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Un Flic is a masterpiece and Melville's best film-- no one has ever agreed with me on that last count, but it will definitely be on my list.

I do not understand why zedz or anyone else loves the Hired Hand, which aesthetically and narratively seems to be a greatest hits collection of the worst traits in 70s American cinema.

The Mother and the Whore also stars the beautiful Bernadette Lafont, Truffaut's old girlfriend as well. I like Santa Claus has Blue Eyes better, but this is a good one, though I haven't seen it since suffering through a ratty double VHS copy years ago. Shame his descendants seem determined not to let this see the light of day

Trilogy of Terror won't make my 70s list but it made my Horror List and I will def speak up in its favor-- look at how the first two segments twist feminist thought and precepts in order to undermine the traditional readings. I completely disagree with your assessment that Karen Black in any way delivers anything less than three (four?) of her best performances. So, yeah, I'm one of those rampant defenders, and it's not because I saw it on TV when it first aired, as I would have been negative eight years old.

And Colin, no, I haven't seen the Sleuth remake and don't remind me that I want to, I've already spent an ungodly amount of money this month on all the assorted internet sales making the rounds!

Domino, I didn't accuse Black of poor acting. In fact, I think that she was the best aspect of the film. Looking back, I see why you interpreted it that way. I meant to say that her characters did not fare well, since three out of the four

Spoiler

die

I've seen a number of horror anthologies from the 70s (Tales from the Crypt, From Beyond the Grave, etc.) and I honestly found the stories here to be the weakest of any of them. I wouldn't say that it was a complete failure, but aside from Black, there just wasn't much to recommend. I saw the twists in the first two films coming from a mile away, so by the time that they occurred the impact was non-existent. And the fetish in the third segment was just downright laughable as the killer. I think that it was about a scarey as the evil Krusty the Clown from The Tree House of Horror. That being said, my hair would probably turn white if I ever saw something like it coming at me.

I also had no idea that Eustache's estate was holding up his films. All three of his works that I've seen were unofficial releases. I really hope that someone can talk his family into releasing the rest. He was such a talented film maker.

bamwc2 wrote:Vertical Features Remake (Peter Greenaway, 1978): This faux documentary from Greenaway charts four attempted reconstructions of footage shot by Greenaway's fictitious ornithologist Tulse Luper. Since critics find fault with each attempted construction, shown here as "vertical features" like trees and fence posts while numbers are read off, no version of the film is considered successful. While I enjoyed the back story that Greenaway had constructed for the film (the questions of whether Luper was a mere figment of the film society's imagination struck me as a particularly intriguing thread that I wished had been pursued), the actual remakes were monotonous. I know that there are some posters that hold this film in high regard, and although I absolutely adore some of Greenaways 80s and 90s output, I simply didn't understand what he was up to in this film. I'd love to hear from one of the film's defenders who can explain to me what I'm missing here.

I think that is kind of the point - the way that the researchers are placing their interpretation of the footage that the departed Tulse Luper had left behind and that their various versions of the 'vertical features' are meant to play in a kind of unsatisfying, monotonous manner. It is a kind of satire on bureaucratic organisations, especially those presuming to make art or decide on which kind of art is 'proper' or 'correct', which usually ends up moving further and further away from anything like the truth of the matter. It is also an Rashomon-like exploration of 'eye of the beholder' approaches to interpretation, and the use of so many assumptions about original intent involved in the remakes - while it couldn't really be said that any of the researchers produce a definitive work that explains what Tulse Luper was originally intending, each of their interpretations is interesting and kind of beautiful for the way that they have approached the various 'remakes' of the footage left behind. It makes the researchers into another kind of audience, inspired into action and appropriation of the material themselves by the absent artist. Who is to say that they are right or wrong? (Although it also seems to be a satire on structuralism theories of film criticism that we apparently in fashion at the time and pushing those theories to logical extremes. Ironically in terms of the content of Vertical Features Remake structuralism seems as if it ends up not being able to see the wood for the trees!)

