Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Zoo in Budapest (1933)

Director: Rowland V Lee

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A strange, ecstatically beautiful little fantasy, set almost entirely within a quaint Douanier Rousseau zoo, all trailing palm fronds and swirling mists, where three innocents - a pair of lovers and a runaway child - seek refuge one night from the cruelties of the world outside. At first a hostile jungle, the zoo mysteriously mutates by night into a Garden of Eden, a transformation subtly painted in light by Lee Garmes' incredible camerawork, which draws delicate analogies in captivity between humans and animals, and culminates with the fantastic sequence of the revolt of the caged beasts, which points the way to freedom. Only marginally let down by the final scene - a brief coda showing the couple happily settled into their own little cottage 'just like anybody else' - the whole film reverberates like one of Blake's 'Songs of Innocence'.

Author: TM 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Rowland V Lee

Producer: Jesse Lasky

Cast: Gene Raymond, Loretta Young, OP Heggie, Paul Fix, Wally Albright full cast

Genre(s): Fantasy

Duration: 85 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.