I. Introduction and Overview
Michael Snow's Wavelength and <----> (also know as Back and
Forth) are two of the most basic yet revolutionary films ever made. And I certainly
can say this in the context of the avant garde movements. Unfortunately when I was reading
through Visionary Film by P. Adams Sitney, I was a little displeased with the
chapter dealing with Snow. It seems the film can only be discussed in context to other
films, or what the point was. Nothing about the actual film itself.
To clue in those who have not seen the movies, Wavelength is a film, 40 minutes
long in which it is basically a zoom of a room. Some events happen in the room, but mostly
it is just the camera conquering the space between one side of the room and the other. Back
and Forth is similar, where the camera pans right to left and back again in a
classroom. Sometimes there are people, sometimes there are not. The films are of course
made up of much more than this, but the basic synopsis of the films are pretty much there.
The most distressing fact about the book is that it never once brings up the trance factor
of the films. Why do we continually look at the screen? What makes us (or at least me)
intrigued? Is it because it is so different that anything we have ever seen? The book
briefly brings up "flicker" films but never expands on it. Flicker films are
simply composed of either a black frame or a clear frame, and the time and frequency
varies between them. Flicker films also have a trance-like quality to them. We become
hypnotized, captivated by the screen.
II. Our Role in viewing these films
Not only are we in a trance, but we start to see things that aren't even there but our
mind imagines, wanders. These aren't just films of somebody else's life, it involves our
own. We start making connections of what is on the screen to our own daily occurrences.
Straight forward Hollywood films wants us to escape, avant garde films are basically
against this type of fantasy world pathos. Although we are basically seeing a plain room,
our minds can bring up such ideas as paintings, windows, traffic, ovens, bookshelves, sex,
death, dinner, etc. It is more than just being bored; if we were bored we would leave or
at least close our eyes. These thoughts flood as our heads stay stationary.
One of the real thoughts that I am sure goes through most peoples mind is, "Why did
he do this?", "How did he do this?", "How long did this take?",
"How did he think this up?" These thoughts are normal, and I am taking liberties
here, but were most likely intended. Both films are about self-reflextivity and also on a
basic level are about the nature of film. Wavelength is a study of a zoom. <---->
is a study of a pan. These studies are not unlike the Musique Concrete musicians of the
thirties and the forties, but I will touch base on this comparison later. Not only are the
films a essay on camera movement and the technique, Snow also goes through the gamut of
film stocks, filters, leader, rhythm, superimposition... Just about everything you could
possibly do to film.
III. Structural aspects of the films
It is wrong to think, actually, to think that Wavelength is merely just a zoom.
The camera actually does move a few times throughout the film, it's just covered up very
well. The perspective does change from four windows to two abruptly. It also seems that
the camera has moved forward, but the zoom is still uninterrupted. Flashes between
negative and positive footage, deep coloured filters, day and night, f-stop exposure
changes are all fair game in this strip. In <----> the filters change
slightly, and so do the exposures, but is basically not as varied as its' predecessor.
Another point that should be brought out is time. Both films are always in the present,
only during the superimpositions are we a little in the future. We are completely present
there, now, even if the films were made twenty years ago. It happens, and we are there
unvaryingly with it.
Both films also have acts. Not in the traditional manner of Syd Fields and conventional
narrative, but in time. There are decernable differences between the beginning and the
middle of Wavelength. The beginning we, the viewers, are getting used to the flow
of the film. Act One consists of a person getting a bookshelf moved, sitting drinking
coffee, and listening to the radio, "Strawberry Field Forever" by The Beatles
playing. Act Two is the shifts in color and the room empty. Act Three is coming out of Act
Two, and some scuffle outside, ending with a man falling on the floor and dying
(presumably). Act Four is one of the women from Act One coming in and calling a male
friend for help. Act Five is the final section of the film as we approach a picture of the
ocean on the wall and end. Back and Forth consists of Act One, going back and
forth. Act Two has people entering the classroom. Act Three, the camera movement speeding
up. Act Four, the change between horizontal movement to vertical movement. Lastly, and
unexpectedly, Act Five, the most beautiful superimposition shots ever recorded.
