The Three Worlds of Nick

Directed by

John Paizs

Country

Canada

How it feels

Three short films follow a silent man named Nick through different movie genres. In each one he never speaks. He gets into odd situations that match the style of the film he is in.

deadpanquirkysilent-comedy styleepisodicwhimsicallow-key

What happens

The Three Worlds of Nick is a Canadian anthology film, comprising John Paizs's short film trilogy of Springtime in Greenland (1981), Oak, Ivy, and Other Dead Elms (1982) and The International Style (1983). The films all starred Paizs as Nick, a "quiet man" who never speaks in any of the three films, but is placed in very different scenarios which each represent a different genre of film; Paizs described the character as "a Buster Keaton-like character in the sound era", and named him after Ernest Hemingway's recurring semi-autobiographical Nick Adams character. The films were originally conceived as a feature film, but as a novice filmmaker Paizs had difficulty securing the funding to make a feature, and instead made each part as a standalone short film before they were exhibited in their entirety as The Three Worlds of Nick in 1983. The trilogy has also sometimes been considered to include Paizs's 1980 short film The Obsession of Billy Botski; although named differently, Billy Botski in that film was still portrayed by Paizs and had some character traits in common with Nick, and the film shared some thematic and stylistic connections with the official trilogy. A screening at the 1984 Festival of Festivals, under the title Three by Paizs, included The Obsession of Billy Botski while excluding Oak, Ivy, and Other Dead Elms; when The Three Worlds of Nick was released on DVD by the Winnipeg Film Group in 2016, it included The Obsession of Billy Botski as a bonus film in addition to all three of the official Nick films. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Springtime in Greenland (1981)
• Oak, Ivy, and Other Dead Elms (1982)
• The Obsession of Billy Botski (1980)
• In and Out (1989)
• The International Style (1984)
• Shorts in Motion: The Art of Seduction
• Migration (2014)
• Nocturnes (1988)