-style from a thousand old movie scripts." - Guy Maddin

"With considerable energy, ebullience and wit, Kuchar depicts his once imagined California paradise as a forbidden planet long-ruled by celluloid monsters from the Id." - J. Hoberman

The Devil's Cleavage - George Kuchar, 16mm, 1973, 107 mins

Media

Schedule

October 12, 2010 from 19:30

Artist(s)

George Kuchar

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