Black Moon (1975) User Reviews (79)

A filmed allegory

[scott-2070 · 7/10 · 25 October 2007]

It's the last war on Earth, men and women are the last opposing armies, and when they've killed each other, humankind will end. The girl Lilly, a virgin, not yet a woman, not yet a combatant tries to escape the carnage. She's looks human, but she really isn't quite, she has such fine senses that she hears plants cry out in pain. For a time she escapes the war, and lives outside of reality.

She sees a rough and tumble unicorn, and makes her way to a ramshackle farmhouse. She finds an old woman there. The old woman symbolizes the World or History or perhaps Civilization. The twin man and woman, both named Lily, that attend the old woman stand for the male and the female forces of civilization. The horde of little children symbolize human impulses or dreams that aren't yet clothed in ideas or form.

After the unicorn talks to Lilly in the garden, he becomes disgusted and says "I won't be back for 154 years"

The old woman dies and Lilly eventually takes her place. The old world dies and the new world is reborn.

Some of the animal symbols: The unicorn's horn is an antidote to poison, and represents healing of the world from biological or radioactive warfare. The eagle is the oldest being perched on top of Yggdrasil - the Tree of Life in Norse Mythology. The Eagle watches and remembers everything that's happened in the world, and then finally dies at Ragnarok - Götterdämmerung - the destruction and rebirth of the world. (Possibly the picture on the wall of the hero cutting down an eagle in the air, and slicing off it's wing refers to Finga, a hero who wore a single eagle wing on his helmet, who appears in Gaelic mythology and the poems of Ossian) The Black Horse is a symbol of Death by Famine. The sacrificed lamb symbolizes the death of the innocent or blameless.

Lilly recalls the mythic Lilith, the "first wife of Adam" , the owl demon who had little milk, who wouldn't defer to Adam, and defended her right to be his equal. Astrologers referred to the dark side of the moon as Lilith.

The twins that fight at the end could represent Líf and Lífthrasir (from the same root word as Life), brother and sister, last man and last woman on Earth that will repopulate the world after Ragnarok. Or maybe not, since we don't see any other humans after Lilly takes to bed, just teeming flocks of sheep and turkeys outside the house.

A September Allegory In Allegro

[[e-mail] · 7/10 · 14 September 2006]

Working late hours sometimes can provide a movie buff with unexpected rewards: for example, getting off at 11:00 PM means getting home in time to fix a cup of hot chocolate in hopes of an early visit to Dreamland. Or it can mean being comfortably wide-awake, and stumbling across a rarely-seen film gem by Louis Malle. Or getting to view a rarely-seen cinematic conundrum also created by Louis Malle.

That would be "Black Moon," made in 1975 and featuring Joe Dallesandro and Cathryn Harrison, grand-daughter of Rex Harrison, and a gaggle of naked children running wild with a large white pig. And a talking unicorn. And a manor house where something is always cooking.

Without a doubt, Malle's "Black Moon" is one strange and beautiful movie concoction. Labelling it as futuristic is entirely inappropriate, as it is set in modern ( but pre-Internet ) times. Released in September of 1975, the film takes place in the French countryside, and begins with a young woman racing along a deserted highway while trying to find something on the car radio. Within minutes, she encounters a military roadblock where she sees soldiers ( some wearing gas masks ), executing their prisoners, who are all female. Although she's dressed like a man, it only takes a flip of her hat to reveal her long blonde hair and so she bolts the scene in her little red car. She races through a field with bullets flying past her. Eventually this young woman, Lilly, comes to a dead end on a dirt road, very near to a manor house. It is there she first sees the unicorn and then a flock of sheep.

What little dialog there is in this movie, is in English, with a few lines spoken in German or Italian by Therese Giehse, the veteran character actress from Germany. She plays an elderly invalid who talks to animals, or to people unseen, on her two-way radio. It is up to a very young Cathryn -- then only fifteen during production -- to carry this hallucinatory tale. Along with Giehse, who stars as the crazy old lady of the manor house ( surrounded by sheep, goats, pigs and the naked feral children ), Dallesandro and Alexandra Stewart as Brother and Sister Lilly round out the credited cast.

The photography for "Black Moon" is sumptuous. The plot, if there is one, is so close to being a cinematic hallucination as to make the viewer positively giddy. Harrison is so very luminous and beautiful that it brings up the guiltiest feelings, upon discovering she was only sixteen, when it was released in September of '75.

