Films: Geography of the Body, The Mechanics of Love, Visual Variations on Noguchi, The Potted Psalm, The Cage, House of Cards, Christmas U.S.A., Adventures of Jimmy, Interim, Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection, The Way to Shadow Garden, The Extraordinary Child, Rebus-Film No. 1, The Fall of the House of Usher, Pacific 231, Arriere Saison, Venom and Eternity
Kino International K537 (2 DVDs, 17 films)
Video: 4:3 full screen B&W
Audio: PCM mono
Extras: On-screen film notes by critic/historian Elliott Stein; Original scores on some of the silent films
Rating: ***
This set and its earlier volume are taken from the Raymond Rohauer collection of experimental cinema. The first volume seemed to have more well-known and perhaps more enjoyable experimental films, but it must be remembered that any program of shorts such as this is going to have some cherries and some prunes. Many of the films were originally silent and not one of these filmmakers had sync-sound equipment, so there is no speaking by any of the actors. All shot in black and white since color was too expensive.
There are two early films from poet/filmmaker James Broughton and four from Stan Brakhage, who was sort of the Beethoven of experimental cinema. I was a member of the experimental film coop in the San Francisco area which continued the pioneering work of Broughton and Sidney Peterson seen in three of these films. Back then I would watch almost anything and find it interesting, but now I’m less forgiving of some of the crudities of cinematic self-expression and there’s no shortage of them here. Geography of the Body of 1943 is a landmark avant short which uses a travelogue description on the soundtrack while the on-screen images are closeups of various parts of a nude body. Broughton & Peterson’s The Potted Psalm doesn’t always live up to its great title, but must have been great fun for them to shoot. It was surprising to see not one but four different films from Stan Brakhage, and all of actors in some sort of story line. All I was familiar with previously were his very abstract later films, attempting to capture what he termed “closed-eye vision” – one using moth wings laboriously glued direct to the film.
One of the two films from 1928 is also a classic – The Fall of the House of Usher is influenced by German expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and makes repeated use of the few special effects which could be done cheaply with B&W 16mm film, attempting to achieve what would later be called psychedelic effects. Pacific 231, with its shots of a steam engine trip thru the French countryside cut to the mechanistic rhythms of Honegger’s piece of the same title, was a disappointment compared to the impact it had on me when seen in grade school. The music track is terribly distorted – sounds like a Russian film of the 30s. You can see a more complete version with a higher-fidelity soundtrack on YouTube, along with several other videos inspired by Honegger’s music – including one using HO model trains! (A budding filmmaker should really shoot a new color/widescreen version cut to a new surround sound recording of the music. Would probably show views of countryside in the U.S., since France is all super-modern-vitesse trains now, no steam engines.)
The piece de resistance of the second DVD is supposed to be the 111-minute-long Venom and Eternity, which cause a riot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951. I can understand why – I almost rioted myself trying to watch it! Filmmaker Jean I. Isou walks the Paris streets in the first part of the film while on the soundtrack we hear an exchange he had at a cinema society passionately espousing his very contrary manifesto of film aesthetics. Then we see footage evidently in keeping with his manifesto – images cut in upside down, images scratched and painted over with pen, streaked footage showing something wrong with the camera’s shutter, etc. There is also dialog about Isou’s bumpy relationships with a couple of girls. When the narration gets around to speaking of what went on in bed, you see only an empty bed. An amazing cinematic testament of self-indulgence. The DVD is said to feature 34 minutes of footage never before seen in the U.S. Well…
– John Sunier
