alr

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Screening on Film
Directed by Roy Rowland.
With Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, Peter Lind Hayes.
US, 1953, 35mm, color, 88 min.

Dr. Seuss wrote and Stanley Kramer produced what can only be referred to as the most surreal children’s fantasy film ever conceived. Bart Collins’s overbearing, prissy, and vaguely foreign piano teacher forces his 500 pupils to play his dreary piano exercises on a continuous keyboard located in his monstrous palace, while Bart’s mother is hypnotized and locked in a gilded cage. Dreamlike and imaginative, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T can be read as both an aesthetic form of delirium and as a fascinating expression of cold-war hysteria in America.

Part of film series

Read more

Adventures in Surrealism

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

Read more

Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

Read more

Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

Planet at 50

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction Continues!

Read more

Theo Anthony, Subject to Review

Read more

The Ideal Cinematheque of the Outskirts of the World

Read more

From the collection – Satyajit Ray