Hey guys,
I just wrote up a deconstruction of the bath-house fight scene on my site. You can read my appreciation of this scene here http://www.bensbasement.co.uk/2014/06/my-favourite-scenes-6-eastern-pr omises.html
I particularly love how there's zero sound. Cronenberg strips back all extraneous detail and filmic techniques, letting the actors just thrash it out instead.
Visit my movie review site:http://www.bensbasement.co.uk/
I reacted to the one sound of a knife being drawn, so that must be the only one of those regular ugly sound overlays in that scene?
shareI once suggested here that someone not watch the scene but just listen, because the greatest brutality was in the sounds. The poster did that, and agreed.
In the theater the relative silence was also punctuated by the gasps and little murmurs of the audience. More than one critic has described the scene as the most realistic fight of its kind on film. I don't go to films for fight scenes, so I can't say, but it surely looked and sounded real to me.
I don't know about the knife sound.
My husband pointed out to me that it is a bit unusual to see a major actor, not a stunt double, thrown for what looked like about fifteen feet by someone else, when he was naked and had no way to hide any padding. I think it might even be unique, but as I say, I don't go to fight films.
DC said that some of the floor tiles were soft, but that the stunt man didn't do a very good job of hitting them with his human projectile, so the makeup man spent more time covering up VM's bruises than anything else. DC said he responded, "Don't tell me that until we're finished."
VM said by the end of the second day he was very glad it was all over. When asked about doing the scene naked, he said he didn't mind while the cameras were on, but it was a bit awkward between scenes, being the only naked person on a set with about 14 other people, male and female.
Just rewatched it. Lots of ugly fake knife sounds, scene cuts and unreal choreographic fighting.
Cool that VM did it naked though.