‘‘These things never happen but are always.’’ Sallust

synopsis

On the eve of her wedding, the beautiful opera singer Malvina is mysteriously killed and abducted by a malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz’s secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons. Little by little Felisberto learns of the doctor’s plans to stage a ‘‘diabolical opera’’ and of Malvina’s fate. He secretly conspires to rescue her, only to become trapped himself in the web of Droz’s perverse universe...

interview

Interview with Jonathan Romney. The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is recognisably a Brothers Quay film in its images and textures, but it’s also a narrative film, in the high fantastic tradition. What ideas and images inspired it?

Quay brothers: The aim was to make something like poetic science fiction. We were very inspired by the novella The Invention of Morel, by the Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, which merges the fantastic and an element of science fiction, on a very poetic level. In the end, in fact, the film came to be much closer to Jules Verne’s story Le Château des Carpathes (Carpathian Castle). It’s about a famous opera singer abducted by an obsessive Baron who takes her to the Carpathian Mountains. Her lover looks for her and finds out that a voice has been heard in this château. When he goes in, he sees her singing – but when he tries to save her, he realises it was all projections on glass that shatter. The other inspiration is Raymond Roussel’s novel Locus Solus, which features these strange machine-like tableaux vivants. Droz is obviously Canterel, the inventor in Roussel’s Locus Solus, who guides us through his estate, showing off each tableau vivant and explaining it. We took the name Droz from Pierre Jacquet-Droz, a famous automaton maker of the 1700s - and by itself, Droz sounded like a science fiction name. The film starts with a quote from Sallust (c. 86-34 BC), which really encapsulates everything: “These things never happen, but are always.” It’s the idea that there are powerful forces which are controlling and shaping people’s destinies. Then there’s this interloper, Felisberto – an innocent who incarnates the liberating Orphic spirit. He arrives to realise that there’s something powerful being perpetrated by Dr Droz, who’s victimising the innocent Malvina. That’s the Bluebeard’s Castle element - the innocent wanders into the forest to free the ‘princess’. And Droz sees what he’s doing and interpolates him into his plan. Why have you moved into making live action features rather than animation shorts?

The idea was to force more animation into the features and combine it with live action. We wanted to push that further here. In a sense, it’s like having live actors walk around puppet sets. We want that integration – or disintegration at times, because there’s also a slippage where you’re hoping that the puppet realm is pushing into the live action realm, or vice versa. We were going for an in-between state, where you’re not sure which world you’re in.

You’ve always used dolls and automaton figures, and this film is haunted by Droz’s mechanical creations. Why do we find the old mechanical automata so fascinating and uncanny, when we seem to be blasé about the commonplace science fiction of robots?

The crucial thing about automata is their enchantment. They can be extremely sophisticated but at the same time very basic in terms of what they can do. They’re usually condemned to remain in a loop of actions that they can’t go outside. We based the Woodchopper in this film on an old ex-voto painting: he basically calls out ‘Timber!’ and chops the tree down, but by accident cuts his leg instead, bleeds into a pool, and then it all starts all over again – he jumps up and he’s chopping again. It’s a very simple loop but there’s a lot of genuine enchantment.

You usually work with models in your own workshop. Here you worked on a set in Leipzig, with human actors and sets on a human scale. What were the pleasures and challenges of moving outside your usual domain?

It was a great pleasure and a challenge. It’s like when we design opera decors, working on a scale of 1: 25, and then suddenly see it on a stage blown up 25 times: bigger there’s a bizarre pleasure in that. In Leipzig, although we were working in a huge studio, a lot of the decor was only partially built: the rest was green-screened, then digitally blended. We designed it so that all interiors could be done on one stage: we needed a seafront, and a bit of a forest, and one chapel for the automata, which became seven, as we shifted the décor round. It was conceived very theatrically. This is the first time we really went for digital – we shot it in Hi-Def, and simultaneously married the animation, which was all shot on a digital Nikon stills camera.

This is the second feature you’ve made with actors, following Institute Benjamenta. How did you choose your cast, and what sort of actors fit your unusual film world?

