"The Garden" may be the most out-of-place Jan Svankmajer film of his earliest works, mostly pertaining to the fact that while the style of filmmaking remains the same (using the standard closeups and intriguing camerawork) the lack of stop-motion drastically changes everything. At the point in his career when the great Czech animator made this sixteen-minute short, his trademark was hardly developed yet: some of his works were animated segments, others were visually bizarre, and others still remained simple experiments in animation. "Zahrada" follows the path of the infamous surrealist shorts that started the experimental film movement (including the legendary classics "Un Chien Andalou" and "Meshes of the Afternoon"): the story and camera movement is meant to convey a mysterious setting, as well as the dark hints shadowing the entire premise. The main thing that separates it from those early avant-garde works is that is does follow, more or less, a coherent plot and does not cause random things to happen just to shock the audience. It's much more thought out than that and comes off as sort of an Edgar Allen Poe story to my eyes.
The premise deals with Joseph and his friend Frank going to visit Joseph's house after stopping to go to the bathroom by the side of the road. The strange thing is that the fence surrounding the house consists entirely of humans holding hands, a living fence which exchanges bets behind the back of their employer. The uncomfortable setting of the film is pulled off well, and it could be interpreted any way - what Joseph really whispers to Frank about the fence will always remain a mystery. And, despite the lack of any type of stop-motion, the short stays an interesting work in the filmmaker's output, even though he would later go on to different things.