Detail
Title ID | 6075 | Collection ID | 848 | ||||||||
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Title | Blind Mice | ||||||||||
Date | [ca. 1970] | ||||||||||
Collection | North Downs Film Unit | ||||||||||
Genre/Type | |||||||||||
Theme | Cine Club Film-making | ||||||||||
Keywords | Disabled Persons Hospitals Uniforms Roads Interiors | ||||||||||
Location |
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Credits |
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Format | 16mm Colour Sound | ||||||||||
Duration | 8 min. 52 sec. | ||||||||||
Copyright & Access | Copyright restrictions apply, contact Screen Archive South East for details |
Summary
Blind men and women are trained to steal in this comedy produced by the North Downs Cinematographic Society in around 1970.
Description
Fiction film. Tune to "Three Blind Mice" throughout. A blind man walks along a pavement with a white stick and briefcase. A man guides him across the road after he is nearly run over by a car. A voice is heard after a high-pitched electronic noise, "You are under my control. You can now see. Carry out your programmed instructions". A man in a room of equipment is seen, speaking into the microphone. The blind man, now sighted, steals a painting from a house. When he leaves, he pretends he is still blind. The voice bellows again, "You are blind again, return to the training centre. You will remember nothing." "Blind Mice" appears on the screen.
The man reaches the De Caen Training Centre for the blind, where he enters a communal room. Woman and men wearing dark glasses sit in arm chairs. The man in the control room brings tea before he decents to the basement control station. A woman switches the briefcases, taking the stolen painting down to the basement.
A woman arrives at a house, persuading the owner to let her in. When inside, the controller's voice continues; "You can now see, carry out programmed instructions. You will remember nothing." She removes her dark glasses and steals jewellery from a box in a room upstairs. Back downstairs and with her dark glasses back on, the woman leads her outside with a basket of food.
At the training centre, a woman looks through the stolen goods. "Big money in stolen miniatures" reads a newspaper headline. The controller looks up the address of a collector and sends the blind man to retrieve them. He hears the electronic noise. "You can now see, carry out plan B". He takes the miniatures off the wall of the house, but when the owner arrives home, there is a scuffle outside. The dials start to spin uncontrollably at the control station. The man runs down the basement shouting "you're out of control!" before breaking the apparatus. "The End".