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Big City Blues

Big City Blues

Big City Blues is a 1962 English-Dutch language short film written and directed by Charles Huguenot van der Linden. Two drunk men chase a girl and a young boy chases a rabbit, leading to horrific consequences. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf@Geronimo1967

April 18, 2026

There's a lot of the Lewis Carroll to this silent drama, and though for a few minutes that intrigues for the remainder of this really quite repetitious twenty minutes I struggled to get to grips with what the purpose of this film is/was/might be. It starts with a gent sitting in the back of what is obviously a police car, and then shifts to a young girl playing with her white rabbit. A young lad appears and begins to chase her through a building that looks to be under construction whilst she chases her pet. Meantime, in the same building a couple of drunks are sleeping off their excesses when another, much older, girl stumbles upon them. One takes a bit of a shine to her and proceeds to chase her throughout the structure with tragic results. Now perhaps the cyclicle nature of the story has some sort of message, but as so few of the actions really add up to anything substantial, it is hard to tell - and by the end of this side of cinematic vinyl, I felt that all that could await us was a flip side with more of the same. The site is still clearly being built, but is insecure and there are no builders nor anything else to put any context the setting. Is that very randomness and disjointedness the point? Perhaps you will get more from this than I? Something? Anything?