Vertical Features Remake and the way that most of the remakes get pursued to the bitter end, is a hallmark of Greenaway's career: people following their obsessions in a vain attempt at understanding or ordering the world, with the results not being very revelatory and usually resulting in the inevitable end: death. One of the other shorts, A Walk Through H, is almost a literal version of that journey, but the same idea recurs through the features from A Zed And Two Noughts moving through the decomposition of more and more complex organisms until getting to human beings, to Smut's counting game in Drowning By Numbers, even to the various books written on flesh in The Pillow Book.

This might seem like a bleak worldview, but in a way it isn't, as people willingly pursue this avenue almost as a way of passing time in their lives before the inevitable, and if that is the way that they choose to live, order and make sense of their world, who is to say that they are wrong? (The Pillow Book is slightly different in the sense that it involves the theme of betrayal, grief, revenge and eventual acceptance through following the process of the creation of the 'books' through to their bitter end)

This also has to be seen in conjunction with Greenaway's magnum opus The Falls (and presumably the later Tulse Luper Suitcases films, though I still haven't had a chance to see those yet), or even something like Dear Phone, which is muddling up the idea of a film running from beginning to end, with the end being the most important and revelatory part of the piece of work. The Falls is structured as a kind of encyclopedia, dictionary (or telephone book) describing the fates of 92 people and as such the last name on the list doesn't 'explain' what came before, but instead the entries through the entire film can be cross referenced together for deeper resonances. In that sense, just as the final Vertical Features Remake is just as valid, or invalid, as any of the others, there is no 'happy' or 'unhappy' ending to The Falls, just many possible variations on an event for the viewer to leaf through.

If you want another variation on the same theme, just with an apocalyptic environmentalism theme and a Vanessa Redgrave narration (she's the equivalent of the researchers in the Greenaway film) added in then I would recommend checking out Patrick Keiller's Robinson In Ruins, which really seems to bear a strong Vertical Features Remake influence (more so than the previous two films in the Robinson trilogy had done).

colinr0380 wrote: I think that is kind of the point - the way that the researchers are placing their interpretation of the footage that the departed Tulse Luper had left behind and that their various versions of the 'vertical features' are meant to play in a kind of unsatisfying, monotonous manner. It is a kind of satire on bureaucratic organisations, especially those presuming to make art or decide on which kind of art is 'proper' or 'correct', which usually ends up moving further and further away from anything like the truth of the matter.

Exactly, and seeing the film today one feels forced to think of it as a satire on all the restoration projects on now, but as these were practically non-existent at the time, Greenaway couldn't have had these in mind. But if you go through the actual text narrated, you will find that basically everything that has to do with making a film is mentioned at least once, be it the actual filming, the cutting, the making of dupes etc. So I think Greenaway is reflecting on filmmaking itself here, or some assumptions that go along with it. As Greenaway and his collaborator Michael Nyman were both very interested in what was going on in the American musical avantgarde at the time (Nyman even wrote a book about it and coined the term 'experimental music' in the process), there's certainly an influence from John Cage's theories about the indeterminacy and changeability of a work of art in here, something that is not normally possible with film, which we think of as a fixed, unchanging entity once it's cut. The four versions of "Vertical Features" are Greenaway's demonstration that you can make equally valid versions of the same material, which still in a way remain the same work of art. This had indeed great influence on his later work, culminating in "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" which are just one part of an ever-changing and ideally ever-expanding art project involving contributions from the 'audience', too.

And I don't think the four "Vertical Features" realisations are monotonous; they're just minimalist in the sense the early music of Steve Reich or Phil Glass (or indeed, Nyman's) was at the time. And Nyman's score is very vital for the film, there are small variations which follow a pre-described pattern and it's quite fascinating to follow it like a game which you'll know will end at a certain point (after 11x11 occurences); this is also similar of course to the strategies employed in "Draughtsman" and "Drowning by Numbers". Also, I find those images quite beautiful...

But I can see where you come from, bamwc2. I once taught a class on Greenaway and showed VFR in the first meeting, after "Windows". While everything went well with that film, the groans started once the students got the idea that VFR wasn't finished after the first version of "Vertical Features", intensified considerably in the process, and the discussion afterwards was...well, let's call it "lively" In any case I managed to reduce the number of participants of the course considerably with that film, so here's a suggestion if anyone feels that their class is somewhat overcrowded...