IV. Sound in the Films
The sound on the tracks are also noteworthy. Wavelength assaults the viewer
with piercing tones varying in frequency over the course of time. They start at a low tone
and work their way up until the end. I only notice them start until Act Two, but it is
possible that they are present from beginning to end. They drone on incessantly as does
the film. Towards the end of the film, in Act Five, the tones glide up the scales quicker
and become much more rapidly, perhaps simulating the sounds of sirens to give us a
conclusion of the narrative. Distorted sounds gives off an eerie quality to the celluloid
it complements. "Strawberry Fields Forever" is already unnatural in sound, but
only a Beatles Fan such as I would recognize that the song is slowed down quite a bit from
the actual recording, thus adding a macabre tone to the beginning, which the viewer does
not shake off throughout the film. The scuffle off-camera perk up the viewer who by that
point is starting to wander. We start to question what is going on, is that on purpose, is
that outside the theatre, etc. In <----> the constant click of the machine
that is controlling the movement after each change in direction adds a drone quality, as
does the whirling of the Bolex, noise that reminds us of the devices controlling what we
are watching.
V. Comparisons to Electronic Music
The sound track is similar to the works of many Musique Concrete performers in spirit.
Musique Concrete is the French term for Avant Garde music, meaning "Concrete
Music", or music from everyday sounds. There were concerts in the twenties of just
pure noise as the instruments. They constructed "Noise Boxes" such as glass,
rocks, horns, etc. and would just play them according to a score. Edgar Varese was one of
the many influential figures of this movement. He would be the predecessor of the Tape
Composition techniques of the forties. In one of his pieces (the name eludes me) he played
eight gramophone tables with sounds and music recorded on them, scratching back and forth,
putting down the needle here and there, playing with the medium. Not unlike Michael Snow,
who played with the actual medium of film, calling attention to the make up of it.
Soon after Varese's important work, was the tape composers, such as Pierre Henry. I have
recently bought a compact disc of two of his works, the first being very important in the
history of music, "Variations Pour Une Porte et Un Soupir" (Variations of a Door
and a Sigh) where various manipulations of a squeaky door are explored in very imaginative
and inventive ways with the use of a tape recorder for forty-eight minutes. The
similarities are obvious.
The most important about this movement in modern music, besides it is deemed annoying by
most who don't appreciate it, is that it first was a result of contemporary music and the
opposition to it, to break the rules, to explore. Second, many of it's pieces were studies
into the process of making music, the nature of sound and its' complexities.
VI. Narrative Insights into the Films
What makes the films better than simply exercises in film are the narratives that can
be thought up by the viewer from what is presented. The movies are open to interpretation,
unlike some of the films by Ernie Gehr, such as the one where the focus changes and
reveals that we weren't looking at a road of a stream, but snow falling in front of a
wall. Snow films could be about anything and I am sure that I am missing out many of the
possibilities, but that is for the individual to decide. In an interview by Simon Hartog
about Wavelength, Michael Snow, has some interesting things to say:
Simon Hartog: "What is it about?"
Michael Snow: "It is about question one. Yes. Question one.
Also question two, four, five, six and seven. And
question three perhaps most."
Simon Hartog: "Why does life enter the film?"
Michael Snow: "Life is in the film. One of the subjects of the
film ore perhaps more accurately what the film is
is a 'balancing' of different orders, classes of
events and protagonists..."
Simon Hartog: "Aren't the beginning and the end arbitrary?"
Michael Snow: "They are the beginning and the end of the film.
And in between? Where do you start? If you
decide to make a film at all that narrows down
your choices considerably..."
