Originally conceived as a short film John Parker’s 1955 experimental feature Dementia is receiving a new Blu-ray release from BFI Video, and it’s certainly interesting if not necessarily entertaining.
Containing no dialogue, Dementia follows a young woman Gamine as she wakes up in a run-down Los Angeles hotel. Wandering into the night she encounters a cacophony of colourful characters from a dwarf selling newspapers featuring the headline ‘Mysterious Stabbing’ to a pimp who may or may not be a malevolent influence.
Stylistically, Parker’s controversial film is impressive; the use of light and framing challenge the cinematic norm and the subject matter ranging from patricide to a recurring theme of female abuse is stark in its bluntness. Gamine – played by Parker’s secretary Adrienne Barrett, the film’s source being a dream she had – is almost bestial in her portrayal, felinely unsympathetic in her actions and mannerisms.
As an historical piece, Dementia is worthy of note, but you sense it would be more at home in a museum than a cinema. The film feels long at 55 minutes, clearly stretched from the original short and the performances are clumsy at times, over-exaggerating scenes in the absence of dialogue.
Only briefly released, this version was picked up by Jack H. Harris and re-released as Daughter of Horror (also included on the Blu-ray) in 1957, but with a new edit and a curious narration that detracts rather than adds to the original.
Noirish, psychological, and unforgivingly bleak Dementia is no easy watch, and will not appeal to the masses.
