The Mozart Bird

The second full-length feature film by Ian Kerkhof is an almost clinical investigation of the relationship between two people. The protagonists, Howard and Selena, are two English-speaking foreigners who live in Amsterdam. They both have university educations, but no work and enjoy everything the city has to offer. Kerkhof calls them rather cynically ‘the dope ‘n dole refugees’. The Mozart Bird is the second film in his ‘urban wasteland serial’. But Kerkhof is not interested in putting his characters in a social context; one consequence of this is that almost the whole film is set in the home: first in that of Selena, at the end that of Howard.The film style is based in a very strategic camera positioning and eight standard camera movements. Cutting is never determined by the continuity of the action or space. This results in a tension between film form and action which deviates considerably from what is normally regarded as film. Kerkhof himself says he was influenced by the structuralist films of Ken and the sentimental, ‘feminine films’ as Max Ophüls and Douglas Sirk made them.