A MOVIE

A MOVIE
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1994.
Directed by: Bruce Conner Release date: June 10, 1958 Runtime: 12 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $350

A Movie (styled as A MOVIE) is a 1958 experimental collage film by American artist Bruce Conner. It combines pieces of found footage taken from various sources such as newsreels, soft-core pornography, and B movies, all set to a score featuring Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome.

Why This Is An Awesome MOVIE

1. As the first of over a dozen experimental shorts Bruce Conner directed, this is a collection of found footage held together by a repurposed musical score (Ottorino Respighi's "Pines of Rome") and Conner's joke-filled editing. As it's similar to but more lighthearted than the reverential Rose Hobart, mainstream viewers have no trouble appreciating this avant-garde film.
2. Viewers of the short inevitably try to craft a story from the footage from a variety of sources (countdown leaders; title cards; a scene of a blonde from a stag film; chase scenes from a Western; a tank hurtling over an embankment; newsreel footage of race cars; air scenes involving a biplane, a pair of acrobats, and the Hindenburg; a submarine commander; a mushroom cloud; and even the Pope, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and a scene from a Jacques Cousteau underwater documentary). These individual shots initially "mean" something, and are easy to decipher. We're used to extrapolating additional meanings when a shot's spliced to another. Conner messes with our expectations, but it's difficult to reduce the short to a plot, theme, or message.
3. The short divides roughly into three sections, in accordance with its soundtrack. Each section builds on the last, after l while retaining its own character
   1. The first section seems to offer a premature climax, interleaving a chase scene from a Hopalong Cassidy western with shots of a speeding horse-drawn fire truck, an elephant stampeding, military tanks on the move, a locomotive’s spinning wheels, and 1920s- and 1930s style race cars colliding; the section ends with a spectacular mountainside car crash, capped with a title stating “The End.”
   2. The action in the longer second section slows down, in line with the more ponderous strains of the second movement of Respighi’s symphonic poem, with shots involving slow-moving aerial vehicles and activities, including a blimp, an airplane, and a pair of tightrope walkers performing high above a busy urban street.
   3. The third section begins with a long segment of black leader followed by a bewildering array of shots: bombers dropping their payloads; the Hindenburg in flames; a young African girl, shaking and apparently ill; an unexplained execution. The final sequence of the film is cryptic, as it tracks a scuba diver entering the hold of a sunken boat. Black leader follows, with a brief undersea shot of sunlight filtering through water before the film cuts to black for the last time. All of this, again, in just under twelve minutes.
4. Among the multiple ways to interpret the non-narrative short:
   • "intellectual rhythms"; Images of hope alternating with images of destruction
   • One could consider the atom bomb the "protagonist" of the short, with the director's prime motivation being to "undermine"
   • It's also possible Conner could just be filling in footage to match his soundtrack music. Whatever he improved what he borrowed is anyone's interpretation.
5. The funny title. enough said. (Despite the fact that the title is pretty generic. as mentioned below).

The Only Bad Quality

1. The title, while funny, is pretty generic.

Comments

Loading comments...