Creation of Woman, The (1961)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
This Oscar-nominated short has pretty much been forgotten over the years but it was produced by Ismail Merchant for just $9,000 and it was soon after filming that the filmmaker met James Ivory and the rest is history. This 14-minute film talks about the Hindu god Brahma's creation of life, the world and of course the first woman. Saeed Jaffrey narrates the story as dancers Bhaskar, Dinu and Anjali Devi "act" out the story. Perhaps I went into this film with too high of expectations but I found the end results to be mildly disappointing. It really wouldn't be fair to call this movie bad but at the same time it had a really hard time keeping my attention. I thought for the most part that the images were quite good as director Charles F. Schwep at least has some nice cinematography and he gets some good colors out of it. I thought the three performers did a good job with their dances but I'd be lying if I said anything the narrator said was of interest to me. I think the film would have been much better had it just focused on the dancers and left the narration alone as a simple introduction would have been all we needed.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
This Oscar-nominated short has pretty much been forgotten over the years but it was produced by Ismail Merchant for just $9,000 and it was soon after filming that the filmmaker met James Ivory and the rest is history. This 14-minute film talks about the Hindu god Brahma's creation of life, the world and of course the first woman. Saeed Jaffrey narrates the story as dancers Bhaskar, Dinu and Anjali Devi "act" out the story. Perhaps I went into this film with too high of expectations but I found the end results to be mildly disappointing. It really wouldn't be fair to call this movie bad but at the same time it had a really hard time keeping my attention. I thought for the most part that the images were quite good as director Charles F. Schwep at least has some nice cinematography and he gets some good colors out of it. I thought the three performers did a good job with their dances but I'd be lying if I said anything the narrator said was of interest to me. I think the film would have been much better had it just focused on the dancers and left the narration alone as a simple introduction would have been all we needed.