We also like using actors not only when they’re talking, we like to use them for those certain looks that they transmit. They can get you past dialogue into other realms. We originally wrote the Assumpta part for Assumpta Serna ten years ago. We wanted a very seductive, entrancing character for this role: her carnality appealed to us. Amira Casar has this real porcelain beauty: we were fascinated by the idea of her immobility, which of course, is usually hard for an actress to accept, but she would still her face and centre it. And her mother was an opera singer - so Amira was very knowledgeable about opera. We love Gottfried John’s stature, his aloofness and regalness. We saw him for the first time in Fassbinder’s 25-part Alexanderplatz, and we cast him in Institute Benjamenta, because we needed someone remote and a bit of an ogre character. Cesar Saracho was in Institute Benjamenta, and his character Felisberto is like Jakob in that film, the figure who walks into the maelstrom. Cesar worked with Theatre de Complicité; he studied under the mime teacher Jacques Lecoq, and looked into the notion of the clown. He has an innocence, and a real comic turn. As usual, your film contains a lot of visual references to the art and architecture of the past.

The chief reference is to the painting Island of the Dead (1880), by the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin. The setting had to be remote: it had to feel like it really was the Isle of the Dead, or even like the island in Antonioni’s L’Avventura – locked off, utterly remote. The estate felt like some secluded Portuguese villa. There’s one place in Portugal called Buçaco where we immediately imagined automata in the form of the stations of the cross. The Portuguese Baroque was a big influence, and the whole earthquake theme was very pertinent to Portugal, because of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Another reference was the famous Magritte painting The Empire of Light, where it’s daytime in the sky and night down below. Of course the landscape, when we created it as a model, was made of cork – we matted those images in, and added sky and water digitally.

For a long time, you worked as a duo, but your cinematographer Nic Knowland seemed to adapt very naturally to your vision when he worked with you on Institute Benjamenta. How did your collaboration evolve on this film?

We’ve worked with Nic on a couple of commercials and ballets, as well as Institute Benjamenta, so we’ve always been exploring things with him. We’re merciless about framing, but Nic really loosened up the camera on this film. On Institute Benjamenta, we had it locked off – here it was more sensuous. Planning with Nic, we knew we were required to shoot in colour and so we said, “OK, then we’ll design in black and white, then the only colour will be in the costumes, the faces and the sea and the sky.”

Music has always been important in your films, and this one is particularly operatic. What were your musical ideas here? For the opera that Droz composes, we needed a unique sound world, a sort of anti-opera because he’s rejected by the established opera world. So he does his take on the Nissi Domini of Vivaldi - a kind of Schnittke-esque take on opera. That’s the theme you hear at the beginning and it’s composed by Christopher Slaski. The other music is by Trevor Duncan, who’s a very agile composer. If you want music for sailing he’s done it, he’s done thriller music, and you can just buy them off the shelf. We had a plan to use library music and we’ve known for more than 40 years that his was the music that Chris Marker used in La Jetée. We use the same music here - it was originally written for a ballet in the late 1950s.

It’s not just the music that’s haunting, though: there’s a whole range of sound design that contributes to the uncanny nature of this film’s universe.

We were looking for the ambience of the remote island – for those states where you felt that the automata realm was starting to contaminate the human world. We use certain sounds - drones - to create an atmosphere of psychic confusion. The sounds float down and multiply and create a sense of depth. We wanted a dream state at times, where you felt that the automata were dreaming the people. We wanted to create a dirtier sound world, one that was almost deliberately mono, that pushed out to the limits of ‘Scope.

The most bizarre image in the film is inspired by the ‘Stink Ant’ of the Cameroon (Megaloponera foetens) – one of the pseudo natural history exhibits in the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, an exhibition of apocryphal wonders. The story is that there rains down a fungus of spores and the poor unsuspecting ant walks along the ground, inhales the spore, suddenly detours, climbs the stalk and dies, because its brain matter has been eaten by this fungus - which then excretes a spike that rains further spores for the next unsuspecting ant... It’s all very convincingly documented, but as you leave that museum you say to yourself, it’s all faked. It’s purely a museum of the imagination. We wrote to David Wilson, who runs the Museum and asked if we could use it and it became the essential core of The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. We wrote it into the script, seeing it as a metaphor for Droz’s world – an allegory of madness. biography

The Quay brothers are identical twin brothers born outside Philadelphia, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They studied Film and Illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art {1965-1969} followed by a Masters Degree in at the Royal College of Art {1969-1972} where they continued their studies in Illustration and Film, particularly the latter, where they made three short animation films. Returning to America they attempted to make a living from free-lance book illustration out of New York, though economically times were difficult. In terms of their work, there was an increasing frustration with the two-dimensional graphic realm of drawing and little by little they gravitated towards wanting to create in miniature {in the manner of Joseph Cornell’s boxes} powerful three-dimensional realms, using puppets and objects through the medium of film animation. In 1978 they received a National Endowment Grant for the Arts. They travelled throughout England, Belgium and Holland researching and looking at the craft of puppetry. Whilst in London a former colleague from the Royal College of Art, Keith Griffiths was working as Deputy Head of Production for the British Film Institute Production Board, and suggested that they make an application for ‘‘experimental’’ film funding. They promptly drafted a scenario for a short puppet animation film and then left for Holland. Some months later they received a telegram saying that they had been awarded the B.F.I. grant.

