Mothlight (1963)
Directed by Stan Brakhage
Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.
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What critics compared Mothlight to
Strickland is clearly a heavy-duty cinephile—Berberian Sound Studio paid tribute to Italian giallo, and there’s a dream sequence here that includes an homage to Stan Brakhage’s avant-garde short “Mothlight”—and he has a lot of fun early on establishing the parameters of his Eurotrash softcore aesthetic.
The abstract images that represent Gilderoy's fragile mental state are mirrored by the imaginary blizzard of moths, quoted from Stan Brakhage’s experimental short Mothlight (1963), that bombards Evelyn.
One should mention the butterflies: Strickland lets the bugs fly in a borderline-experimental sequence that’s a direct quote of Stan Brakhage’s “Mothlight.”