The Periwig-Maker

"The Periwig-Maker" (1999) is a claymation short set in the time of the Great Plague of London. The film was directed by Steffen Schäffler, and is narrated by Kenneth Branagh. It is based on Daniel Dafoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" which first appeared in 1722, more than 50 years after the event. It may have also been influenced by Samuel Pepys' contemporary accounts related in his diary, in which he mentions his fear of wig-makers using the hair of the dead, a theme used in this short. In those years London could not have been the safest place to live. England was just over the English Civil War when the plague started in 1665. It did not came as a surprise, as there have been many outbreaks before, but this last and biggest one demanded the life of some 100 thousand people, one fifth of the city's population. Hardly had it been over when the Great Fire of London swept over the city... It is to this world that we travel through the diaries of a wig-maker, who witnesses the events, and relates his thoughts about them. In his monologues he reveals his speculations on the feeling of death lurking around every corner and that nobody is in complete safety. In his Gothic isolation he observes the tragic fate of a girl with beautiful red hair left to certain death following that of her mother's. This starts a series of thoughts in him that slowly penetrates his own sanity...