They returned to London and “a little like James Joyce who, upon his arrival in planned on staying for only two weeks and instead remained 25 years. In our case, we had planned on staying a mere 9 months in order to execute the film but similarly have ended up staying some 25 years as well. Our first film lead to a second film, then a third and a fourth, etc” By this time they had formed a small company “KONINCK” together with producer Keith Griffiths and over the past 24 years have made a hybrid variety of puppet animation films: Documentaries {Punch and Judy, Stravinsky & Janacek, The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, Anamorphosis, The Phantom Museum}; Interludes & Stings {BBC, MTV}; Commercials {for England quay brothers and America}; as well as Fiction Films inspired by the writings of Kafka, Bruno Schulz {Street of Crocodiles}, Robert Walser {The Comb, Institute Benjamenta - a live-action feature film}. Recently, for Channel Four they have directed as part of a dance series called «Choreographers and Filmmakers» Duet - an 18 min. ballet by Will Tuckett from the Royal Ballet. For the BBC as part of its Sound and Image series they collaborated with the composer who wrote the music for their film In Absentia. They did a further collaboration with the choreographer Will Tuckett, a 40 min. film based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman.

Apart from the films, their work also includes designing the scenography for Theatre, Opera and Ballet productions both in London and Europe.

fi lmography

1979 NOCTURNA ARTIFICIALIA {British Film Institute} 1980 PUNCH & JUDY {Arts Council of Great Britain} EIN BRUDERMORD {GLAA} 1981 THE ETERNAL DAY OF MICHEL DE GHELDERODE {Arts Council of Great Britain} 1983 IGOR: THE PARIS YEARS {Channel Four} LEOS JANÁCEK: INTIMATE EXCURSIONS {Channel Four} quay brothers

1984 THE CABINET OF JAN SVANKMAJER {Channel Four} 1985 THIS UNNAMEABLE LITTLE BROOM {Channel Four} 1986 STREET OF CROCODILES {British Film Institute} 1987 REHEARSALS FOR EXTINCT ANATOMIES {Channel Four} 1988 STILLE NACHT I: ‘‘DRAMOLET’’ {MTV} 1989 EX VOTO {MTV} 1990 THE COMB: From the Museums of Sleep {Channel Four} 1991 DE ARTIFFICIALI PERSPECTIVA, or ANAMORPHOSIS {J Paul Getty Trust} THE CALLIGRAPHER: Parts I, II, III {BBC} 1992 STILLE NACHT II: ‘‘Are We Still Married?’’ {4AD} 1993 STILLE NACHT III: ‘‘Tales from Vienna Woods’’ {Atelier Koninck QBFZ} 1994 STILLE NACHT IV: ‘‘Can’t Go Wrong Without You’’ {4AD} 1995 INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE {Channel Four/Image Forum/British Screen/Pandora Films} Feature Film 1999 DUET: Variations on the Convalescence of ‘‘A’’ {Film Ballet} {Channel Four} 2000 IN ABSENTIA Music by Karlheinz Stockhausen {BBC} THE SANDMAN {Film-Ballet} {Channel Four} 2001 STILLE NACHT V {Atelier Koninck QBFZ} «Day of the Dead» {Dream Sequence} for the Film ‘‘’’ by 2002 THE PHANTOM MUSEUM {The Wellcome Trust} 2003 SONGS FOR DEAD CHILDREN Music by Steve Martland {Tate Modern} 2005 THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES {/France/UK} Feature Film

fi lmography

2005 THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES - Brothers Quay 2004 PEINDRE OU FAIRE L’AMOUR - Arnaud et Jean-Marie Larrieu 2004 LA CLOCHE A SONNÉ - Bruno Herbulot, Adeline Lecallier 2004 ANATOMY OF HELL - 2003 MARIÉES MAIS PAS TROP - 2003 SYLVIA - amira casar