Near the end of this puzzle on film, there's a long section of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde", which is sung in the middle of the night, by two children, as Lilly plays the piano. When it ends, the new day is breaking and shortly after that, the "reality" of the war comes crashing down with shell bursts and the rat-a-tat of submachine guns in the fields around the house. At this point, the cranky old lady has disappeared, the unicorn has reappeared for about the fourth time, and Lilly closes the window and retreats into the on-going hallucination of this manor house.

And then, the film freeze-frames on an image of her beautiful face and penetrating eyes, and then simply fades away. The viewer never gets to know what happens with Brother and Sister, nor what becomes of the rampaging feral children and their huge white pig.

In that regard, "Black Moon" ends and ends up being almost wholly unsatisfactory !!

However, the rest of the 100 minutes of this film are so well-crafted, and Cathryn Harrison is so appealing, that the final state of confusion seems to be less like a cop-out than an appropriate way to end a film which, after all, has no plot at all. And it must be said that despite the hallucinatory quality of "Black Moon," it is not a movie about taking drugs, or tripping, or going cold turkey from drugs, and there isn't so much as one cigarette in the whole film.

And, also, no, there's no clue as to what "Black Moon" really means, and the context of the film never discloses the purpose of the allegories contained within it. It's not a parable. There's no real story and therefore it has no "moral to the story."

It is only certain that there's absolutely no connection whatsoever to the Fay Wray horror-flick of the same name, from 1934.

What the heck is Louis tryin to say here?

[czar-10 · 7/10 · 20 October 2000]

Weird movie by Louis Malle, Which was filmed at Malle's own Manor, with Joe Dallesandro acting in his first (and only), non speaking role, Playing the brother of a twin sister. The film starts off with a girl, played by Cathryn Harrisson (Actor Rex Harrison's granddaughter, who was only 16), driving in her car in the dark and runs over some kind of beaver or something, later on down the road she encounters a road-block, put up by men with army suits and gas masks. The men in masks with machine guns mow down about 6 women in plain view of her. One of the guys in the masks starts approaching her car, she's dressed like a guy with a hat and her long hair tucked underneath it. The guy in the mask pulls off her hat and her long blonde hair streams out, alarmed, she suddenly pins the gas and gets away. Later she encounters men in more masks killing more women, and things get even weirder from here. Almost too weird. The movie no doubt, has a very surreal tone to it, very ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Trying to comprehend what really this movie is about is impossible. Only Louis Malle knows what king of message this movie was intended to give. And that just suits me just fine, because I find the imagery of the different scenes and various characters keep me occupied through-out the film, and interpretations are mixed with each time I watch it.

Very Strange

[starrbaby82680 · 26 October 2011]

This movie is one of a kind. It was so weird I couldn't stop watching it. If you like strange and unusual movies like I do, then watch this one. You won't be disappointed. I've seen it 3 times so far and I still never ever get bored with it. I can only imagine what the writer was smoking when he wrote this story. It's one of those movies that stays with you forever. It makes no sense whatsoever, but, you can't stop watching it. For those of you who have never heard of it or seen it, you should definitely give it a whirl. You might have to watch it 2 or 3 times like I did, to try and understand what the hell is going on. Good luck and enjoy.

Malle's surreal experiment is commendable but falls short

[Aditya_Gokhale · 7/10 · 25 April 2012]

A lot of avant-garde filmmakers experimented with Lewis Carroll's classic novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Some features that come to mind are Jaromil Jires' wonderful film, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders", Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and Jan Svankmajer's "Alice". Louis Malle's surrealist experimental film "Black Moon" could very well fit into this category of the directors' own interpretation of the novel giving it their own "free form"!

Written by Louis Malle in collaboration with Joyce Bunuel (Luis Bunuel's daughter-in-law!) and directed by Louis Malle, "Black Moon" is devoid of any central plot as such. Set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop of a "war between the sexes", this film simply chronicles the weird happenings as experienced (or imagined?) by a teenage girl, Lily (Cathryn Harrison) who has narrowly escaped being killed by men seemingly out to wipe out the entire women populace! Having been lucky to have escaped, she just speeds away in her car deep into the woods only to come across an isolated property, a huge manor house and its strange inhabitants. The house is dwelled in by a cantankerous, bed ridden old lady (Therese Giehse) with a weird fetish, who talks to animals, especially a big rat-like creature "Humphrey" in some language that's gibberish, and every once in a while speaks on a radio kept by her bed. There is a brother-sister pair around the house to take care of stuff. They don't speak a single word. They only hum some songs as they work around the property. Some snakes tucked away in unlocked drawers also share the space with them!