(From Cinim No. 3, Spring 1969)
As we can read from the answers, Snow intentionally leaves the film open to
interpretation, and expects interpretation. One by Manny Farber was that it was a
document of a room in which a dozen businesses have lived and gone bankrupt. On first
viewing of the film, I thought it was about the emptiness of life, symbolic of the room,
and the beginning is birth, red and then image immediate and abrupt. The events are new to
the viewer, childhood, and then non-existent from then on, adulthood. Death then, and us
going into the abyss (the waves), with what should be in focus after all our expectations
very clear, the end. I was in a bad mood. Now I see the film in many different
connotations. Is it about what a wall would see if he/she was alive? The perspective of a
canotonic man in a wheel chair?
It really could be about anything. It does however, have the importance of sight
inherently in it. The film is really about perception. Do you think the inhabitants really
noticed the room as we did? Did they contemplate why the photo of the sea is there. David
Sterritt, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor, brought up the point that
the room is enclosed but the photograph is open and endless. Is the film about the
struggle for freedom? Is that why there are women who work in the room? Is that why she
calls her boyfriend (?) instead of the police? Why is the song placed there? A song about
the return to childhood. Is this what a child would see in a room? Is the film about
drugs? Is that why the ultimate psychedelic song is place on the soundtrack?
On second viewing, I thought the film was about fear. Fear is a man's best friend, they
say. I was scared. At two points in the film a man appears in the windows, First time in
the flesh, when the film is in its' negative state, second time as a reflection. I stared
into those unblinking and unemotional eyes. Was it the man who died? Why was it there!? It
was obviously deliberate, it wasn't like the hand we accidently see in one section which
held the filter on the camera, that reflection was put there! It still makes me feel real
creepy just thinking about it.
As for Back and Forth, I have only viewed the film once, but perhaps it is about
confusion. It might have to deal with the confines of walls, and us wanting to break free
as the characters do by going outside the classroom. Or is it a comment on the educational
system in general, perpetually enforcing rules, and behaviors that are anti-social. Men
break out into fights, people don't really speak, the one real character who does can't be
heard (also a woman), a cop looks in the window and makes sure everything is okay, the
professor talks to the crowd as a collective whole, and not as individuals. Their actions
are repetitious, lifeless.
VII. Importance in context to the time
The relevance of the two films are enormous. One critic put Wavelength on one of the
top ten films of all time. OF ALL TIME. That is not something that should be considered
lightly. The film came at a point in history when revelation and non-conformity was not
only a current trend, it was in vogue. There are roots traceable in Snow's work, the most
apparent comparison is to Andy Warhol, who films were simply tableaux of action or
composition. Such influential pieces were Sleep (a man sleeping), Empire (a
shot of the Empire State Building over a span of time), Eat (A man eating), Blow
Job (A man receiving fellatio, shot from the neck up), etc. One concept, one shot,
really long projection time.
Another comparison that can be made is to Stan Brakage. A quote from Metaphors on
Vision by Brakage shows the relevance, "My eye, tuning towards the imaginary,
will go to any wavelengths for its sights." Dog Star Man, or the longer The
Art of Vision, tries to simulate the minds' eye through rapid editing, out of focus
shots, and a bombardment of images. The similarity is that of the attitude. Vision.
Allegorical meanings happen in an instant in the films of Brakage, they take an hour or so
in Snow's films. Both revolutionized the concepts and boundaries of film.
Art reflects the times and culture of the civilization. Such films could have only been
produced either with support or in anarchistic revolt to the infrastructure. This time it
was both. There was a great struggle between conservativists ideologies and youthful
ideals. Who won is besides the point. The era was filled with experimentation, of all
types; politically, sexually, ideologically, socially, artistically. Some of the most
intriguing music ever was created during this period and everything was being
revolutionalized again and again. The seeds were planted many years before... nobody
expected any of them to germinate, let alone most of them.
