Film Culture (Winter 1955)

tions exhibited. His love for a place in which he lived (Sausalito) and his poetic sensitiveness, to interpret here and there the ordinary in extraordinary scenes, changed the ‘“quasi-documentary” character of the film and made it a poetic essay, a model and new form for “city” films. Neither Walter Ruttmann in Berlin nor Sucksdorff in Stockholm tried such an approach. In all his films, even in the commercials, he made this poetic gentleness (not to use the word “love”), which characterized him, come through. But considering all his endeavors I would still insist that what made him unique was the victorious battle he led for the recognition of the experimental film as an art form. The task of offering to the American audience the experimental film as a new film form in order to further its understanding—a feat attempted by Miss Iris Barry, curator of the powerful Museum of Modern Art in New York—was tackled by Frank single handed with the generous and intelligent help of Dr. Grace L. McCann Morley, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Art. The result was manifold: —A challenge in the form of a book Art in Cinema, 1947. It’s the only one of its kind in the United States; it’s a program for an advanced audience and a historical document offering a survey of the fundamental ideas and the growth of the experimental film, expressed by the people who had developed these ideas and by a new generation who gave them a new impetus. —An uninterrupted series of film showings, which not only introduced the experimental film in San Francisco and the West Coast but proved that San Francisco had a big and undiscovered audience which filled the big 600 seat auditorium in the Museum for many repeat-performances. In that way San Francisco became the center of experimental film showings. When Frank drove me over there from Hollywood in 1948, after the opening of Dreams .. ., I met at the Fisherman’s Wharf—and in private homes—artists, writers, film makers, and a climate that made me feel as if I were in Paris and at home. Maybe this friendly climate shaped Frank’s character but most certainly his quiet consideration, his love for the neighbor helped to shape the climate. . —The printed documentation, Art in Cinema, plus the fact that he created an audience to back it up, has, in my opinion a great deal to do with the astonishing growth of the experimental film movement in the United States. Maybe the time was ripe, but I do not remember anybody else, who went to the trouble of doing anything about it. Frank did it because he loved it. And because his love was so sincere he was trusted: the Museum and the audience trusted him, and so did the artists who gave him their films and collaborated with him. It was exactly this climate of mutual trust that stimulated young people to dare and to produce films. San Francisco became not only the center of experimental film showings but also of experimental film making: it gave us Stauffachers, Broughtons, Harrirgtons, and others. Im Im ges The last time I met Frank in 1954 he came to my apartment in New York to discuss a plan which I had in mind: to recommend him as my successor, as the Director of the Film Institute at the City College. It was to no avail. He was then already a very sick man, I realized that soon. We discussed his next series of film showings with Hollywood directors at the San Francisco Museum and our attitude to the commercial film— “We want to learn from them, even if they don’t want to learn from us.”” And he too was doubtful about the position I offered him. He wanted to wait and see how his health would develop. It went against his grain to do things hastily or half-heartedly. When I wrote him again, half a year later, his wife Bobbie answered, Frank’s pretty and courageous companion. Frank was back in the hospital—dying. He was, though, much too hasty to leave us. We all lost a noble friend and the greatest helper the non-commercial, experimental film maker had in this country. His memory should be honored.