The City of Lost Children
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La Cité des enfants perdus (or The City of Lost Children) is a French fantasy/comedy film by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet released in 1995.
The plot revolves around a mad scientist, Krank, who lives off the coast of a surreal futuristic French city and has been kidnapping children in order to study and extract their dreams, to supplement his own inability to dream. Because he cannot dream, he has become prematurely old.
Krank is actually a genetically created man, with superior intelligence. He was created by an Inventor who also created five clones (the Inventor and the clones are all played by Dominique Pinon), a wife, and a migraine-ridden brain in a jar named Irvin to talk to.
Krank employs blind men in the city called "the Cyclops" to kidnap the children. In return, they are given a mechanical eye that enables them to see through soundwaves.
The movie begins when a sideshow strongman named One (played by Ron Perlman) witnesses an orphan he cares for, named Denree, being kidnapped. He sets out to find his "little brother", with help of a nine-year-old street urchin girl named Miette. Denree turns out to be the perfect kid that Krank has been searching for.
Also in the film are a pair of Siamese twins. They train orphans (including Miette) to steal, much like Fagin in Oliver Twist. They become upset when Miette, their best thief, and One run off and thus aim to destroy them. They attempt to get help from their former sideshow employer, a man who has trained fleas to insert poison at the command of some music.
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External links
- Template:Imdb title
- screen shots (http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/skina/skina4.html)de:Stadt der verlorenen Kinder