L'Homme qui rétrécit

Aucune attraction de tour de passe-passe inutile qui étaient monnaie courante dans les années cinquante. L'homme qui rétrécit est une aventure incroyablement inventive et captivante, avec un scénario imprévisible et une portée de réflexion existentielle exemplaire. C'est un drame captivant sur un homme dont la vie change soudainement du tout au tout et qui doit faire face à une chute inévitable dans l'isolement total, se battre pour se nourrir, pour sa survie. Un pilier du genre de science-fiction, qui est rarement égalé aujourd'hui. (15/03/2009)

One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve ever seen! Arnold was a true master in his field and could make a very smart and unpredictable film even with a generic and trivial premise. I already liked his earlier Tarantula, but The Incredible Shrinking Man is cinematically somewhere else. A thrilling and fast-paced adventure, the likes of which are no longer made today, with quite groundbreaking and successful effects and a second half made for enthusiastic genre fans. The scene with the cat still takes my breath away, but not nearly as much as the final clash with the "giant" spider, which I experienced perhaps even more intensely than Frodo's memorable duel with Shelob (it was also clear that the spider here was real). I wouldn’t recommend it to arachnophobics, but for the rest of you, don't hesitate to watch this unjustly forgotten gem. 95% (02/02/2013)

The magical atmosphere of classic B-movie sci-fi films, enhanced by tremendous special effects, a quanta of impressive suspense and above all a constantly interesting story about an ordinary man who does not turn into a man-eating monster and does not threaten the world, the city or his loved ones, but simply tries to survive in his own house (and especially in his basement). (01/12/2015)

When Wolker published his poem “Pokora" (Humility), he had no idea that a mere thirty-six years later a spirited reply to how it feels to become smaller and smaller would come from across the ocean. Well that is really rather unpleasant, Jiří. Especially if you have any pets, a cellar with a tarantula and a big snake. Arnold’s picture may have aged in technical terms (but very little, in fact), but in terms of suspense and entertainment this movie is still at the height of its strength fifty years later... And if the opening thirty minutes had been a little better, I would certainly have awarded this five stars. (06/09/2008)

A huge surprise and one of the best sci-fi movies I've ever seen! (from the Golden Age of Sci-Fi in Hollywood in the 1950s, that is.) The story of a man who mysteriously begins to shrink until, at the size of a few centimetres, he has to fight for his bare life in his apartment, which had become a merciless jungle. The director Jack Arnold used everything that the visual effects techniques of the time had to offer, and it has to be said that the effects in this film are simply phenomenal for its time. Not only did the creators of the props played with making all sorts of everyday objects superhuman in size to make the illusion of the actor's small size as believable as possible, but they also accentuated it by blending shots and all sorts of optical tricks. The resulting impression is flawless. But that still wouldn't be enough without an interesting plot, riddled with a bunch of ideas. Starting with a brilliant scene in which the main character, who is several centimetres tall, is attacked by his own cat (I really don't understand how they managed to get the cat to do the things they demanded, nowadays it would probably be solved by some digital monster at the expense of impact), through such contraptions as stealing cheese from a mousetrap, climbing on furniture, making a gun out of a pin, making a fire with – given the size of the main character – about a three-meter match, etc. The list of memorable scenes would be much longer. The highlight of the film is a very realistic looking fight with a spider, and the last pleasant shock for me was the absence of a classic conclusion and the very strange and open ending by Hollywood standards. The rating is very clear, 5*, it’s awesome! (06/10/2004)