William Eggleston and the Real World

Standard Oppertating Procedure - Errol Morris

Moving Midway

Experiments and Sound

The first thing we hear upon entering any film studies course is the theory (that is assumed by theorists to be about as much of a theory as the theory of evolution or relativity). Eisenstein was almost as obsessed with the film-as-language idea as he was about montage. It then makes sense that he would assume that montage was the answer to all the world’s communication problems: if all the world could learn the language of film, than we would have universal mutual understanding. According to him, this worked – at least in the “developed worlds.” At that point, though, film was strictly visual and the language would have to change with the introduction of sound:

“Sound used [as an unimaginative imitation of the “dramas of high culture”] will destroy the culture of montage, because every mere addition of sound to montage fragments increases their inertia as such and their independent significance; this is undoubtedly detrimental to montage which operates above all not with fragments but through the juxtaposition of fragments.” (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov “Statement on Sound,” 316)

Eisenstein feared that adding this other dimension to our ability to process filmic language would create among the viewers a false expectation of reality from film as well as ruin the universalizing capabilities of film. Rather than easily exchangeable inter-titles (which he also disliked) separating montage sequences, there was now audible language to segregate audiences by their language. He was, of course, correct in these fears: the invention of sound and, later, color destroyed the film language as he knew it. Not only was it now easier to understand, that world looks at least a little like ours.

Experimental film does not play along with this game. If you will permit the comparison: Experimental film is to Hollywood what Jackson Pollock is to Michelangelo. What’s truly bizarre about film history (as apposed to art history) is that what you think of as typical film techniques are all conformed experiments from the art house cinema. Yet artists still turn to the experimental. In class, I hear a lot of people asking “Why would you try? I think it is because you can comprehend a completely different layer of meaning

Whether or not you understand the ideas, you do leave the theatre with a message – the same way you would understand the general message seeing a couple fight on the other side of the tracks in Grand Central Station with the sounds of the subway raging in your ears. If you become curious, you can easily glean more simply by paying more attention. As for narrative: the main difference is not the lack of narrative but the lack of a guide into, through, and out of a distilled story that is, in some sense, meant to be representative of real life. Rather than emulate life and provide commentary through the emulation, experimental film to examine pieces of film.

I think one main difference lies in the level of your ability to identify with what you are seeing. Because most experimental film does not take into account continuity conventions such as shot-reverse-shot sequences, the viewer does not become sutured into the film. Because of this lack of continuity, the viewer imagine itself to be lost in a twilight zone of film, where the idea of floating among clocks and doorways in space is just as good as any because you have no frame of reference.

I personally like the lack of an overt frame of reference. Though I often find narrative films comforting and beautiful and I like them very much, I find that they are too didactic for my taste. While no form of artistic expression can be void of some sort of guide – from basic compositional concerns to a straightforward narrative voice over – experimental film has the loosest of frameworks. You are then free to decide for yourself where you stand and how to look at the imagery yourself. No p.o.v. will attempt to force anything onto you, but rather, images will exist for your contemplation. On that note, I will leave you with a quote from Trinh Minh-ha’s interview “Framer Framed” about sound’s place in the lack of viewer placement.

 

“I do think that silence has more to offer than just being disquieting or disorienting. It suspends expectation (music usually tells you what to expect) and is necessary as a moment of restfulness of pause, just like the black spaces in the film.” (Trinh Minh-ha 227)