The most bizarre of all though, is the presence of about half a dozen naked children running around playing with a gigantic pig; they keep interrupting Lily's path every time she chases a not-so-graceful Unicorn that seems to be a regular visitor around the property…..

Everything sounds very interesting for film lovers who love their films rife with surreal dreamscapes but frankly it doesn't go much beyond this. The film surely holds our interest for most of its modest running time of about 95 minutes thanks to the splendid camera-work by the genius cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the rather awe-inspiring sound design. In a fabulous close-up of a crawling centipede, you can actually "hear" the little thing crawl on a surface! In another hilarious scene (repeated twice), amidst near dead silence, a pig sitting at a table, apparently guarding a large glass of milk kept at the center of the table, lets out a loud grunt every time Lily gulps milk from it!

These are just some of the really jaw-droppingly outlandish scenes in the film and there are a good number of them. There are some scenarios that are so absurd, they are comical and that's a good thing, but after a while the same devices are recycled instead of bringing in some novelty factor. Once one gives in to the idea of absurdist fiction, then there are no limits to what one can do! But surrealism not being Malle's forte, he leaves a little to be desired in his product. If a premise that automatically creates endless possibilities starts to get repetitive then there is a problem somewhere! Malle even tries to infuse some allegorical allusions to the Indian epic Ramayana (a particular episode involving "Jatayu", the demi-god possessing the form of a vulture, who tries to save Sita from Raavana's clutches!) but it doesn't necessarily create a huge impact in the overall proceedings.

This is an English language film and Cathryn Harrison, portraying Lily clearly speaks in English. However Therese Giehse's (Old Lady) speech sounds dubbed in English and her lip movement is ridiculously out of sync. It is unclear whether this was intentional or a technical glitch, a bad dubbing job or a bad lip-synching job! At times even Harrison's dialog seems out of sync. Some of it sounds really dumb as well! If one thinks from a certain angle, there certainly is an interpretation that gives the happenings on screen some meaning and a vaguely fitting explanation which could even reflect religious themes! I would not like to adhere to any theory or interpretation though. I think it is safe to assume that Louis Malle didn't want to make a deeply thought-provoking or metaphorical film. He merely wanted to compile some dream-like visions into a motion picture laced with themes of civil war and futuristic dystopia and a teenager's coming-of-age, and that's fair enough. He wanted his film to be more a visual experience than a cerebral puzzle. Only Luis Bunuel or David Lynch could've done a much better job with the material at hand.

Score: 7.5/10.

very experimental

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 11 October 2021]

It's a war-torn world in some sort of war between the sexes. Lily barely escapes a male military squad and finds a mysterious community living in a country mansion. They have lots of animals, lots of naked children, and an unicorn. There are a beautiful man, a pretty woman, and a bed-ridden old lady who seems to be their leader.

This is an experimental sci-fi film from French director Louis Malle. It's a lot of weirdness. I'm not sure about anything in this film. Lead actress Cathryn Harrison is not really acting as much as just existing in this weird world. She's very pretty but her range is somewhat limit. She is either a pissed off teen or a tensive teen and she alternates between the two. I don't know what else to say about this. I wish I knew the point Louis Malle is trying to make.

Totally bizarre

[raymond-15 · 6/10 · 27 February 2007]

This film may be considered as an example of theatre of the absurd or possibly an attempt at putting abstract art on the movie screen. There is no story,,,,no beginning,,,,no satisfactory ending….and in between just a series of vignettes of strangely behaving characters. Yet for all that it's interesting. You tend to hang on just in case the next scene will give some explanation of what has gone on before.

A group of soldiers have formed a road block in a country area. At gun point they line up a dozen captives along a track and shoot them in cold blood. A young woman motorist observing the slaughter accelerates through the roadblock and terrified races away through a wooded area. She finds herself approaching a somewhat deserted mansion where the strangest things happen.

You have to decide whether the woman is imagining the events or whether they really happen. Animals seem to talk more than the humans and flowers cry if you happen to trample on them. An old bedridden woman telephones on a bedside phone and laughs hysterically when the young woman's undies fall around her ankles. There are snakes in the chest of drawers and large centipedes that interrupt your sleep. A large pig and a unicorn make themselves at home lounging on the furniture and down below in the garden roosters and hens peck away at the flesh of a dead soldier.

When the old lady is thirsty she moans for her daughter who opens her blouse and suckles her mother at her breast. Strange behaviour indeed.

Alexandra Stewart plays the frightened stranger convincingly while handsome Joe Dallesandro (who does not speak but sings perched in a tree) is ready to comfort her in his strong arms..