Tommaso wrote:And I don't think the four "Vertical Features" realisations are monotonous; they're just minimalist in the sense the early music of Steve Reich or Phil Glass (or indeed, Nyman's) was at the time. And Nyman's score is very vital for the film, there are small variations which follow a pre-described pattern and it's quite fascinating to follow it like a game which you'll know will end at a certain point (after 11x11 occurences); this is also similar of course to the strategies employed in "Draughtsman" and "Drowning by Numbers". Also, I find those images quite beautiful...

It also needs to be appreciated in the context of experimental film of the early 1970s. People like Chris Welsby and William Raban (both of whom have DVDs out from the BFI) were making exactly the same sort of films as the fictional Luper, combining an interest in natural scenery with rigorous structural procedures. Greenaway's framing narrative acts as a lightly satirical commentary on the sort of zealous purism that characterised this work, much of which emanated from the London Film-Makers' Co-op (see also the more abstract films of Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, Lis Rhodes, etc).

At the same time, he was clearly influenced by the ambitious encyclopedic approach of Hollis Frampton, who positioned himself in an American modernist lineage. (Now that there's a Criterion set out, everyone should watch Zorns Lemma.) It was the same sort of brash ambition - perhaps more celebrated in American than British culture - that would go on to make Greenaway persona non grata in both avant-garde and commercial circles.

(I seem to have dropped out of the lists project, but, having voted for Vertical Features at No. 4 last time round, I felt compelled to chip in here.)

Is the Wellspring release of Fox and His Friends in OAR? Rented it from the library and the 1.33 is a bit odd.

Thank for the Greenaway help, guys. I think that I have a much better appreciation of what he was up to. For what it's worth, I reviewed the Chris Welsby BFI release here. Perhaps I was a bit too kind to it at the time since I honestly don't *get* this style of film making. I had the same problem when I watched Michael Snow's Wavelength last year, a film that had no narrative whatsoever. I sat through the whole thing, but felt like it was a colossus waste of time.

Re: Domino's treatment of Bugsy Malone. I'm in complete agreement with everything you say. There's no real point to the gimmick, but there are some songs (especially Jodie Foster's "My Name is Tallulah", the pen ultimate number "sung" by Scott Baio at the soup kitchen, and the song the ends the final pie fight) that I haven't been able to get out of my head a year later. However, I have had a strange theory about the ending that I'd like to test out here.

Spoiler

In the film, getting hit with a pie is treated as the equivalent as dieing for 9/10ths of the film. The rat in the opening sequence is chased down and "killed" by pies with his lifeless body lying there motionless covered in whip cream. Throughout the film, Fat Sam's gang gets picked off with pies and become unavailable to him. His last thug, Knuckles(?), accidentally shoots himself with a pie and goes through a drawn out death scene. In each and every case, when a person gets pied, he or she is immediate gone from the movie and treated as dead. This makes the end pie fight seem very strange by comparison since being hit with a pie appears to have no consequences here whatsoever. What's going on? Notice that Blousey and Bugsy are the only two that escape cream free from the massacre by hiding under the table and then running for the exit to drive away to their new life. No one else leaves. Is everyone else dead? When the piano player begins belting "You Give A Little Love", does this signify a move to the afterlife where they all realize the ultimate wrongness of what they've done and hence drop their weapons or am I just reading way too much into a silly film?

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia (1970) (Unavailable)
Notes Towards an African Orestes (1970) (R2, Extra on BFI's The Decameron
Le mura di Sana'a (1971) (Available on Youtube)
The Decameron (1971) (R1 Criterion, R2 BFI)
The Canterbury Tales (1972) (R1 Criterion, R2 BFI)
The Arabian Nights (1974) (R1 Criterion, R2 BFI)
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) (R1 Criterion, R2 BFI)


