My next movie is set in 1960. It’s called Adam Resurrected. It’s set in a mental institution in the desert and it’s about this patient, Adam, who before the war was an entertainer. Cabaret and circus. Did a lot of animal acts. He and his family get taken to the camps. The commandant recognises him as “the funniest man in Germany”. Well, he gets through the concentration camps by becoming the commandant’s dog.
He lives on all-fours, in a cage, entertaining the Germans. Eats from the dog bowl, sees his family killed off. At the end of the war the commandant releases him. So 10 years later, we find him in this mental institution and he hears something. He goes to the head of the institution and says, “Who brought a dog in here?” “There’s no dog in here”. “Yes there is…” And he goes and he finds this dog. Only it’s not a dog, it’s a feral boy that’s been raised on a chain. And he looks at the boy who acts like a dog and barks like a dog and they recognise each other as dogs. And then the movie becomes about their relationship: a story of a man who once was a dog, who meets a dog who once was a boy.
