H2O

This is just one of many art films from the DVD collection "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941" and it's from Disc 3. However, compared to the earlier shorts shown on this disc, this is actually a pretty normal art film. While I am sure that the beautiful musical accompaniment that is presented with the film was NOT used originally (since it came out in 1929--and probably was a silent), it fits perfectly. The entire film consists of many images of water flowing and they are intercut quite often--giving you an almost pulsing effect. The cinematography is quite lovely--showing the camera person was a real master of the art of film. It was relaxing and mindless--the sort of thing kids and hyper people would hate but which might make many people stop and pause. Artsy but not unapproachable to the average plebe....like me.

When it comes to water, you'd be inclined to think that what you see is what you get. We've all observed rivers, lakes, ponds and puddles; there's nothing new in the notion of a water surface reflecting and refracting light. Only an avant-garde filmmaker like Ralph Steiner could possibly have envisioned any different, and his 'H2O (1929)' is a bewildering montage of aquatic images, an inane but moderately absorbing examination of Earth's most abundant liquid, and the life-blood of all living organisms. The film starts ordinarily enough, presenting the viewer with rather commonplace shots of flowing rivers and the like, before becoming fascinated by the sprays of light reflected by the water ripples. Gradually, Steiner focuses closer and closer upon these ripples, exploring water's material nature at such close range that the liquid becomes almost unrecognisable, the shifting bands of reflected light seeming to flit across the screen like some bizarre psychedelic animation. The film takes a few too many minutes to get to this point, but, once it does, the effect is rewarding.

Exactly what Steiner is attempting to communicate about the nature of water has quite eluded to me. Those well-versed in experimental cinema can no doubt invent some obscure meaning to match the film's images, but I'm content to evaluate the film based purely on aesthetics, and, certainly, various shots in 'H2O' can only be described as hypnotic. The film, which runs around ten minutes in length, opens with four minutes of mundane water shots before we get our first reassurance that something worthwhile is unfolding. The film, which will definitely not suit all tastes – and, indeed, probably sits on the border of what I find entertaining– deserves to be seen by those interested in the avant-garde movement, particularly from an era where experimentalists and surrealists were only just finding their feet in cinema {Luis Buñuel's 'Un chien andalou (1929)' was released the same year}. Additionally, if you've ever wondered what more was to be discerned from water other than two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen, then perhaps you've found your answer.

Still photographer Ralph Steiner picked up a movie camera and created a visual documentary on water in 1929's "H2O." This 'cinepoem' consists of patterns seen through reflections of bodies of water. Steiner, a freelance photographer whose work was seen in a number of publications such as 'The Ladies Home Journal' as well as in Madison Avenue advertisements, joined a New York City film group and immediately immersed himself in the medium.

As the name implies, Steiner filmed miles of footage of water patterns, scenes such as rain water descending down a drain and larger bodies of water creating artwork on their surfaces. His moving images showed natural patterns that modern canvas artists could only dream of painting. He varied the speed of his film rate, lingering on those images he found unique by its shapes and lines.

Steiner's career bounced between the still and the moving photography. He even did a stint in Hollywood for four years before moving back to his New York City and New England roots. A close friend of his, Nathanial Dorsky, said the photographer "didn't want to make anything fancy but was an old man who appreciated life itself and wanted his film to simply show the special magic there was in our visual world in the most ordinary circumstances."

A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.

What can you say about this? It is a few minutes of water in various forms. Beautiful, yes, though without a crisp picture it really loses something. I am not quite clear on what makes it historic or why it is worth preserving over any other footage. Was there something I missed? But it does make you think about water, how important it is and how it is everywhere. Maybe someone ought to try to do this again, only with better cameras and light? Sort of seems like a precursor to Kenneth Anger... but only in the most general sense.

In the book The Immense Journey (1957) by American anthropologist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) is a wonderful quote--"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Twenty-eight years before Eiseley's book, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) created a short paean to water, a 12-minute silent film entitled "H20". He, incidentally was a cinematographer for the fine Pare Lorentz documentary, "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936).

Steiner's "H2O" film has a very brief introduction with rain the focus; it quickly becomes more abstract. Steiner is obviously fascinated by the remarkable kinetic action of water and how the motion created an endless variety of water reflections. This occupies half of the film. He then follows up with some brief textural aspects of the water, and finally ends with the effects of light on the ever-moving liquid--the shimmering, glowing, sparkling. With pattern merging into pattern, amazing abstractions appear, startling in their beauty. The film is an aquaphile's delight.

As an amateur still photographer, I've taken numerous water abstraction photos. I would love to see what a cinematographer might do with these water features in color. It's easy to envision a kaleidoscopic short which features the patterns created by reflections, the textures and the impact of light. The poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from the Leonard Cohen novel Beautiful Losers would aptly describe such an effort and does indeed describe what Steiner did in 1929.