Pasolini began this decade with a pair of documentaries. According to the imdb, there was a third in 1972, Document on Giuseppe Pinelli, which chronicled the life of the Italian anarchist murdered by the police. While this undoubtedly sounds like the sort of figure that Pasolini, a dyed in the wool Marxist, would have made, my understanding is that his involvement was very minimal. Regardless, it's unavailable from anywhere that I'm aware of so I won't comment on it any further. Similarly, despite sounding fascinating, Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia seems to have fallen off the face of the planet. Le mura di Sana'a features the director's opinion on Yemini architecture (he provided the a similar look at fascist architecture in Pasolini e la forma della città). While beautiful, the documentary seems like a footnote in the director's career. Far more substantial is his Notes Towards an African Orestes, which concerns his trip to Africa to craft a film version of the story of Orestes. If this aborted attempt were successful, perhaps we'd be discussing his Greek trilogy (along with Oedipus Rex and Medea). Instead, we just have this behind the scenes look that gives us a peek into Pasolini's mind while scouting a location. The action is capped by a delirious jazz number back in Rome and a well deserved negative appraisal of his idea by a group of African students studying in Italy.

Pasolini's Trilogy of Life marks a major departure from his previous films of the 1960s. While he was interested in Greek classics, his attention changed to the earthy tales from the medieval period. He also abandoned the idea of trying to situate his characters in a modern context (which apparently would have been taken to the hilt in his proposed Orestes), and instead fully embraced the world of the literature that he adapted. The weakest of the series is also its first one, The Decameron, which finds the director testing out his new approach. Some of it doesn't work, but enough of the material hits to make viewing worthwhile. The Canterbury Tales finds another tonal shift with Pasolini playing both Chauser himself and going for a much more comedic approach to material. This sort of could prove disastrous in another director's hands (see, for instance, the Pasolini-penned Bawdy Tales), but comes off pitch perfect here. The trilogy ends with its best film, The Arabian Nights. The best scenes here have the sort of ethereal and dreamlike qualities found in his Greek films of the previous decade. His work captures the mythos behind the anthology, and feature some of the most heart rendering aspects that Pasolini ever set on film.

If the Trilogy of Life were a philosophical statement on life and sex, then the nihilistic Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom marked a complete rejection of those ideas. The copious nudity in the trilogy was treated as natural, erotic, and oftentimes humorous. Here the similarly constant nudity is degrading, a way of dehumanizing the fascist's victims. There is nothing erotic about the nude forms here, and if you do take sexual gratification out of what's on screen, then I don't think that I'd like to know you. As has been well documented in the literature on the film, Pasolini had grown tired of life when he made this. Mired in more than just a deep funk, the director intended for this to be his extended middle finger to the world. It's brutal and difficult to sit through (though not nearly as hard as the atrociously written novel that it is based on), but definitely worth it. The film is without a doubt one of the strongest statements of dissatisfaction and the dehumanizing aspects of fascism ever made.

Thanks for the round-up, bamwc2. I'm not as much in favour of Canterbury Tales as you are, as even in Pasolini's own hands the treatment is too bawdy for my taste and doesn't really do justice to Chaucer's tales; I'm also almost a bit annoyed about the extreme roughness of the editing in places. That said, there are of course some poetical moments, and Pasolini as Chaucer is wonderfully endearing. But still, the film is behind Decameron (which isn't a complete masterpiece either, but an engaging and beautiful film) and certainly not on the level of the magnificent Arabian Nights.

However, I completely agree with your words on Appunti per un'orestiade africana. It's one of the most fascinating documentaries I've ever seen, in the way how his words and his voice on the soundtrack are really evocative of those scenes that he had planned to film, combined with images of the African world which seem to express the story - given in words only - nevertheless in a perfect way. I also like how Pasolini is not afraid to show the non-approval of his ideas by those African students the words of whom effectively tear his very Western idealization of so-called 'archaic cultures' to shreds. I'm pretty sure those students wouldn't have approved of Arabian Nights either, but I'm glad that he clung to his ideas and made that enchanting dream of a film...

bamwc2 wrote:I had the same problem when I watched Michael Snow's Wavelength last year, a film that had no narrative whatsoever. I sat through the whole thing, but felt like it was a colossus waste of time.

This quaint attitude is sort of adorable, but, in the case of Wavelength, 'no narrative' is incorrect.

Honestly I don't think any film can be said to have 'no narrative'. No story perhaps, but the very fact of montage and how it exists within time forces a narrative on the rationalizing brain (though I haven't seen anything by Snow).

