This film starts out as a hardcore action thriller set in a dystopic war driven world. Unfortunately, very soon it reveals its true genre: of artistic surrealism. And the problem with this "art" is that this surreal drivel just goes for ever, but never really catches the viewer either by the hart or mind. Instead of this, it just gradually builds up a huge disregard for a movie that presented itself with an excellent openingOf course one can indulge self in seeking the true meaning of a given scene, hidden messages or themes running throughout the film. For example this movie as a whole could be viewed as a battle of a sexes. And the scene with the killing of the bird by the girl combined with the showing of the painting depicting a killing of a similar bird by a painted woman could imply, that the girl and the woman are the one and the same person; thus making girl and / or woman unreal. Or maybe even that also the elderly woman is the same person as the girl and that woman, because the repeated breastfeeding symbolizes a never ending cycle of life, happening even in the time of war blah-blah-blah how much more boring can this movie get? Was the often running around of the girl also to mean something, or was it only put in the film to wake up the audience falling asleep?Aside from a great black and white movie poster, this picture presents us with an extraordinary performance by the leading actress Cathryn Harrison, who must have been of only 15 or 16 years of age at the time of the shooting. Other than that this picture is just a disappointment for the dystopic / sci-fi movie seekers and in overall a surreal waste of time. So in contusion: yes, watch it; but only up to the scene, in which the elderly woman starts a conversation with the animal (which happens 23 minutes into the picture)

"Black Moon" was Louis Malle's first film in English; it wasn't successful and has been largely, and very rightly, forgotten. It's a dystopian, futuristic fantasy; a kind of dark "Alice in Wonderland", though this is a wonderland no-one would want to visit. Our heroine is a fresh-faced Cathryn Harrison, daughter of Noel and grand-daughter of Rex, making her way through a desolate landscape where men and women appear to be at war with each other, literally. She winds up in the house of Therese Giehse who lives with the seemingly eternally beautiful Joe Dallesandro, fresh from his stint with Warhol, and Alexandra Stewart, who was in "Le Feu Follet", (neither of them speak, which perhaps is for the best). It makes no sense, (I mean who is our 'Alice' and what is she doing here?). It's also pretty awful, a great director's misguided folly and Malle really must take the blame since he wrote it as well as directed it. The above-average photography is by Sven Nykvist. Oh, and did I mention the talking Unicorn and rat?

