Film Culture (Spring 1964)

many of the shots which have been seen are cut together very quickly. I can’t say that I knew consciously that I was going in the direction of single frames. It would be a lie. RB: Does your editing technique now rely on single frames? Is that the essence of your trying to establish a new narrative form? GM: I’m not trying to establish it in the sense —I hope you don’t mean it in a sense where I hope that everyone will be using this technique. RB: No, I mean as a personal — GM: As a personal thing I more or less find it established very strongly in my work. Certainly after Twice a Man. In the new project, Prometheus I hope to go many steps beyond that, but that of course is a very natural thing to do, now that I know those single frames will work. There was a time, I guess about a year and a half ago, I was very uncertain that I could use these single frames. I made some tests at the studio of Charles Boultenhouse. He’s the film maker of the beautiful film, Dionysus. And we had run the single frame variations and they looked very, very good and it had been done in the camera. It was a very tiring way of doing it. I would photograph one frame and then photograph the next frame and go back and set up again, but I discovered that it was very, very difficult to keep everything in the exact composition for each frame that I had to repeat, so I finally decided the only way I could do it was through a system of A and B rolls, but I wasn’t certain at the time that the single frames would go through the project-ah, the printer. However I’ve discovered that they do go through safely enough. I was worried about the psychological affect on the audience — all these flashing frames, but in the creative processes, which to me is more or less intuitive, I discovered as I spliced — you see I spliced, edited all of Twice a Man without ever knowing if the system of single frames was going to work out or not. I just began, started at the beginning and went to the end and waited with great anticipation to see the first section that was sent by Western Cine to me. RB: I get the impression that the single frames would be a lot less effective in black and white than in color only because they’d be more striking in color which also raises the point of are you ever going to work in black and white again or will you always work in color? GM: I have only once worked in black and white — you see I began a film called The Dead Ones which I dedicated to Jean Cocteau back in 1949. I think most of that footage is still in California somewhere at Consolidated Film Studios. Then I made another film called Perpetual Mourning which the Film-Maker’s Cooperative releases. To answer your question, I think that black and white single frames would be just as effective as single frames in color. You have just as many variations in black and white — that is you should have — as you have in color. You have all kinds of whites and all kinds of blacks. Unhappily in most films today, certainly in the commercial field, they make films so quickly that the technicians aren’t patient enough to try and register these various greys, blacks, and whites the way the great Stroheim and the magnificent Sternberg did in their work. RB: Since your film Twice a Man has justly been awarded at the Brussels Festival, it’s a timely subject, so I'll think of a few questions to ask you about that. I found that — I don’t know if you were conscious of it — your hero, Paul, seemed to be alone most of the time, but it seemed, sort of, that the backgrounds seemed to be cluttered. Did you try for a contrast in this? GM: I’m not sure I understand this. I don’t deliberately try to clutter my backgrounds. It’s like, — how can I explain it to you? For instance, if I’m filming tomorrow morning I always say to my actors or non-actors: “Be sure to arrive on time whether it’s raining, snowing, or the world is coming to an end. We will film.” I accept the day as it is, the light and so forth. I do the same thing with my locations. A few days ago I was doing a sequence with the young dancer, Bob Alvarez, doing the role of Narcissus and dancing on a frozen lake and I had never visited this town house where we were filming. When I saw it, I immediately saw certain objects — this fantastic doll that moved her arms, a phonograph player, and so forth. There was a map and immediately things fitted into place for me. I had done so much research for the Prometheus project that when I saw this enormous map I said, “Good Heavens, this map can be photographed and Narcissus can be in front of it and I can intercut it with the travels of Io, because Io comes from the far reaches of the World. She travels through Egypt in the original Aeschylus.” That is the way my mind works. So when I see a setting, I place it and I limit it and place my people into it. I do not consciously or unconsciously clutter it. RB: I see. That’s the way a lot of exterior FILM CULTURE 7