No matter how many times you watch this film, your brain cannot logically deliver a meaning unless of course life is not what it seems, life if it exists at all has no true meaning and is just a charade.

Not an "Art" Film, Not A Genre Film, Not...well...Not Much

[nospam-25-374977 · 3/10 · 29 June 2014]

Liking or disliking this film appears roughly to be about a 50/50 split. In order to write a review that might add something useful to the many already written, I will try to point out some elements that could affect your enjoyment of this movie thereby helping you decide if you want to spend the time watching it, to wit:

First off, it's not sci-fi. It is a fetishistic, pseudo-erotic fantasy that will not be particularly arousing to most people in the mainstream. There were several scenes that collectively made me decide to take "Uncle Louis" (Louis Malle, the director) off of my "A" list of babysitters.

Secondly, while there are a few vague similarities to Charles L. Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll) "Alice in Wonderland", this thing is not even close. Dodgson's masterpiece combination of comically bizarre characters, charmingly absurd situations, wildly imaginative scenery and brilliantly logical dialogue remains both treasured and unmatched in all of history's known literature. On the other hand, this muddled romp through Louis Malle's rather...er..."peculiar" mind has all of the charm of a full-for-5-days, fish offal bin, on a hot August afternoon.

The reviews that allude to this film being allegorical and/or composed of a parable(s) and/or containing deep "messages" regarding war, social inequity, animal rights, etc., etc., ad nauseum must have Malle rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically. A more realistic interpretation is that Malle decided to knit together a bunch of idiotic scenarios that had formed in his head while he was thinking about the silly and/or contentious issues of the day (radical feminism, the Vietnam war, etc.) mixed with the black sludge contents of his own psyche. The end result being "Black Moon". The point is that there is no point to this movie and it is likely deliberate!

So, if you like watching films that are well-produced, well-photographed, artless euro- bourgeois, jumbled stream-of-consciousness, incoherent, pseudo-socially mindful, plot- free, products of Louis Malle's contemporary (to 1975) musings and possible masturbatory fantasies, then "Black Moon" is for you! Otherwise you might want to consider a good action-thriller and a tub of buttered popcorn (you'll have waaaaay more fun)!

Best Regards, OtherView

A nightmare of the '70s

[Boris_G · 8/10 · 8 December 2007]

In the mid-70s when this film was made there was - in the real world - a 'battle of the sexes' with militant feminism in full swing (if not an actual 'war', there was a lot of bruised feelings and anger in the air - witness works of fiction like 'Who needs men?' and 'The Woman's Room'); the student riots of the late 1960s were a fresh memory, as were images of Vietnam (and for British viewers, the latest IRA atrocities). Black Moon may not 'make sense', but it's more understandable as a dream, from beginning to end (forget the idea that any of it is meant to be set 'in the near future'), by a pubescent girl, subconsciously worried by the apparent war between the sexes and disturbed by her budding sexuality (note the juxtaposition of the idealised vision of heterosexual love, presented by music from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde first heard on the car radio, quickly followed by the shocking images of war).

As mentioned elsewhere, this is beautifully filmed, and IMHO captures beautifully the quality of dreams where one event follows another in a 'stream of consciousness' manner (yet with certain obsessive themes), and the dreamer does everything as if it were the most rational thing to do (as one does in a dream). On first viewing I suspected this film to be a rather self-indulgent exercise, but there's a strangely compelling quality about both the narrative and the beauty of the actual cinematography. Highly recommended.

BLACK MOON (Louis Malle, 1975) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 12 November 2010]

I had missed out on this on French TV a few years ago – the film is so obscure that I had never even heard of it back then!; eventually, I caught up with it while in Hollywood on bootleg DVD-R in an English-dubbed version (as was this current edition, albeit a slightly out-of-synch one!).

Best described as a plot less apocalyptic surreal fantasy on "Alice In Wonderland" lines, it actually precedes Claude Chabrol's own superior modernized take on the children's classic (ALICE, OR THE LAST ESCAPADE [1977]). For the record, writer-director Malle had previously only breached fancy with the anarchic ZAZIE DANS LE METRO (1960) and, with Luis Bunuel's daughter-in-law Joyce contributing to his script here, it could well be that the use in the film under review of Wagner's music – also heard in the elder Bunuel's L'AGE D'OR (1930) and WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1954) – was a deliberate nod in his direction. The leading lady of BLACK MOON is a beguiling Cathryn Harrison, granddaughter of Rex; also in the cast are Alexandra Stewart and Joe Dalessandro as incestuous siblings (neither of whom ever utter a single word, though he likes to express himself in baritone!).