Feelings of change on a large scale was felt in the mid to late fifties with the birth of
rock 'n' roll, the finalizing of the 'cool' movement in jazz, the bravery of Lenny Bruce,
the appearance of the beatnik. The arts are always receptive to the change in viewpoint,
and early on in this shift avant garde filmmakers came to their own. With the works of
Christopher MacLaine, the boundaries of film were starting to be undone. The idea of
structure, which originated with the father of film, David Wark Griffith, were on the
whole, limited to only the classical narrative film, and to tell a story, or perhaps no
story, one had to conform to this unspoken set of rules. MacLaine steers off this path in
his early work, The End, where six lives are introduced to us the day of the
apocalypse. He separates these sonnets with black leader, and narrator tells us all about
the people, in an unusually, free-flowing way.
Avant-Garde films from that period seem to stick with a straightforward narrative, albeit
very different then contemporary films; Guns of the Trees by Jonas Mekas, The
Flower Thief by Ron Rice, Little Stabs at Happiness by Ken Jacobs, etc. The
movies were pushing the boundaries of story-telling using the cinema. Very creative, and
very beat-like. The beats seem not to want to remove existing structures, just change and
alter them. The films were innocent, simple, and strange for most tastes.
When Brakage really came on the scene, however, all was re-evaluated again. Film could be
something more than a story teller; it could be abstract and yet still convey points. What
a complex idea! Most abstract paintings evoke moods, or perhaps calling attention to
style, colour, texture, etc. However, if Brakage was a painter, he would have a line
represent early man, the line after it representing civilization, and the other line
representative of ideas on the manufacturing of swiss cheese. Intelligence of his stature
is always felt, but perhaps not recognized by many except artists. Brakage, though, did
not disrespect the elder artists that he drew influences from, such as MacLaine who he
tried helping out before ending up in a mental institution, respectfully and lovingly
detailed in his own book, Film at Wit's End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers.
We fast-forward up to 1966, where there is a film that seems to precursor Wavelength,
All My Life by Baillie, just as Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys precursored Sgt.
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The film is simply a pan, very slowly,
and slowly tilts up to the sky. It isn't very long, but the composition is very pleasing,
but the inherit meaning that we extract into the film, is a feeling of calm, and
reflection on our lives, why do we run around so much and never appreciate nature. Life.
Not bad for three minutes of celluloid.
VIII. Ideas that perhaps would have made the films even stronger
I enjoyed the films, let me get that clear, but there are perhaps a few points I would
like to make before concluding that perhaps would have made the films even better. One
little point of Wavelength is perhaps it could have been a little longer, it is a
little rushed towards the end, or at least to me. Snow agrees with me on this point in an
interview with him I have read. He thinks a little more time would perhaps make more of an
impact. Perhaps. Also, I was toying with a little idea. What if at the end of the room,
instead of the picture of the waves, there was a picture of the room from the beginning of
the film, and it repeats all over again? How many more possible narratives could be drawn
from that?
With <---->, I thought that the up and down section, besides being very hard
to watch (my theory is we read left to right, so our eyes are stronger seeing the pans
in that direction, but up and down, we have trouble focusing because we don't constantly
move our eyes up and down...), isn't long enough to complement the other section. The
mood changes so quick between the two movements, viewers would perhaps forget the feelings
stirred.
IX. Concluding thoughts
Any piece of work not only reflects the artist, it reflects the times as well. Any
great work of art will sustain through any time, and will not seem dated; it will endure
forever. Snow's films will endure, and they are as fresh today as they were then. They are
just as surprising. Just as mind-boggling. Just as beautiful. Both films are beautiful.
The composition is aesthetically pleasing. The colour is reflective. The movements are
exciting. Wavelength and Back and Forth are incredible. Think about it. How
many films have you seen consist of basically one shot, one movement, hardly any action,
and can still seem to keep your attention? How many films do you know don't appear dated
one bit? How many films do you know can make you feel with out any real story happening?
Can any film make you feel the coldness of a room. The staleness of the air. The touch of
the chair. The feel of the blackboard. Like you have been there. Like you can always go
there. I'm sure that in tens of years I will still remember that chair. The texture of the
paint on those windows. Can Jurassic Park do that to you? Can you get that
emotional about any film you have seen recently?