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The Fly
Movie
Screenplay by James Clavell
Based on a story by George Langelaan
Directed by Kurt Neumann
Released July 1958
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A scientist develops a matter transporter
and then puts himself through it, with catastrophic results.
Watch the full film at DailyMotion
Didja Know?
The Fly is a 1958 movie based on the
short story of the same name by
George Langelann (1908-1972) first published in the June 1957
issue of
Playboy. It served as the inspiration for both this film
and the 1986 film.
Scientist André Delambre is played by Al Hedison, who would
later adopt the screen name David Hedison and go on to be best
known as Captain Lee Crane, commander of the high-tech nuclear
submarine Seaview in the 1964-1968 television series
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Andre's brother,
François, is played by Vincent Price (1911-1993), well-known for
his horror film roles (though he appeared in many other types of
film and television as well).
Characters appearing or mentioned in this film
André
Delambre (dies in this story)
François Delambre
Satan (stray tom cat)
Gaston
Dandelo
(the Delambre cat, dies in this story)
Hélène Delambre
Inspector Charas
Dr. Éjoute
Philippe Delambre
nurse
Yvette
Emma
(Delambre
housekeeper)
Professor Augier
(mentioned only)
Nurse Anderson
Didja Notice?
At 1:33 in the movie, we see the sign for
André
Delambre's business,
Delambre Freres Electronics Montreal Ltd. This is, of course, a
fictitious company. Freres is French for "brothers", so
the business is
Delambre Brothers Electronics.
The sign reveals that the story takes place in
Montreal
(Quebec, Canada). The
original short story is set in France. For this film
adaptation, the setting was moved to Canada, presumably to
appease North American audiences. Possibly the large
French-speaking population of Quebec played a role in the
decision as well, as a way of having the story remain French,
but still be in English!
As the movie opens, a cat runs through the
electronics factory complex and is intercepted by the night
watchman, Gaston, who picks up the feline and says, "Ah, Satan, mon cher. You are late ce soir. Still looking
for your girlfriend, huh? Mademoiselle Dandelo has found
another. You will never see her again. But don't you worry.
There will be others. Y en a toujours. Ne t'en fais pas."
Presumably, the cat is a stray tom Gaston has taken somewhat of
a liking to; funny that he calls it Satan!
Dandelo is the "official" cat of the factory, as we shall see
later in the film, a female. Mon cher is French for "my
dear" and ce soir means "tonight". Mademoiselle
is French for "Miss". "Y en a toujours. Ne t'en fais pas,"
is French for "There are always some. Do not worry."
Dandelo also appears (sort of) in the
short story, but Satan
does not. In the short story, Dandelo is referred to as
male, not female.
After hearing about the death of
André, François calls Inspector Charas at the Athenaeum Club,
which appears to be a gentlemen's club. As far as I can tell,
this was a fictitious club for Montreal, but probably inspired
by the famous
Athenaeum Club of London, England.
As he pulls up to the Delambre factory at 6:05 in the movie,
Inspector Charas' car is a 1957
Mercury Montclair. The white police vehicle already there is
a 1948 Packard Custom Eight Ambulance.
At 7:51 in the movie,
François is able to identify his brother's body, even though his
head was crushed, by the long scar running from his knee to
ankle incurred during the war. Likely, this is a reference to
WWII. In the short story,
Andre's scar ran from knee to thigh.
At 9:04 in the movie, Dr. Éjoute says, "François, mon ami.
Is it true?" and "Mais c'est impossible." These are
French for "François, my friend. Is
it true?" and "But it's impossible."
Inspector Charas remarks that if Hélène killed her husband as
she claims, she could hang for it. In Canada, capital punishment
was inflected only by hanging from the end of French rule until
July 1976 when capital punishment was abolished in the country.
André and Hélène's son is named Philippe.
In the original short story, he
was named
Henri.
Philippe asks his uncle François how long flies live. François
doesn't know the answer; common houseflies live for about
one month.
At 32:00 in the movie,
André remarks to Hélène about television transmissions from New
York as a comparison to his matter transmitter.
New York City
is the most populous city in the U.S.
Just as in the 1986
film, when Brundle
teleports a baboon as his first living test subject, André here
decides to teleport the family cat, Dandelo, and it's a
disastrous failure, the cat's molecules vanishing into the ether
instead of reforming! Shouldn't he have attempted to teleport a
plant or something like that first? And even if he had
successfully teleported a plant first, the first mammal he'd
attempt it with should be something like a lab mouse or rat.
(After weeks of refinement on his equipment, he does finally
teleport a guinea pig).
And why does he put the cat's milk saucer in the
teleporter with her? It seems as if the action is only there to
show that the teleporter will work with inanimate objects (the
saucer reappears) and not with living specimens (the cat does
not reappear). But that is not what
André was trying to show with his experiment.
When the cat fails to rematerialize, how is it that the cat's
meow is heard emanating echoingly from the air around the lab?
