Industrial Symphony No. 1

Infobox_Film
name = Industrial Symphony No. 1

|200px
caption = VHS Front Cover
director = David Lynch
producer = Angelo Badalamenti
writer = David Lynch
starring = Laura Dern
Nicolas Cage
Julee Cruise
Michael J. Anderson
distributor = Warner Home Video
released = 1990
runtime = 50 minutes
language = English
budget =
music = Angelo Badalamenti
David Lynch
Julee Cruise (Vocals)
awards =
imdb_id = 0099844
amg_id = 1:24795
|

"Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted" is a short, avant-garde musical play directed by David Lynch, with music by Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise.

Overview

When David Lynch studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (PAFA), he made a series of complex mosaics in geometric shapes which he called "Industrial Symphonies".

The play was originally presented (twice) on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City as part of the "New Music America Festival" on November 10, 1989. It was released on VHS in 1990.

The show will debut on DVD 18 November 2008, in the "David Lynch: The Lime Green Set" DVD collection.

Cast

*Nicolas Cage : Heartbreaker
*Laura Dern : Heartbroken Woman
*Julee Cruise : The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman
*Michael J. Anderson : Woodsman / Twin A

Tracklist

#Up In Flames
#I Float Alone
#The Black Sea
#Into the Night
#I'm Hurt Bad
#Pinky's Bubble Egg (The Twins Spoke)
#The Dream Conversation
#Rockin' Back Inside My Heart
#The Final Battle
#The World Spins

The show

The presentation opens with Cage and Dern engaging in a telephone conversation, the gist of which is that he is breaking up with her, to her great sorrow. Though they are never named as such, the two characters bear a striking resemblance to Sailor and Lula from Lynch's movie "Wild at Heart". The rest of the play is a hallucinatory "dream" that the Heartbroken Woman has.

The show takes place on a stage, the main props being a tall metal girder-like structure, and an abandoned shell of a car, with flickering lights and cacophonous sounds used to disturbing, nightmarish effect. Much use is made of actors suspended from ropes, flying and falling, as well as dancers.

Julee Cruise sings on tracks 1, 2, 4, 8 and 10. These songs are all from her first album, "Floating Into The Night" (1989), apart from track 1, which is from her second album, "Voice Of Love" (1993). They are the normal, studio recordings - the songs are mimed. Her voice can also be heard in track 6, in which she gets pushed into the boot of the car. In track 8, the boot opens and she sings from it, her face superimposed on a TV-screen. One recording, "Rocking Back Inside My Heart", is also featured in "Twin Peaks" (for which Cruise recorded a vocal version of the theme).

Michael J. Anderson (known for his role as the small, dancing Man From Another Place on "Twin Peaks") is featured on track 3, patiently sawing a log of wood to Badalamenti's discordant music. He is also part of the stage ensemble on track 5 (instrumental), along with a tall, demonic reindeer-like figure. Finally, on track 6, he reiterates the opening dialogue between Cage and Dern, accompanied by a clarinet-player and a non-speaking actress playing Dern's part.

Track 9 is wholly instrumental, with a background of dolls being lowered from the roof on strings.

In Lynchian culture

*Julee Cruise starred once more as a [road house] singer in an episode of "Twin Peaks". Michael J. Anderson had a regular role as The Man from Another Place in the same show.
*Much of the circumstantial music was reused in "Twin Peaks".
*The unnamed characters of Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern bear a striking resemblance to those played by them in "Wild at Heart", where they are also in love.
*This was Dern's third collaboration with David Lynch; she went on to work with him once more in "Inland Empire".
*Lynch frequently makes allusions to specific trademarks that recur throughout his films. This film features the "lumber trademark", when Anderson's character saws a log. This trademark is also prominent in "Twin Peaks", where the title sequence features saws cutting wood, as well as the sawmill that is eventually burnt in the season 1 finale. Another trademark is the "blinking lights trademark", repeatedly used throughout the film. Blinking lights usually signify change, more specifically used in "Lost Highway", "Mulholland Drive" and "Inland Empire".

Versions

VHS: Warner Music Vision (ASIN 6302374065) ; 1990
Laser Disc: Warner Reprise (38179-6) ; 1991

References

* [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/david_lynchangelo_badalamenti_industrial_symphony_no_1_the_dream_of_the_broken_hearted_featuring_julee_cruise/ Rotten Tomatoes review]
* [http://geocities.com/~mikehartmann/indus.html The City of Absurdity]
* [http://davidlynch.de/Industrial.html DavidLynch.de]

David Lynch's films