Dan Hayhurst and Reuben Sutherland are Sculpture
via Jim Le Fevre
(T)
Servais animated the film using 35mm color front-projection of his characters onto a multiplane filmed, black velvet background.
The Harpy, with its human torso and facial features, can be aligned to Freud’s primal uncanny and Kristeva’s notion of the abject in cinema. The film can also be read as a modern retelling of the femme fatale archetype story – a warning to men captivated by the allure of a dangerous female.
“Deutscher Girls” was inspired by the controversial art film Portiere Di Notte (The Night Porter) by director Liliana Cavani, and starring Dirk Bogarde (after whom Adam and the Ants’ 1979 debut album Dirk Wears White Sox is named) and Charlotte Rampling. The 1974 Italian film featured elements of Nazisploitation; Bogarde plays a former Nazi, and Rampling a former concentration camp inmate. In the song, the roles are reversed.
Lyrics were changed from the original Jubilee version when it was released as a single three years later. The line “So, why did you have to be so Nazi” was changed to “So, why did you have to be so nasty”, and “Camp 49 way down on the Rhine” was changed to “A lover of mine from down on the Rhine”. Adam Ant told Sounds:
“ It’s not about concentration camps. It’s about a guy who falls in love with a girl – a member of the Nazi Youth Organisation. “