BFI

Funded by the BFI's Experimental Film Fund, The Axe and the Lamp was intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of the rostrum camera in illustrating aspects of art history.

The film consists of an exploration of 'Nederlandish Proverbs' (1559) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a typically teeming canvas that simultaneously illustrates dozens of traditional Flemish proverbs (scholars have identified over a hundred), the aim of the entire painting being to illustrate the folly of human stupidity. The film's title is explained at the start: the painting attacks sin with the axe of satire, and illustrates folly with the lamp of pity.

Rather than present the film as a dry history lecture, producer-director John Halas makes use of a rhyming commentary by Paul Dehn (read by the TV presenter Robert Robinson) that highlights several of the proverbs, with the camera gliding over the canvas, constantly framing and reframing appropriate sections of the painting to bring its individual stories to vivid life.

Very occasionally Halas highlights a detail with a small amount of animation (a glint of steel here, a sputtering candle there), but the film's visual energy is mainly derived from a series of highly intricate camera movements that would be hard to pull off in a live-action situation.

Michael Brooke

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