2002 UNDER ANOTHHER SKY - Gaël Morel 2002 HYPNOTIZED AND HYSTERICAL - Claude Duty 2001 RIEN, VOILÀ L’ORDRE - Jacques Baratier 2000 LA VÉRITÉ SI JE MENS 2 - Thomas Gilou 2000 BUNUEL AND KING SOLOMON’S TABLE - Carlos Saura 2000 ONCE WE GROW UP - Renaud Cohen 2000 HOW I KILLED MY FATHER - Anne Fontaine 1998 WHY NOT ME? - Stéphane Guisti 1998 SOONER OR LATER - Anne-Marie Etienne 1998 LE DERRIÈRE - Valérie Lemercier 1998 LE COEUR À L’OUVRAGE - Laurent Dussaux 1996 WOULD I LIE TO YOU? - Thomas Gilou 1996 MARIE BAIE DES ANGES - Manuel Pradal 1996 MIRADA LIQUIDA - Rafaël Moleon 1995 SHARPE’S SIEGE - Tony Glegg 1995 TIRE À PART - Bernard Rapp 1994 AINSI SOIENT-ELLES - Patrick Alessandrin 1989 ERREUR DE JEUNESSE - Radovan Tadic fi lmography assumpta serna

2005 THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES - Brothers Quay 2003 TERESA TERESA - Rafael Gordon 2003 LE INTERMITTENZE DEL CUORE - Fabio Carpi 2003 SINGLE AGAIN - Joyce Buñuel 2001 THE JOURNEYMAN - James Crowley 2000 BULLFIGHTER - Rune Bendixen 1998 WHY NOT ME? - Stéphane Guisti 1998 SUBJUDICE - José María Forn 1997 STOLEN MOMENTS - Oscar Barney Finn 1996 COMO UN RELAMPAGO - Miguel Hermoso 1996 TOT VERI - Xavier Ribera 1996 THE CRAFT - Andrew Fleming 1996 MANAGUA - Michele Taverna 1995 HIDDEN ASSASSIN - Ted Kotcheff 1995 A HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS - Agnès Varda 1994 SHORTCUT TO PARADISE - Gerardo Herrero 1994 NOSTRADAMUS - Roger Christian 1994 GREEN HENRY - Thomas Koerfer 1994 BELLE AL BAR - Alessandro Benvenuti 1992 CHAIN OF DESIRE - Temístocles López 1992 THE FENCING MASTER - Pedro Olea 1992 LA NUIT DE L’OCEAN - Antoine Perset 1992 ADELAIDE - Lucio Gaudino 1992 A QUOI TU PENSES-TU? - Didier Kaminka 1992 HAVANERA 1820 - Antoni Verdaguer 1991 ROSSINI! ROSSINI! - Mario Monicelli 1991 L’HOME DE NEO - Albert Abril 1990 I, THE WORST OF ALL - María Luisa Bemberg 1990 WILD ORCHID - Zalman King 1988 QUI T’ESTIMA, BABEL? - Ignasi P. Ferré 1988 VALENTINA - Giandomenico Curi 1987 LA BRUTE - Claude Guillemot 1987 BALADA DA PRAIA DOS CÃES - José Fonseca e Costa 1987 LA FURIA DE UN DIOS - Felipe Cazals 1987 LA VERITAT OCULTA - Carlos Benpar 1986 LOLA - Bigas Luna 1986 MATADOR - Pedro Almodóvar 1986 LULU BY NIGHT - Emilio Martínez Lázaro 1986 LUCKY RAVI - Vincent Lombard 1985 THE OLD MUSIC – Mario Camus 1985 CRONICA SENTIMENTAL EN ROJO - Francisco Rovira Beleta 1985 EXTRAMUROS - Miguel Picazo 1984 EL JARDIN SECRETO - Carlos Suárez 1984 BAJO EN NICOTINA - Raúl Artigot 1984 LA JOVEN Y LA TENTACION - François Mimet 1983 CIRCLE OF PASSIONS - Claude d’Anna 1983 SUPERMARKET - José María Sánchez Álvaro 1983 COTO DE CAZA - Jorge Grau 1983 SOLDADOS DE PLOMO - José Sacristán 1982 LA REVOLTA DELS OCELLS - Lluís Josep Comerón 1982 DULCES HORAS - Carlos Saura 1981 LA CRIPTA - Cayetano Del Real 1981 DOS Y DOS, CINCO - Lluís Josep Comerón 1981 VECINOS - Alberto Bermejo 1981 PATRIMONIO NACIONAL - Luis García Berlanga 1980 PEPI, LUCI, BOM AND OTHER GIRLS ON THE HEAP - Pedro Almodóvar 1980 EL CRIMEN DE CUENCA - Pilar Miró 1979 POLVOS MAGICOS - José Ramón Larraz 1979 SALUT I FORÇA AL CANUT - Francesc Bellmunt 1978 L’ORGIA - Francesc Bellmunt fi lmography cesar sarachu

