An elegant and humorous film-in the guise of a serious anthropological treatise-spotlights "The Perfect Human," a model of the modern Dane created by our wishful thinking.
Jørgen Leth about his short film classic: A beautiful young couple act as demonstration objects. We have to see how a person comes into being by virtue of the roles assigned to him/her.
We must see how a person becomes more skilled at living. It all takes place in a bright demonstration room with dissection lighting. The film is a document - or a meta-document - about life in Denmark in 1967.
It will show models The Perfect Man, created on our wishful thinking, as they are expressed in different ways in our everyday life, and this model is, in my opinion, more representative of forward-looking trends in society, than even the most sober sociological report on life in Denmark. --dfi
Like Life in Denmark, Good and Evil, and Notes on Love, sensible anthropological study is apparently on the programme, and in Leth's award-winning breakthrough it assumes an elegant, highly amusing form.
Spanning a period of 22 years these films revolve skittishly around human nature, and apart from the more documentary Life in Denmark, each has actor Claus Nissen as Leth's artful alter ego. Nissen and Maiken Algren are in an empty white room with only the essential props for each scene.
A bed, bedding, a table, chairs. "We are going to see the perfect human being in action", we hear, and Leth's voice puts descriptive or puzzled words to the little actions the film exhibits: the man touches his face investigatively, fills a pipe, cuts his nails, and gets undressed, but he does peculiar things, too: he jumps as if he is weightless, snaps his fingers in strange ways, and dances with exaggerated movements and no music.
"Today, too, I had an experience that I hope I shall understand in a few days' time", he ponders. The whole film is staged with great clarity in its picture compositions with several characteristic zooms to indicate the bodily parts of the perfect human being, and emphasis on the light, boundless nothingness of the room.
The soundtrack reveals tones of a clarinet touching on the stylistically consistent visuals. At its premiere at the Carlton cinema The Perfect Human was shown before Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise. —imdb
About this movie
Title: Det perfekte menneske (1968, short)
Directed by: Jørgen Leth
Date of birth: June 14, 1937, Aarhus, Denmark
Writing credits: Ole John, Jørgen Leth
Year: 1968
Country: Denmark
Language: Danish
Color: Black & White
Runtime: 13 min.