The film's war-torn landscape is undercut by a plethora of entomological detail, beginning with a raccoon getting crushed under the heroine's car's wheels and ending with a snake slithering up her skirt!; there is also a giant rodent – with which the eccentric old lady of the central setting, a dilapidated country-house, frequently engages in gibberish conversation (for whatever reason, she also keeps a control center by her bedside!) – and a squat talking brown unicorn, which seems to particularly intrigue Harrison!!

The elderly woman – who died before the picture was released (in fact, it is dedicated to her memory) – occasionally takes the semblance of death even here and, when she comes to again, finds herself craving milk: Stewart and, eventually, Harrison oblige her in this regard – the film, then, ends on a shot of the heroine about to feed the afore-mentioned horse in the very same manner! Harrison, too, seems fond of milk – which she repeatedly drinks out of a very tall glass set at table, always with a pig nonchalantly looking on!; besides, a brood of wild naked children are continually seen chasing a hog all over the place.

In the end, the film proves too obscure and personal for complete success and, yet, it is certainly not to be ignored by way of its intrinsic strangeness and undeniably haunting quality.

Perchance to nod-off and dream.

[Someguysomwhere · 5/10 · 11 September 2007]

This movie is a version of the Alice in Wonderland story about a young innocent who finds herself in a world of odd characters and behaviors. It did not have a clear A to Z story line that I could follow. It seemed to me that it's just what's happening at the moment that matters. It is best viewed as a dream or even madness; this way, when nothing makes sense (and it never does), you have a logical explanation.

I was balanced precariously on the edge of consciousness while watching this thing; slipping in and out momentarily at times. However, half way through, I managed to stay focused. I have to confess though that the piano scene threatened to send me under again.

Finally, I couldn't say that I liked this movie, but at the same time I couldn't say I particularly disliked it either (I would have slept thru the whole thing if I did). so I'm giving it a "middle-score" of 5 stars. If you are into films that are offbeat, quirky, symbolic, -then who knows? This one might be to your taste. The rest of you-- well, you might want to save this movie for a sleepless night. Your "secret weapon", as it were. If nothing else gets you, the piano scene towards the end will deliver the knockout punch you need. Guaranteed! Happy dreams! Love, boloxxxi.

Haunting, surreal and ever-lasting

[gothicgoblin1334 · 10/10 · 26 June 2006]

I must say, seeing this film was like an adult orientated verison of Alice in Wonderland; the material is dark and surreal as the music is eerie to set the mood of the film. The story revolves around a girl 'Lily' who finds herself stuck in a strange and bizarre world between fantasy and reality. Such events occurred in this film contains a talking unicorn, a teenager breast feeding an old woman (and later a unicorn?) and a naked children, frocking around the meadow as if nothing were watching them. Not since 'Eraserhead' have a seen such a bizarre, disturbing and fascinating work of art. A must see indeed for those of you who Cherish rare pieces of work like this.

"Just a minute please!"

[LeonLouisRicci · 7/10 · 5 July 2014]

Designed as a Deep, Disturbing, Coming of Age Allegory, this is a Bizarre, Enchanting Film but is at Times Very Unsettling and Nightmarish.

Animals, Including a Unicorn, Speak. Insects Communicate and are Ever Present. Snakes are Inhabiting Her Virgin Sensibilities and an Old Lady is Central to the "Plot" and is just Disgusting.

There are Naked Children (Cherubs), Mythological Manifestations, and Breast Feedings from Hell. The Movie uses Cinematography and Sound Effects in Eerie Compositions and Intrusions (alarm clocks), although the Color seems Lifeless.

There is a "Sub-Plot" of a Futuristic War of the Sexes and Although it is a Minor Story Arc, when it is On Screen it is Visceral. This may All be a Dream, and it Probably is. The Final Scene is the Most Profane of All.

Recommended for Fans of the Avant Garde, Surreal Cinema, Art-House Movies and Lovers of the Strange.

