THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN: Jaw-Droppingly Good!

2 years ago, we had the chance to watch another part of the adventures of a certain Ant-Man, a superhero with the ability to shrink his body even down to, for example, the size of an ant. What is important, however, is that in the aforementioned work, it is a skill, and as a result, the protagonist uses it when he wants. The hero of The Incredible Shrinking Man unfortunately does not have the luxury of choice. An irrational force, from a scientific perspective, acts on him in an inexplicable way, first filling his life with existential fear and then making the greatest everyday threat from something that just yesterday could have been squashed under a shoe.

American director Jack Arnold is remembered as one of the more famous creators of science fiction cinema in the 50s and 60s. The Incredible Shrinking Man is one of his best works. Not only because the director, taking on a very intriguing but crazy idea, approached it seriously and gave the story of Scott Carey’s case an existential weight. It is also a remarkable film, or perhaps primarily so, because it was simply brilliantly made, which contributed to its longevity. Even today, no one would think of remaking a film from 1957. And I have the impression that this is not just because cinema has already given us several variations of the story of Tom Thumb, but because The Incredible Shrinking Man simply cannot be made better.

The main credit for this goes to the incredible special effects for the time. I must admit, at the beginning of the screening of The Incredible Shrinking Man, I was worried about whether the creators of the effects were able to create something realistic and universal enough that, decades after the film’s premiere, their work could be called unequivocally successful. Anticipating the development of the action and the fact that the creators would have to show various stages of the hero shrinking, I expected that the technical limitations of the 50s would evoke feelings of pity rather than admiration. I was wrong, very wrong. I quickly realized that I was dealing with one of the most distinguished examples of special effects in science fiction cinema.

Supervised by the outstanding specialist in this field, Clifford Stine, the various trick shots were perfected down to the smallest detail. The film is rich in magical techniques – we have in it double exposure, rear projection, and masking. Thanks to these tricks, it was possible to show the hero first reduced to the size of a child and then to the size of an insect. These effects were complemented by excellent work from the set designers, who created enlarged models of objects – fitting to the current size of the hero. Interestingly, the studio allegedly used these models in several other productions. The biggest challenge, however, for the effects specialists was the scene of dripping water droplets. A famous anecdote from the set says that Jack Arnold decided to use a treadmill, from which bags filled with water were dropped, using condoms.

The perfect visual setting of The Incredible Shrinking Man is one thing. The film does even better on the level of its messages. The plot, based on Richard Matheson’s book, initially triggered in me a metaphor of a man’s depressive state. It is hard not to notice the analogy connecting the hero’s gradual shrinking with a psychological disorder, resulting in the diminishment of his position in relation to others, exaggerating the smallest daily problems to unnaturally large proportions. However, in the finale, the reflection turns out to be much deeper. The hero’s smallness is meant to refer to the smallness of man in relation to the universe, and therefore, to God himself. For Him, it doesn’t matter the size of the organisms He created, as all are equally perfect elements of one mechanism. No matter how small or grotesque we may seem, God sees us.

Matheson had prepared a continuation, in which the main character’s wife cannot bear the longing and decides to shrink herself to find her beloved in the microcosm. However, this idea never came to fruition. In 1981, however, a comedic remake was made, featuring a female protagonist. The film lost the quality battle with the famous original. The 1957 film is an unattainable model of artistic courage, which before our eyes transforms into the pure magic of cinema.