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Visions of Lourdes (S)

6.0

21

Ratings

Original title: Visions de Lourdes
Year: 1932
Running time: 18 min.
Country: Belgium
Director: Charles Dekeukeleire
Screenwriter: Charles Dekeukeleire
Cast: Documentary
Cinematography: Charles Dekeukeleire (B&W)
Producer: PDK
Genre: Documentary | Experimental Cinema. Short Film
Synopsis: "Beginning with conventionally beautiful mountain vistas, the film slowly moves toward the area around the sacred grotto and finally to shots within the grotto itself. There are shots of shop-windows full of Lourdes souvenirs (including candy made with holy water from the shrine), but these come in fairly late, avoiding a blatant focus on the commercialization of the site and the notion that those hoping to be healed of illness and deformity are being exploited.
Clearly Dekeukeleire has a more original sense of composition than does Storck. There is a motif of old women selling candles that the filmmaker turns into a series of shots that look like something out of Eisenstein’s Mexican footage–which of course Dekeukeleire could not have seen. The film is critical of the church, but subtly so–and perhaps mainly because we’ve been cued to take it that way, especially in this case by the dissonant music. I wonder if, in a different context and with a cheerier soundtrack, some of the devout might actually take it as a serious tribute to the healing powers of the saint. They would be mistaken, I think"
- Kristin Thompson

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User history

Visions of Lourdes (S)

1932

Charles Dekeukeleire

6.0

(21)