Revisiting the Steampunk Nightmares of ‘The City of Lost Children’ 30 Years Later!

While he’s mostly known for 2001’s quirky rom-com Amélie, French Filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet actually began his career by telling darker stories that felt like they were ripped straight out of childhood nightmares and dreamscapes. Back then, the director would often partner with his close friend Marco Caro, an animator and comic-book artist who co-directed some of Jeunet’s best work.

And with the duo’s award-winning steampunk fable, The City of Lost Children, currently celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, I feel like this is the perfect moment to look back on the anachronistic thrills of this genre-defying adventure and make a case for why horror fans might enjoy its hand-crafted aesthetics.

Jeunet and Caro met at an animation festival in 1974 and immediately hit it off, with the duo proceeding to partner on several short films combining stylized animation and intimate live-action storytelling. The duo’s ultimate goal was to create an elaborate feature film that would allow them to explore their penchant for larger-than-life characters and intricate production design, with the fantastical project that would one day become The City of Lost Children having been conceived as far back as the early 80s. Of course, the inherent cost of such an endeavor meant that they had to settle for a slightly less ambitious idea when the time came to produce their debut feature in 1991.

Thankfully, Delicatessen became an unexpected hit, with the post-apocalyptic cannibal romance even impressing audiences overseas. And thanks to the film’s success, the duo was finally able to finance their original passion project through a combination of private investors and European Cultural incentives. This is how The City of Lost Children finally entered production.

The larger budget didn’t necessarily make things easier, however, with most of the resources going towards the construction of massive indoor sets that could house the titular seaside city. While Caro dealt with art direction, Jeunet decided to search outside of his usual talent pool when looking for a protagonist. Frequent collaborators like Dominique Pinon and Jean-Claude Dreyfus were still present here in highly memorable roles, but Jeunet became enamored with American actor Ron Perlman due to his unique physical characteristics and inimitable screen presence.

At the time, Perlman was mostly known for playing the Man-Beast Vincent in CBS’s Beauty and the Beast series (which deserves an article of its own), but The City of Lost Children became the actor’s first starring role in a major motion picture – with the filmmakers even incorporating his limited French into the story.

The finished film takes place in a dystopian city where children are being kidnapped by a cult and taken to an offshore facility. Once there, mad scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork) attempts to steal their dreams in order to combat his premature aging. When his little brother is taken by the cult, strongman One (Perlman) teams up with the orphaned thief Miette (Judith Vittet) for a rescue mission that will put them at odds with the city’s criminal underworld.

It’s certainly worth getting invested in this dreamlike story filled with enigmatic characters, but you could honestly watch The City of Lost Children on mute and still have a great time due to the sheer level of expert craftsmanship oozing out of every frame. From the anachronistic environments to the charming special effects that blend miniatures with digital matte paintings, there’s an animated quality to the visuals here that even veteran filmmakers like Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro struggle to replicate in modern productions.

Of course, it’s not just the odd designs that bring this world to life, as Jeunet also encouraged the actors to perform as if they were putting on a comedic stage show. Dominique Pinon is a great example of this, with his multiple roles as a series of identical clones, allowing the actor to show off his mastery of slapstick without breaking viewer immersion. Even Perlman is more energetic than usual here, despite his character only speaking in brief snippets of broken French and relying more on physical expression.

This theatrical quality is precisely what makes the film so memorable. While Delicatessen had its moments of over-the-top humor, The City of Lost Children expects viewers to understand that none of this is meant to be taken literally – especially when it comes to that Inception-like finale.

That being said, there is a coherent narrative to be found here if you’re willing to accept that the film operates on dream logic. In fact, the recurring themes of exploitation and economic obsession hint that the surreal story is more about society taking advantage of vulnerable populations than it is about a mad doctor literally stealing kids’ dreams.

And while it’s not quite as dark as Delicatessen (after all, that film dealt with cannibalism in a post-apocalyptic society), The City of Lost Children is still pretty grim for what could easily have become a family picture had it been produced in North America, and that’s why I think it might appeal to horror fans!

For starters, the film’s freakshow aesthetics harken back to movies like Freaks and Carnival of Souls, with the story featuring iconic tropes like hulking strongmen, conjoined twins, genetically altered freaks, and even a deus ex machina in the form of a literal flea circus.

There’s also a scene hinting at the same kind of genetic terror that would later make up the most memorable parts of Jeunet’s unfairly maligned Alien: Resurrection (which would once again see the director collaborating with Perlman). In fact, the whole mad science aspect of the film feels just as inspired by Frankenstein as it is by comic-book supervillains, with specific elements like the brain-in-a-jar Uncle Irvin reminding me of the underrated gateway horror cartoon Evil Con Carne.

There’s plenty more horrific imagery where that comes from, with the Cyclops cult members looking a lot like Warhammer’s grimdark Adeptus Mechanicus faction (and that’s not even mentioning the literal nightmares that the titular children are subjected to), but these darker elements only seem to make the intimate character moments that much more important – especially between One and Miette.

And if gamers in the audience think that some of the ideas and visuals here seem familiar, that’s probably because the movie’s sibling relationships and nautical imagery were a major inspiration for Bioshock. The game’s Little Sister mechanic was even inspired by Miette crawling around the vents in Krank’s laboratory, something that the character would also do in the film’s official adventure game adaptation developed by Psygnosis in 1997.

At the end of the day, The City of Lost Children won’t appeal to everyone (and even fans like myself have to concede that the movie is bloated and weirdly paced), but I’d argue that the film’s impeccable atmosphere and unforgettable characters have kept it fresh for the past 30 years and will likely continue to do so for decades to come.