2005 THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES - Brothers Quay 2004 BABYLONSJUKAN - Daniel Espinosa 2003 EXPRESO NOCTURNO - Imanol Ortiz López 2002 MOTE MED ONDSKAN - Reza Parsa 2000 FORE STORMEN - Reza Parsa 2000 TO BE CONTINUED... - Linus Tunström 1995 INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE - Brothers Quay 1995 SALVATE SI PUEDES - Joaquín Trincado 1991 SANTA CRUZ, EL CURA GUERRILLERO - José María Tuduri fi lmography

2005 THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES - Brothers Quay 2004 COWGIRL - Mark Schlichter 2003 SAMS IN GEFAHR - Ben Verbong 2002 NANCY & FRANK - A MANHATTAN LOVE STORY - Wolf Gremm 2000 PROOF OF LIFE - Taylor Hackford 1999 ASTERIX ET OBELIX VS CESAR - Claude Zidi 1998 BIN ICH SCHÖN? - Doris Dörrie gottfried john

1996 DER UNHOLD - Volker Schlöndorff 1995 GOLDENEYE - Martin Campbell 1995 INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE - Brothers Quay 1992 DIE VERFEHLUNG - Heiner Carow 1992 DIE ZEIT DANACH - Jürgen Kaizik 1991 ICH SCHENK DIR DIE STERNE - Jörg Graser 1990 WINGS OF FAME - Otakar Votocek 1986 CHINESE BOXES - Christopher Petit 1985 OTTO - DER FILM - Xaver Schwarzenberger & Otto Waalkes 1985 DIE MITLÄUFER - Eberhard Itzenplitz & Erwin Leiser 1985 MATA HARI - Curtis Harrington 1984 SUPER - Adolf Winkelmann 1983 ENTE ODER TRENTE - Rigo Manikofski 1981 LILI MARLEEN - 1980 BERLIN - Alexander Platz (TV) & Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1979 THE MARIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1978 IN A YEAR OF THIRTEEN MOONS - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1978 FEDORA - Billy Wilder 1978 DESPAIR - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1975 MOTHER KÜSTERS’ TRIP TO HEAVEN - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1971 CARLOS - Hans W. Geissendörfer 1962 CAFE ORIENTAL - Rudolf Schündler cast

Malvina van Stille...... Amira Casar Dr. Emmanuel Droz...... Gottfried John Assumpta...... Assumpta Serna Filesberto / Adolfo...... Cesar Sarachu Gardener Holz...... Ljubisa Lupo-Grujcic Gardener Marc...... Marc Bischoff Gardener Henning...... Henning Peker Gardener Echeverria...... Gilles Gavois Gardener Volker...... Volker Zack Gardener Thomas ...... Thomas Schmieder crew

Producers...... Keith Griffiths Alexander Ris Hengameh Panahi Executive Producer...... Executive Producer for UK Film Council...... Paul Trijbits Senior Executive for the New Cinema Fund...... Emma Clarke Co-Producers for Mediopolis...... Alexander Ris & Jörg Rothe Associate Producer for MCA...... Michael Becker For Arte France Cinema ...... Michel Reilhac & Rémi Burah For ZDF/Arte...... Meinolf Zurhorst & Eva Kammerer Line Producer...... Björn Eggert Scenario...... Alan Passes & Quay Brothers Costume Designer...... Kandis Cook Editor...... Simon Laurie Director of Photography...... Nic Knowland BSC Music...... Trevor Duncan & Christopher Slaski Director of Sound ...... Larry Sider Direction Design Animation...... Quay Brothers Casting...... Irene Lamb (UK) Cornelia Mareth (GER) Choreographer...... Kim Brandstrup UK/Germany/France 2005 99’ color 2 :35 Dolby SRD

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