We decided on the image of the legless man standing erect on crutches, a character who suddenly shows up in the film for no other reason than to provide a masculine symmetry to maternal amputee Alba. For something with a bit of motion to it, you could pick one of the slightly nauseating time-lapse experiments, such as the decaying zebra corpse (which heaves as it is swollen with scurrying maggots, then deflates as they consume its guts). That technique creates a multitude of memorable tableaux: two children dragging a dog past the enormous blue ZOO sign at the Rotterdam Zoo, Alba with her head sticking through the car windshield while a swan’s hindquarters decorate the hood, the twins flanking the legless woman in bed.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Peter Greenaway films each scene like a painting: static, with characters arranged in precise visual relationships, moving very little. On its original American release A Zed and Two Noughts was sometimes screened alongside “ Street of Crocodiles.”.The character named Van Hoyten is a reference to van Meegeren, the famous Vermeer forger. Painter Johannes Vermeer inspired the film’s look.In keeping with the alphabetic sub-theme, Greenaway and Vierny worked out twenty-six different ways to light a set.Vierny’s other projects included Last Year at Marienbad, Belle de Jour, and The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, making him arguably 366’s favorite cinematographer. Zed was the first (of an eventual eight) of Greenaway’s collaborations with cinematographer Sacha Vierny.It was partially filmed at the Rotterdam Zoo. This was Peter Greenaway’s second theatrical feature, after The Draughtsman’s Contract (1980’s The Falls was made for television).Eventually both brothers fall for Alba, forming a strange menage a trois. The grieving brothers question Alba, now missing a leg and bed-ridden, trying to find answers to the tragedy, while simultaneously documenting the decomposition of various animal corpses with time-lapse photography. PLOT: The wives of two zoologist brothers are killed when a car driven by their friend Alba Bewick strikes a swan outside the zoo where they work. These are deliberately bizarre notions that we’ll be trying to render believable using all the artifices of cinema.”–Peter Greenaway on A Zed and Two NoughtsįEATURING: Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Andréa Ferréol, Frances Barber, Joss Ackland, Agnès Brulet “The film contains three absurd propositions that aren’t impossible but are highly improbable: 1) Siamese twins who don’t want to be reunited 2) a woman fascinated by zebras who dreams of being raped by them and 3) a crippled woman who gives birth to twins whose fathers are also twins. 366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

A zed and 2 noughts