Vedere la Scienza

Milano   15/3/2004 - 21/3/2004

Spazio Oberdan - viale Vittorio Veneto 2 - Milano

The fly



  1. Original Title: The fly
  2. Author: Kurt Neumann
  3. Director: Kurt Neumann
  4. Editor: Merrill G.White
  5. Music: Paul Sawtell
  6. Starring:
    Patricia Owens,
    Vincent Price,
    David Hediosn,
    Herbert Marshall,
    Kathleen Freeman
  7. Producer: Kurt Neumann
  8. Production: 20th Century Fox
  9. USA
  10. 94 min.
  11. 1958

A small, unassuming fly accidentally gets into the apparatus that scientist André Delambre is using, with himself as guinea pig, to perform an experiment in tele-transporting (dematerializing matter, sending it through a wire and rematerializing it somewhere else). Their genetic codes get fused and what comes out the other end are two monstrous hybrids: a fly with the head and arm of a man and a man with the head and arm of a fly. Andre’s stricken wife obeys her husband’s pleas to kill him, and stands accused of murder until the police stumble upon the horrifying spectacle of a man-fly caught in a spider web and weakly calling for help. The incongruous title of the Italian version L’esperimento del dottor K (The experiment of Doctor K) (none of the characters is named Doctor K) does make a Kafkaesque reference to the hero of another horrible transformation. Neumann’s film, as naïf and rudimentary in its effects as it is, has now become a cult movie and its subject is extremely topical. The numerous sequels fail to match up to the original, with the sole exception of The Fly by David Cronenberg, a director completely in his element with themes such as metamorphosis and genetic experimentation. The film sees us caught between the desire to experience other forms of life and the fear of the consequences of a science that no longer recognises any limits, in a state of transition that makes us susceptible to the strangest of transformations. And as Cronenberg himself put it: “I have always known that somewhere deep inside of me there lurks a large insect.”

Other projections:

VEDERE LA SCIENZA 2003
Vedere la Scienza
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