All sizzle and no steak

[MrPie7 · 1/10 · 27 June 2006]

I guess you have to earn the right to be totally idiosyncratic. If Malle were a first time film maker, there is no way that this film would have been tolerated. So many idiotic annoying things in this film. The intrusive sound track. A beetle scuttles thru the grass and it sounds like a rhino charging thru a corn field. At one point in the film an ENDLESS series of wind-up alarm clocks ring; an ear-splitting annoyance that goes on for almost a full minute as Lily frantically tries to shut it off. As soon as she does another one goes off, then ANOTHER. After 3 or 4 alarms go off, she finally just starts throwing them out the window,thus making a clever point: time flies? At the end of this scene, and about TEN alarm clocks, I wanted to chain Malle to a grandfather's clock and throw HIM out the window! Then the huge,irritating rat which speaks gibberish in a loud, grating high-pitched drone. Also it appears that no one, from the unicorn that looks like it's ready for the glue factory, to the old lady , can eat ANYTHING without a deafening smacking of the lips before and during ingestion. Insects and farm animals appear at random amid throngs of naked children. A painting of a warrior beheading an eagle foreshadows the exact incident being re-enacted by the brother, which sets off a pointless indecisive battle between he and his sister. Lily's underpants fall down to her ankles ....TWICE, which the old lady finds hysterical and she grabs her instamatic for a "Kodak moment"! Lily eats a big piece of swiss cheese after removing dozens of live ants.

I kept thinking of that terrific scene in "After the Fox" when Peter Sellers is on trial for smuggling while using the pretext of making a film to disguise the crime. The poorly focused, badly cut film of random activities is shown as evidence in the case. Afterwords a film critic in the crowd leaps up and begins to rave. "Encore! Brilliant!! I Laughed, I cried, it became a part of me!"

I don't care what credentials a film maker has, allegory is NOT a random series of vignettes that please the director. I like Cheese so I'll have scenes with cheese. I hate the sound of an alarm clock so I'll show you just how annoying they are. Mr Malle... GO POUND SAND!!!!!!!

Unavailable wonderful movie

[jmosh-1 · 27 March 2004]

It played here in Berkeley in the late 1970's at the repertory UC Theatre (now defunct of course), I saw it in Cologne in 1976, but it doesn't seem to have been picked up by any US distributor and it is not and has never been available on VHS, Laserdisc, or DVD anywhere in the world, AFAIK. And I have never seen it on cable tv (Sundance, IFC, you listening?).

A neo-surrealistic fantasy, it was promoted in newspaper ads in Germany as The Movie Where Animals Talk to People!

Weird and wonderful from beginning to end, IMHO. An old woman sitting at her kitchen table talking to a rat sitting on it. An 8 year old or so boy and girl playing in the yard and suddenly breaking into the complete love duet from Tristan & Isolde. Joe Dallesandro of Andy Warhol/Paul Morrisey movies, and lots more. I can't remember it very well at this point, it's been a quarter of a century since I saw it.

The number one film on my want list.

Malleapropos

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 20 September 2009]

The interesting thing about Louis Malle is that he is often lumped with the new waveleteers primarily because he shot a feature - Lift To The Scaffold in English - on location shortly after Godard's Brainless and Truffaut's The 400 Yawns, when in fact he has always (or so I thought) made more or less mainstream films. With Black Moon the Academic-Psued axis may well be justified in labeling him with something trendy like post-New Wave because Black Moon is a genre-defying one-off and it meets the principal criterion of Academia in that it can be about ANYTHING they want it to be which means they can 'teach' it til the cows come home offering a different interpretation each semester. For the rest of us mere mortals we can either take it or leave it. We not first the depressing colour and equally depressing landscape, a suggestion of late Autumn of even full Winter negated by the gamboling/frolicking of totally naked children. The protagonist - if that's not overstating it - is clearly old enough to drive, i.e. late teens, who can get away with early twenties yet is also perversely childlike. In rapid succession she encounters 1)armed militia who mow down a group of innocent civilians, 2) a group of naked children playing with a pig, 3) an apparently bed-ridden old woman who talks into a wireless set via a microphone and 4) a unicorn - grey-black rather than pure white - with whom she is able to converse. We are free to make of this what we will. Multiplex fodder it's not. intriguing? This depends entirely on your own point of view. Mesmerising? See above. Watchable? Yes.

Art?

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 28 January 2021]

Louis Malle's Black Moon is one of those movies that I'll be watching and Becca comes in and gets mad about.

"What the hell is that unicorn in this movie for?" she asked.

"It's art" is always my answer. She doesn't care that Malle made stuff like Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and My Dinner with André. No, she just sees someone breast feeding a goat.

Lily (Cathryn Harrison, Images, Eat the Rich) escapes a gender on gender civil war*, barely avoiding getting murdered by a firing squad, as well as encountering a flock of sheep standing around their lynched shepherd, militarized women torturing a boy and falling asleep on flowers that scream out in pain.