I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

Robert Altman

M*A*S*H* (1970)-Fox BD RA
Brewster McCloud (1970)- Warner Archive DVD
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)- Warner R1
Images (1972)- Pulp Video R2; MGM R1 OOP
The Long Goodbye (1973)- MGM R1 OOP; MGM R2
Thieves Like Us (1974)- MGM R1
California Split (1974)- Sony R1 OOP
Nashville (1975)- Paramount R1 OOP
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)- MGM R1
3 Women (1977)- Criterion BD RA
A Wedding (1978)- Anchor Bay R1
Quintet (1979)- Fox R1 OOP; Fox R2
A Perfect Couple (1979)- Fox R1

Robert Altman, certainly had one of the most prolific--if not consistently great--filmographies of the decade. This was the era that he pioneered his signature overlapping dialogue and interlocking ensemble stories. The former was nothing short of a breakthrough when it was used in M*A*S*H*, his darkly comic adaptation of Richard Hooker's novel about the depths that a group of surgeons will go to in order to survive the insanity of the Korean War. The film has undoubtedly lost some of its once grand reputation in recent decades, but it still stands out as one of the highlights of early 70s cinema. His 1975 film Nashville was equally revolutionary in use of interlocking stories with ensemble casts. With the possible exception of Short Cuts, nowhere is this better done than in Nashville. However, if forced to choose his best film of the decade, that honor would not go to either of these two. Instead, I would go with his adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye. Here Eliot Gould plays Marlowe as shlub stuck in an investigation of which he has no control over. Altman fires on all cylinders here and there are almost no imperfections in it. Truly marvelous. McCabe & Mrs. Miller also stands out as one of Altman's best of the decade. Starring Warren Beatty in the first of the two titular characters (the marvelous Julie Christie plays the other), the film pulls no punches in its analysis of love and violence in early western settlements.

Altman also had a number of films that, while good, were not masterpieces. Probably the best among these is his mysterious 3 Women, which chronicles the relationship between the loquacious Shelly Duvall and the more reserved Sissy Spacek as the two feed on each other in a very disturbing way. Duvall also co-stared in his Thieves Like Us with fellow Altman vet Keith Carradine. Carradine is part of a trio of depression era bank robbers in this sometimes comedic crime drama. The film works well, but is nowhere near his best. I'd also say the same for the surreal Brewster McCloud which stars another of Altman's discoveries, Bud Cort, as loner living in Houston's Astrodome while planning self-controlled flight. Although the film is too quirky by half, there still a lot to love in it and Cort in his prime is always worth a spin. California Split certaily has its defenders here, but its always struck me as minor Altman. It’s certainly worth seeing, but never felt like anything more than the sum of a few great sees and a lot of uninspired ones to me.

Though Altman had a number of misses in the 70s, the only one that stands out as an abject failure is Quintet. Starring Paul Newman as futuristic arctic nomad, the film is about a game that makes absolutely no sense. Newman tries his best, but nothing works right here. Newman's other collaboration with Altman this decade, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, was nowhere as bad Quintet, but is still ultimately a failure. Presenting Buffalo Bill as an egomaniac who uses Sitting Bull for profit, the film never progresses beyond its desire to show Bill as a buffoon and leaves you wondering why it exists at all. Images stars the recently deceased Susannah York as a schizophrenic housewife whose fear over her own hallucinations leads her to violence. While York does a marvelous job here, Altman relies so much on the "is it real or only in her head" cliche through the film that by the end I no longer cared. Of all of the misses in this section, this is the one that comes closest to squeaking by. Although both A Wedding and A Perfect Couple are both competently made, these "comedies" have too few in laughs in them and come off as more boring than anything else.

zedz wrote:I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

Say what? All I remember is a camera in a corner of the ceiling with virtually nothing occurring. Am I thinking of the wrong title? Oh, crap. I must be. Sorry, I could have sworn that it was a Snow film that I was thinking of. What was it?

bamwc2 wrote:

zedz wrote:I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

Say what? All I remember is a camera in a corner of the ceiling with virtually nothing occurring. Am I thinking of the wrong title? Oh, crap. I must be. Sorry, I could have sworn that it was a Snow film that I was thinking of. What was it?

