Image in the Snow

"Image in the Snow" can be found in the DVD collection entitled "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema: 1922-1954: Vol. 3"--a collection of very unusual films that probably would hold little interest to the average viewer.

The film begins in darkness as the narrator reads a poem. Then, abruptly, you see images of a man sleeping, some snow and a guy climbing down from a water tower (which is in slow-motion). Then, out of the blue, a guy in Speedos appears in front of the man who came from the tower and the camera seems to focus a lot on the Speedo-guy's crotch. He appears and disappears as if by magic and soon others appear and disappear as well--one of which dances about and another is a woman dressed like a princess. It's all filmed in New York--on top of a tenement building and in the apartment where you see the sleeping man from time to time--as well as when this man takes a trip through New York late in the film. The total package looks like a home movie by someone who has thoughts of becoming an artiste--which is pretty much what this is. If unusual art film are your bag, man, then by all means give it a look. However, to me there just wasn't enough of interest in this one to make it stand out in any positive way--as I do, occasionally, enjoy an experimental film. Also, people who are phobic of snakes should probably skip this one, as inexplicably, a snake appears rather randomly in the movie.

Willard Maas directed the all-time classic GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY, my personal favorite among the experimental films that I saw in the '60s when first exposed to avant-garde cinema. This later work was apparently disliked in its day, but holds up extremely well decades later.

Burdened by a heavy narration track, which styles it as a "film poem", I found concentrating on the visuals to be highly rewarding. The young hero's journey through urban landscapes has a definite homo-erotic overtone, complete with crotch shots, male dancer and a body builder on display. Recurring vertigo image of movement at the bottom of a "well" alley-way space between buildings is cryptic but highly suggestive.

There's endless symbolism here, including a princess bringing an urn, containing a dove, Marie Menken as the hero's mother, and even a strange trip aboard an el train. Hero eventually arrives at a cemetery, soon covered by a snowfall, and the statuary there raises plenty of religious imagery, as well as Biblical connotations, with an urn containing a snake this time. Downbeat ending is de rigeur.

The beautiful black & white vistas of vintage Manhattan are lovely to see, and I detected an influence upon subsequent experimentalists, even showing up in the hetero (subsituting Uta Erickson for the hero) porn opus of the Amero Bros., BACCHANALE.