Endless Hallways #3

Written By Tom Turrell
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Production Design in Moving Image:

Anton Furst & Stuart Rose — ‘The Company of Wolves’ (1984)

The first time I saw The Company of Wolves was (ashamedly) by chance. I remember being so arrested by its visual texture and atmosphere, and having an intense need to know immediately what it was. It holds the the sort of dreaminess perfect for a night in bed between the sheets. It makes you want to hunker down into a world of your own, burrow into a corner of your mattress - childlike - and fall asleep like its central protagonist Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson).

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It is wonderfully set-ty and charmingly artificial, but also vivid and completely intentional. The cycloramas (or mattes) of skies are reminiscent of old-fashioned studio atmospheres that wouldn’t be out of place in Powell and Pressburger’s work. Neil Jordan’s lucid direction is very important, but equally so are the production design and art direction, which are so beautifully rendered by Anton Furst and Stuart Rose.

How sad to think that Furst (who would go onto win an Oscar for Tim Burton’s Batman a few years later) cut his own life and career tragically short in 1991. What other worlds he could’ve - would’ve - gone onto create in film and beyond. Jordan would direct more atmospheric works after this (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire, The Butcher Boy, Byzantium to name but a few, and another blogpost altogether!), and has consistently teamed up with brilliant technicians ever since (he collaborated with Furst only once more on High Spirits, to grand visual effect).

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Opening in the modern world and switching to a dream reality, The Company of Wolves teases you to return, time after time. It contains a palpable magic, and is a real, fluid piece of cinema. Bask in its spooky, fairytale reveries and relish Angela Carter’s characters where not even Granny (Angela Lansbury) feels entirely trustworthy. Drink in the sublime establishing shots and set pieces: foresty vistas, ancient woods, candle-lit cottages by night, churchyards, owls, toadstools, frogs, foliage, boscage, murk, mist. It is a dangerous yet unimpeachably cosy world.

Go ahead and feast your eyes, and be careful…

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Tom Turrell
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Distinct Impressions #4: Patricia DeCou