Wavelength is the film where the camera slowly moves across an apartment to close in on a photo on the opposite wall. Though it moves inexorably forward, the imagery and 'camera movement' is rather unpredictable. In the meantime, some extremely dramatic stuff is happening inside the apartment, even though the camera-eye has other things on its mind. This is where the narrative comes in.

zedz wrote:I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

I suppose so, but I feel even with something like Black Ice there's an intellectual and/or emotional arc that one experiences from the film. This I think comes through even more clearly with films like Zorns Lemma where the structure really does ask one to rationalize and process the film in terms of motifs and 'representational characters'.

Tommaso on Vertical Features Remake wrote:Also, I find those images quite beautiful...

I should second this too and one of my favourite of the remakes is the one where they try to group different seasons of imagery together with the theory that this might have been one of Luper's intentions! The (occasionally wonky) centred symmetrically of the image with the vertical feature breaking up the frame also seems to prepare for the symmetrically composed images of A Zed and Two Noughts.

We should also put in a word for the quite beautiful natural (in addition to the musical notational stings in one of the remakes) soundtrack as well with the carefully placed sounds of birdcalls or overflying jet planes coming in at certain strategic moments. Those intricate soundscapes feel like where the Intervals influence carries over (although I also wonder whether the, so far unseen by myself, Goole By Numbers would bear some comparison too).

knives wrote:

zedz wrote:I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

I suppose so, but I feel even with something like Black Ice there's an intellectual and/or emotional arc that one experiences from the film. This I think comes through even more clearly with films like Zorns Lemma where the structure really does ask one to rationalize and process the film in terms of motifs and 'representational characters'.

Oh, I agree, but I think it's important to be able to distinguish between certain kinds of films, and if you use the word 'narrative' to include films that don't have 'stories', with 'plots' and 'characters', you muddy that distinction. I prefer to talk about those kind of works in terms of structure and development. And a lot of abstract and structural films are far more carefully constructed than mere narrative films.

zedz wrote:

bamwc2 wrote:

zedz wrote:I think 'non-narrative' is a fair-enough label for truly abstract films like Black Ice or Particles in Space, or truly structural works like Zorns Lemma or Seven Days (which is nevertheless entirely predicated on linear progression through time), but in Wavelength Snow goes out of his way to incorporate a dramatic narrative into the work, so I think it's a miscategorization.

Say what? All I remember is a camera in a corner of the ceiling with virtually nothing occurring. Am I thinking of the wrong title? Oh, crap. I must be. Sorry, I could have sworn that it was a Snow film that I was thinking of. What was it?

Wavelength is the film where the camera slowly moves across an apartment to close in on a photo on the opposite wall. Though it moves inexorably forward, the imagery and 'camera movement' is rather unpredictable. In the meantime, some extremely dramatic stuff is happening inside the apartment, even though the camera-eye has other things on its mind. This is where the narrative comes in.

No, I'm definitely conflating it with something else. I just watched the first few minutes of Wavelength and it's not what I'm thinking of. The one in my mind featured no humans and no talking. Just a camera panning back and forth. It was he equivalent of watching color security camera footage.

bamwc2 wrote:The one in my mind featured no humans and no talking. Just a camera panning back and forth. It was he equivalent of watching color security camera footage.

That sounds like either Standard Time or <—> (aka Back and Forth).

zedz wrote: Oh, I agree, but I think it's important to be able to distinguish between certain kinds of films, and if you use the word 'narrative' to include films that don't have 'stories', with 'plots' and 'characters', you muddy that distinction. I prefer to talk about those kind of works in terms of structure and development. And a lot of abstract and structural films are far more carefully constructed than mere narrative films.

Well I agree with your explanation of your agreement. Semantics work for once I suppose.

Matt wrote:

bamwc2 wrote:The one in my mind featured no humans and no talking. Just a camera panning back and forth. It was he equivalent of watching color security camera footage.

That sounds like either Standard Time or <—> (aka Back and Forth).

Thanks Matt, but that's definitely not it either. Like I said no cast, and no change in speed, though there were likely some zooms. I'm a bit embarrassed at this point, and I don't see this conversation going anywhere productive. Perhaps we should move on and allow me to wallow in my ignorance.