Short Films to Features


I posted this in the general David Lynch forum, but I believe that this forum is much more appropriate.

Anyway, I just got the Short Films of David Lynch and have only watched the first three (six men getting sick, the alphabet, and the grandmother), but I have to interrupt the Grandmother to write this post quickly!

Watching this short film, the Grandmother, which I'd never seen before now, shows that David Lynch had come up with his whole style rather early. Even the radical departure style wise from the beautiful Mulholland Drive to the gritty Inland Empire makes sense. The extremely uncomfortable close ups right next to unusual actor's faces, the sonic undersound that hasn't creeped up much since Eraserhead but came back in Inland Empire, the blacked out shadowy eyes of dark looking characters fairly common in Inland Empire, all of these traits are extremely present and practiced in this short film of his.

The style of clothes (the David Lynch suit, so to speak) that Kyle MacLachlan and Jack Nance wear in Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, respectively, are worn by the young child actor who is the main character of the short film. Lynch has apparently always been interested in this innocent and soon to be jaded character as we have seen from Eraserhead all the way through Inland Empire (maybe exceptions being the Straight Story and Elephant Man), and he's been working on this character and tweaking it since the beginning.

So what? Well, I don't actually have any reason as to why this is so interesting to me. I guess I'm just glad that I am watching this short films as they really show where David Lynch has come from and how stylistically and sometimes singularly driven he has always been. I guess that I just reccomend finding these short films (especially the Grandmother) if anyone is interested in seeing David Lynch's visions as they would later translate into such interesting and unique American films.

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