The cat should just be disintegrated shouldn't she?
Does anyone know what ballet the
Delambres go to at about 40:00 into the
film? Is it a real ballet or just something put together for the
film? The cover of the playbill
André is seen holding reads only "The Royal Opera House
presents...Ballet Russe," and Ballet Russe is simply
French for "Russian Ballet". As far as I can find, there is no
opera house called Royal Opera House in Montreal.
Except for his visit to the ballet with his wife,
André wears what appears to be the same clothing throughout the
film. It's not remarked upon in this film, but in the 1986
film, Seth Brundle also wears one ensemble throughout,
five sets of exactly the same outfit to wear day-by-day, saying
he learned it from Einstein, so he doesn't have to expend any
thought on what he's going to wear. Perhaps André was doing the
same.
André explains to his wife that his matter transporter turns the
subject into its constituent atoms and sends them at the speed
of light to the receiving chamber. But atoms have mass, so
cannot travel at the speed of light; only light, with no mass,
can travel the speed of light.
We see that the teleported guinea pig is still alive and healthy
after one month. This same day,
Hélène remarks that "Spring will soon be here." This means it is
likely the beginning of March, as Spring begins around the third
week of March in the northern hemisphere. So,
André's first initial semi-success with the teleporter occurred
one month and a couple weeks
before that, roughly mid-January.
When
François comes to the house for lunch, Hélène tells him
André wants to show him something in the lab and François
excitedly (or perhaps mock-excitedly) asks, "Well, what is
it? Flat screen?" and she responds, "It's better."
There's no other dialog to indicate what they meant. Could they
really be talking about a flat screen television?! Was this
something people were dreaming about even in the 1950s? There
was, in fact, talk about it in technology circles as early as
the late 1940s, maybe earlier, by General Electric in
conjunction with the company's work on radar monitors. I'm not
sure how widely-known the concept would have been to the public
back then, but since the Delambre brothers own an electronics
company, it makes some sense that they might be interested in
developing it. Also, since the quote is in the movie in the
first place with no further explanation, it implies a general
movie-going audience of 1958 could have knowledge of the concept.
When
Philippe captures a strange fly with a
white head, he keeps it in a match box until his mother makes
him release the insect. The box reads, "Manufactures de
l'etat, 50 Allumettes Suedoises, Contributions Indirectes."
This is French for "State Manufactures, 50 Swedish Matches,
Indirect Contributions." Kind of a strange label if you ask me!
There is a company called Swedish Match founded in 1915 as a
maker of matches and tobacco products, though the box seen here
seems to be the product of a fictitious company; the label
appears to have been applied to a match box with a different
logo printed on it. The family housekeeper, Emma, has a mild
accent that sounds like it might be Swedish...possibly the boy
got the match box from her!
As
Philippe releases the fly he's caught
at 49:54 in the movie, it is a real fly. It is clear that
the white head on it is simply the result of a tiny drop of
white paint and not the miniaturized head of
André as seen at the end of the movie!

The evening of the day
André becomes part fly, he slides a note under the lab door
telling his wife not to enter or ask questions and he asks for a
bowl of milk laced with rum. An odd request as food items go,
though there are some cocktail recipes of rum and milk. With a
fly head, it would realistically be impossible for André to eat
solid foods (although he does later), hence the liquid dietary
request. Possibly, the rum is a craving of the fly part of him,
as rum is an alcohol made from sugarcane. And it's possible the
milk request is due to a portion of cat genes being incorporated
in him from the discorporated Dandelo! Though the cat
incorporation is never made explicit here, the original
short story has André's head
becoming a mix of fly head and cat's head from the lost
Dandelo!
Losing his ability to speak due to the fly head,
André types out notes on a typewriter in his lab for his wife to
read. But the pages he hands her all have tractor feed sprockets
on the sides! I'm not aware of any typewriter that used tractor
feed paper, but the typewriter on his desk does appear to have a
ribbon of the paper going into it. The paper sheets are also
shorter than the typical 11" length. Maybe the device is some
kind of combination typewriter and dot-matrix printer attached
to the computer system.
What is this contraption seen mounted to the kitchen wall in the
Delambre house?

When
Hélène finally unmasks her husband and sees the fly head, we
then see a prismatic view of her face repeated dozens of times.
This is due to the compound eyes of a fly.
Emma tells
François she thought the white-headed fly looked like a bluebottle. The
bluebottle fly is a species of blow fly, common to most areas of
the world and recognized for its metallic blue coloring.
Both human/fly fusions die by being crushed: the human with fly
head crushed by the hydraulic press, the fly with human head by
a rock wielded by Inspector Charas.
At the end of the movie, Philippe tells his mother and uncle
he'd like to be a scientific explorer like his father was. In
Return of the Fly, the adult
Philippe
essentially becomes just that!
Memorable Dialog