Film Culture (Spring 1964)

One of the spectators’ excuses in not understanding the films of the New American Cinema is overand under-exposure of the images, or out of focus images. Once and for all the word overexposure, under-exposure, in focus, out of focus becomes the prerogative of the individual filmmaker. To understand their films this must be made a prime maximum. Once this principal idea is understood by the motion picture spectator he will recognize why the sun of inspiration shines upon the hands of the film-makers. Why their eyes are moonlit. New exposures, new focusings, new portrayals are the challenges which the film-makers are both confronted with and confronting their spectators. The film-makers will use outdated motion picture film, they will overexpose, under-expose, go out of focus, pull the camera from the tripod and go beyond parallax, respect the human body in all its beauty or ugliness, and thus introduce their separate souls: true film-makers as opposed to the commercial filmmakers. These differences which the film-makers have discovered are as real and essential to the spirit of experimentation, and to the spirit of man as any proposed journey to the Moon or Mars. Indeed, the arrival upon those planets may well be very close, that is similar, to the keys, in seeming fantasy, discovered and suggested by the filmmakers. In this lies a kind of uncanny greatness of the art of motion pictures. That is why I often in the past have publicly and privately referred to film as an art containing eternity. I would venture to suggest that what we believe to be real in the medium of the theatre is not real at all. Further, I would venture to suggest that only in the motion picture as an art form and that means, immediate and continued experimentation/ creativity/inspiration while at work, is there the truth of what we enjoy naming Reality. If we speak of the motion picture as the realm of fantasy, it is only because of a misconception in our present human mind’s imagination, which realizes the motion picture as fantasy, when in truth it is beyond fantasy and reality. An over-exposure or an under-exposure is like a painter mixing his colors. It is like the ancient poets who knew how the effect of a passage could be enriched by introducing into it a phrase or turn of speech which stirred in the ear of the spectator a train of emotional association. A scratching of the film is like the scratches that may be found in paintings which are called masterpieces. Rembrandt’s “Christ with A Pilgrim’s Staff” contains such scratches, on the very shoulder of Christ. Just as a poor surface or canvas may be used by a painter, just as a cheap note book may be used by a writer, just as ordinary clay may be used by a sculptor, so too any materials that a film-maker may utilize for his own work. In the end it is not the materials that reveal the spirit of the artist but rather the soul of the artist is revealed by the contents of the film. These contents may be as vastly different as a painting by Redon, a vase of flowers by Margareta Haverman (16th century and reminiscent of the colors in Jack Smith’s new motion picture Normal Love) or the latest work of Salvador Dali. The film spectator in his desire to understand the film-makers may extend his generosity even further: he may recognize that as in the other arts which he understands or has learned to understand, that the film-makers may be preoccupied with light or a kind of light, and in this sense the exposures of his material affected. The film-maker, like every artist, presents a different performance for the spectator. The film-makers handle their equipment, their materials with the same precise pressure that a pianist touches the key of his piano, or the slightest light or heavy stroke of the sculptor’s chisel. The very affection, interest or disinterest with which a film-maker holds his camera or moves the head of his tripod on which the motion picture camera is attached becomes a part of the work of his art. These gestures create the different types of work in the arts, and it is no different when applied to the medium of motion pictures. From place to place, from person to person, from state to state, from body of water to body of water, the films of the American film-makers are being shown and created. A Charles Boultenhouse works as if in a temple; a Jonas Mekas works as if on the brink of the first flight of man moving his camera as if it contained a million sounding eyes at once; a Jack Smith and a Ron Rice work from opposite poles, both with flood lit rooms not unlike those in Hollywood, i.e. flood lit as if they were sitting on the sun; a George Landow works in silence; a Kenneth Anger works in a spider’s net of American myth; a Marie Menken works as if night were day; and, a Stan Brakhage works in the medium’s purest light, for one has only to recall the exquisite Mothlight. So it is! FILM CULTURE 5