She then finds a château that is filled with animals and a strange woman who lies in bed, yelling at her pet rat Humphrey. She then begins making fun of Lily to someone on the other side of the shortwave radio before trying to strangle our heroine, who promptly slaps her so hard that she dies.

Then, she meets Lily (Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro) and Lily (Alexandra Stewart, The Uncanny), who wet nurses the old woman back to life. For some reason, they all share names and communicate telepathically. Then, a bunch of nude children run into the house and the unicorn tells her that the old woman is not real.

This is also a movie that goes on to feature male Lily beheading a hawk, a chorus of naked kids singing Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and a woman attempting to give a unicorn her mother's milk.

Black Moon was shot in Malle's own 200-year-old manor house and considered it a sexual awakening inspired by Alice In Wonderland. He called it his "mythological fairy tale taking place in the near future." It failed at the box office and went unseen for many years.

*Malle referred to this battle as "the ultimate civil war...the war between men and women...the climax and great moment of women's liberation."

Saw it in Bloomington, Indiana

[kevino-4 · 7/10 · 3 September 2003]

It had a small US release, possibly in some college towns where there might be a Malle-knowledgable crowd. Much like a strange dream or nightmare, after Lacombe, Lucien it was a disappointment, but I've always remembered an image so it must have some power.

waste of time

[jtjwsnake · 1/10 · 13 June 2011]

This movie starts in the middle of nowhere, has nowhere to go, and takes ALL DAY to get there. I like to think I enjoy strange and eclectic works of art, but this just blew me out of the water. There is a remote possibility for a plot, but since there is absolutely no setup or introduction (it just dives into the middle of a chain of events) all meaning is lost throughout the movie. I have never seen a work that was not a silent film that had less dialogue. Seriously, almost no one talks. It's like the people the 'protagonist' (can there be a protagonist without a plot?) comes into contact with simply speak through massages (not a typo- I really said massages). This movie is full of disgusting imagery and hints of incest. As another reviewer mentioned, the soundtrack is absolutely appalling. This film seems to be a series of random events and not one character finds any of it the least bit strange. Even a symbolic or metaphorical work needs to have some kind of realism or make some kind of sense to be in the least bit effective. The only thing this film is effective at is boring the viewer to sleep. Seriously, if you haven't yet, do NOT waste your time finding, renting, borrowing, purchasing, previewing, or even pirating this film. It's just not worth it.

Malle's dream journey

[netwallah · 9/10 · 1 June 2006]

Before the film begins, even before the logos of the producers and distributors appear, Malle posts a disclaimer in French that translates roughly like this: "This film does not address your sense of logic. It describes another world for you, at the same time familiar and different. Like your dreams. Come inside, with your emotions, with your senses. Let yourself be carried away, it's a journey I'm offering you."

Malle's dream/nightmare story is filled not with psychic symbols or mystical patterns, but with the visual equivalent thereof. It just won't do to try to sort things out into a symbolic code, because the images, as familiar as they sometimes seem, are also uncannily different because they're separated from the usual scheme of a puzzle waiting to be solved. Certainly there are a number of patterns running through the movie, such as the quest of the lovely young girl, Lily (Catherine Harrison), but it never clear whether she is running from or to something. At the beginning she runs from the war that's going on at the borders of the movie, a war between two brutal armies, one of men and the other of women. Then she happens upon a farmhouse in the countryside where the rest of the story unwinds. The war is never far away, and never explained. Nothing is explained; in fact, there are long passages in which nobody speaks, and when they do speak it does not always make sense. The inhabitants of the house are a bedridden old lady, her son and daughter, a crowd of naked children, and various animals (pigs, lambs, birds). People appear and disappear, disorienting Lily, until finally she seems to be absorbed by the strange household, accompanying two children as they sing Wagner, pursuing and talking to the local unicorn, and offering her breast to the old invalid to suckle just as the daughter did earlier. The unicorn is decidedly unexpected—it's not a tall, white horse but a small, roly poly pony with a shaggy mane, some strands of which are pink. Though there are some fleeting suggestions of sexual awakening, they're just impressions added to the mix, not real components of the plot, and not the key to the hidden meaning of the story.

The main characters are always interesting to watch: Lily fair and slim and intent on discovering what's going on and flushed by the effort, the son and daughter (Joe Dallesandro and Alexandra Stewart) all cheekbones and enigmatic looks and practically no words spoken, the old woman (Therese Giehse) alternately plaintive, furious, comatose, malicious, welcoming, and bizarre--she talks to a rat, and he talks back. Of all the deliberately mystifying films of this sort I've seen, this is my current favourite. It teases the viewer with the promise of understanding at the same time it dances away from riddle-solving with surprising grace.