Did Alice stumble into the French version of Wonderland, or does this merely take place on Planet Goofball, in the Zany Critters planetary system, in the vicinity of the Silly Dream Nebula, located right smack at the outer rim of the Loony Galaxy?A beautiful blonde, resembling Maria Sharapova a bit, experiences a series of hallucinations(?), roaming about in a world which isn't explained to us at all (or is it? maybe I'm just too daft for Malle's undoubtedly multi-layered hidden intellectual musings). There are animals doing strange stuff, there is a rather absurd i.e. overly symbolic war between men and women (carrying whatever left-wing meaning it probably carries), and there is an old woman that seems to have a taste for fresh human milk. (Milk, not blood, though she could have fooled me.) This strange, perhaps alien, wasteland even features Andy Warhol's own Joe D'Allessandro, acting as badly as ever, not having his little friend dangle about but this time pretending to be mute even though he quite clearly sings great opera, mere hours before frantically trying to lop off the head of a brown eagle, which sets of a battle between him and his sister Lily, while Maria chats with a semi-grumpy unicorn. Did I mention that Joe's name is also Lily?Where else but in a 70s European "art film" will you see a 75 year-old hag suck on the nipples of a young woman (her own daughter)? You won't see that in a Disney or Spielberg flick. The goofy old witch even gropes Maria at one point. But considering that this is a European "arthouse" flick, the perversion takes quite a back seat. After all, most Euro-art flicks have to have either masturbation (preferably involving a boy aged 9, peeking through a key-hole, watching his hairy aunt shower), incest, cannibalism, or at the very least homosexuality. "Art" as an excuse to indulge in depravity and the baser forms of human behaviour? I'm just asking, not saying. Don't shoot the messenger.Thankfully, apart from the cringe-wrothy scene of the old biddy cop-a-feeling the wonderful English dyevochka (Rex Harrison's grand-daughter, nepotism working for once), the film is just weird. Bizarre, but without hurling us into the oftenh inevitable lurid depths of necrophilia, pedophilia, or any other "philias" that Euro-trashy "art" directors seem to be so fond of. No-one is eating poo here, no-one gets their head lopped off by a family member, and no children get gang-raped by a group of sex-starved cannibalistic Fascists. No such "art" here, thankfully. BM is quite enjoyable.But even more bizarre than the nipple-sucking were Maria's very very odd temper-tantrums. Bad acting, senseless characterization, or flawed choices by the director? You tell me. I kind of liked it. Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed Maria, whatever she may have been doing, and the same could be said of the excellent photography, courtesy of Sven the Svensky, who finally put his talents to some good use after having previously shot a string of utterly pointless, monotonous, ugly Bergman dramas.BM starts off with the brutal though accidental(?) slaying of a luckless badger, not exactly the most enjoyable scene in the picture. I wondered what meaning this strange killing had in regard to Maria and her character. I didn't wonder for long. About a half-hour later I ceased wondering altogether, stopped trying to figure out this film because it became evident that there was absolutely nothing to figure out, sort of like trying to analyze the mind of Sean Penn – nothing there. Even "Eraserhead" has more structure and meaning.The old woman mocks Maria's "small breasts", but her daughter's chest turned out to be only marginally larger. So much for senseless nit-picking, Grandma! You only wish your daughter were as hot as the loony blonde!I'm discussing breasts and grannies instead of the story, you say? Well, that's hardly my fault. BM has no plot to speak of. It is merely an almost random collection of interesting images and strange goings-on.At almost exactly the half-point of the movie, Maria asks Granny: "Would you please tell me what's going on around here?" And not a moment too soon. I guess she spoke for us all. Perhaps that wasn't even in the script, and she add-libbed it, directing the question right at Malle himself. The decadent old bint responds to the question by laughing wickedly (for the umpteenth time), which is how I imagine Louis may have reacted had anyone dared ask him what the hell this movie is about. So in a sense perhaps the granny is the Malle's alter ego: she likes to grope blond girls, loves sucking on their nipples, and she laughs at any attempts made to comprehend the plot. The non-plot.The upside to this kind of film – i.e. a totally plot less, "allegorical" one (allegory as an excuse to not have to come up with an actual story?) - is that the unpredictability level is high. You simply cannot tell what will happen next, sort of like watching an insane person alone in a shopping mall or a zoo. However, where the movie draws nearly all of its advantages are the amazing visuals and Maria's good looks and charisma. Since the movie offers no actual content (apart from a blond, a hag, an Andy Warhol Z-movie-budget reject, and a bunch of animals pretending to speak) it remains for the visual aspects to shine, and they do, hence saving this movie from the usual oblivion of euro-crapdom. If you're a sucker for high visual quality in movies, as I am, then you will enjoy this film. However, if you are looking for a plot to carry you through, stay away.

In the mid-70s when this film was made there was - in the real world - a 'battle of the sexes' with militant feminism in full swing (if not an actual 'war', there was a lot of bruised feelings and anger in the air - witness works of fiction like 'Who needs men?' and 'The Woman's Room'); the student riots of the late 1960s were a fresh memory, as were images of Vietnam (and for British viewers, the latest IRA atrocities). Black Moon may not 'make sense', but it's more understandable as a dream, from beginning to end (forget the idea that any of it is meant to be set 'in the near future'), by a pubescent girl, subconsciously worried by the apparent war between the sexes and disturbed by her budding sexuality (note the juxtaposition of the idealised vision of heterosexual love, presented by music from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde first heard on the car radio, quickly followed by the shocking images of war).As mentioned elsewhere, this is beautifully filmed, and IMHO captures beautifully the quality of dreams where one event follows another in a 'stream of consciousness' manner (yet with certain obsessive themes), and the dreamer does everything as if it were the most rational thing to do (as one does in a dream). On first viewing I suspected this film to be a rather self-indulgent exercise, but there's a strangely compelling quality about both the narrative and the beauty of the actual cinematography. Highly recommended.