Irritating

[PhilippePoreeKurrer · 6/10 · 10 March 2020]

One of those films which annoys during the viewing, but which remain embedded in the memory to the point that you end up saying that there was something. Here, no doubt that once again Louis Malle sought to identify (or reveal) the genesis of desire. Unfortunately, the exercise is rather irritating.

What the ?

[walter907 · 3/10 · 5 July 2006]

[ possible spoiler(s) - although I think I could dictate exactly what I saw in this particular movie from beginning to end without really giving anything away. It's that peculiar. ]

I'm not sure what movie the last reviewer watched - I have no idea what all his comments about cherubs and seraphs are about. Perhaps he saw heavenly references in the naked children chasing/wrestling the hog. But that doesn't explain the sheep; the turkeys; the huge talking rat; the short, shaggy, talking unicorn; the war; the WWII radio; the mother, brother, and sister's relationship; Lily's actions from beginning to end; the costumed houseguests; the black eagle; eating the ant infested cheese; nursing granny; etc, etc, etc...

I suspect the movie may be full of symbolism and hidden references but all I saw was one long surreal visual nightmare (with surprisingly very little dialog). Even if the writer explained exactly what each symbol meant to him I think that each viewer would get something different. Me? I got confused and more than a few unintended laughs. But I did find it somehow compelling enough that I watched it all the way through (after falling asleep a couple times because there are long stretches with no dialog or "action"). Perhaps that's the best explanation; I fell asleep early and had a very strange nightmare instead of watching the actual movie.

Unless you've seen and enjoyed movies like "Eraserhead" and "The Naked Lunch" I can't recommend this movie to anyone except as a way to recalibrate the low end of your movie rating scale.

A must see

[mcnalbri · 10/10 · 21 December 2005]

I saw this film when it was first released in the US in 1975. It played at the Carnegie Hall Cinema right underneath Carnegie Hall. One reviewer called it a disappointment but they must have seen another movie. The group I was with was about as sophisticated as film goers get and everyone of them were simply awed by this film. This is not a film you think you way through rather you let the archetypal symbolism sweep over you. The film works on the deep subconscious of the viewer and what at first appears to be complete madness slowly turns into a new reality that works. Eventually it all appears to be perfectly normal even though it's anything but.

I will never forget walking home from the theater to the upper west side that night in the freezing subzero temperatures. Homeless people, wrapped in whatever clothes they could find, trying in vain to keep warm held out their empty hands in hope some one would drop a coin in them. It was a dark, empty and bitter cold city devoid of any feeling and I recall thinking that this was the real madness and the movie seemed so warm and inviting by comparison. I consider this film to a true masterpiece that for some bizarre reason has simply dropped off the radar screen. Carl Jung would have loved it, see it and see what I mean, if you can find it. Magnificent and exquisite cinematography by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergmans famous director of Photography.

In summary it was a surreal sci-fi flick that is rarely scene, and no wonder.

[krohn-6 · 6/10 · 23 July 2006]

We just saw Black Moon on Charter cable tonight, Sunday July 23. It was a strange movie, very hard to get into. The war between the men & women seemed like just an excuse to drive the young girl to the house where the animals talked, the people sang, and the kids ran around naked. I'm still not sure either of us understood it. My girl friend just said I had a strange taste in movies. She found it hard to follow. I thought the coloring was muted to give it a desolate effect, and the talking rat and unicorn gave it an Alice In Wonderland effect. When the unicorn wanted to nurse off the girl at the end is when I lost it. I guess I wasn't meant to understand this movie but it was two hours well spent. Of course, part of it was the company I was in. In summary it was a surreal sci-fi flick that is rarely scene, and no wonder.

Mind numbingly boring

[AlmightyT · 3/10 · 27 November 2006]

This film had a couple things going for it; it is obvious that some very talented people had a hand in creating this film, and the concept for the story had potential, but these were vastly overshadowed by the fact that it was uninteresting, lacked any kind of storyline, and was too real to simply be a girl's imagination. It lacks the imaginative quality of Alice In Wonderland, and substitutes it for random implausible scenarios. The story gives no background for the girl, no idea of who was fighting the war, or why, or if the people she met were real, and mutated by her imagination, or if she manufactured them completely. If she WAS trapped in this place, why did she never try to escape? The basic instinct in a human is to flee from or fear the unknown, of which she did neither. This movie did not even reach a conclusion, leaving you to wonder why you just wasted an hour and a half of your life. And what was with the naked little kids running around? Seriously!