Cat's Cradle

Though as thematically incomprehensible as much of the director's work, in terms of the mood that Brakhage is able to cultivate, 'Cat's Cradle (1959)' is an excellent short film. The home in which the film is set is perpetually bathed in a warm, glowing ambiance, a combination of red and orange hues that suggests comfort, intimacy, love and lust. Brakhage sits against a wall, puffing contemplatively on a cigarette. Wife Jane Brakhage poses uncertainly for the camera – even in such brief flashes, she has a smile that lights up the screen. Though you wouldn't notice it on first viewing, also present are family friends James Tenney and Carolee Schneemann. But most prominent among the film's characters is a domestic cat, coloured black but always bathed in that ghostly reddish light. Rather than being an omen of bad luck, the feline instead serves as the entity that draws together the disparate elements – characters who are rarely seen sharing the same frame – into a cohesive household.

It's probably never a good idea to blend unrelated works of art, but I must admit that the Beatles' "Revolution 9" harmonised perfectly with the film's images, and even to a certain extent enhanced them. Brakhage's films often capture instants in time – prolonging, accelerating, and repeating these moments – and so creating a rhythm of disjointed time that is beautifully complemented by the nonsensical, psychedelic sound collage of John Lennon's avant-garde oddity, which makes frequent use of tape loops and backmasking. Brakhage's montage is unrelenting, each shot disappearing from the screen as often as it came, but, perhaps because he recycles certain frames on numerous occasions, the end result is neither jarring nor disorientating – that Brakhage had no intentions of telling a conventional narrative was, given his stylistic choices, certainly beneficial. The sensuality of the colour palette left me feeling rather flushed, as though I'd been sitting with an intense fluorescent light beaming against the back of my neck.

Evidently influenced by the editing techniques of Sergei Eisenstein, Cat's Cradle is a rapidly edited collection of shots of a cat and two couples in two rooms. Whatever narrative exists here is too obscure for me to grasp with four viewings, but it seems that this six minute short is more about atmosphere anyway. Some unusual camera angles suggest that at least some of the shots are meant to suggest the perspective of one of the five characters, most intriguingly the titular animal. In what would seem to be another nod to silent cinema of the 1920s, many of the frames are monochromatic: red in particular stands out in the film's color palette. Light is also used to create some interesting effects, for example at a few points bands of it roll back and forth to create a new dimension of motion on otherwise still people and objects. The various objects in the room are given as much attention as any of the animate subjects, however Brakhage is careful to keep the camera tightly zoomed in so that it's often impossible to tell where any of these objects are in relation to each other. Of particular interest to those familiar with Brakhage's other work are the shots of lighted glass items, a subject he would explore at much greater length in 1974's The Text of Light.

To me, a film like Cat's Cradle represents something fundamental in what I see as the difference between film's style and substance. This film succeeds completely by the live or die rules of style. But unlike substance, with style the sky's the limit. This is also the 'avant-garde' style of an artist, Stan Brakhage, who for the bulk of his lifetime (aside from being a film professor) has done little short films in the style of Andy Warhol, though not to compare him to him. Many of his works are based on two crucial sides, and one could arguably hold more to his true gift than the other.

One side is his gift for compositions, lighting and likewise usage of color. Scenes in this film are given a very rough, but very precise, use of reds, magenta's, burnt oranges and yellows, whites, darks, and often in strange close-ups or 'intimate' (if one could call them that) medium shots. Some of the shots are so detailed, and at the same time the other side to his style comes through- his use of montage. One could just say editing, but with a man like Brakhage, montage is really what applies, at least for this film (some of his less-than-one-minute films are even more intricate with shots, and then over like that).

It leads one into realizing why there isn't as much substance as style to the film, as it's all too immense to take in with symbols and such. Besides, who wants to focus on 'substance' when it is not only replaced but inhabited by the style? I loved the speed that was given in most of the film, and then how it went along further. It's really sensual as well with the imagery, even as it is mostly cut a cat, and it's fur, and Brakhage's wife, and so on.

In short, the film doesn't necessarily 'make sense' on the first viewing, but why carp. This is obviously the kind of grade-A underground art-film directing that likely inspired the likes of Darren Aronofsky- taking editing over the invisible line of what's traditional in montage, and trying to get the audience successfully with them.

This is a mostly average Stan Brakhage film that contains plenty of his signature trademarks: no real plot, no audio, quick editing, unique use of color, bizarre camera angles, etc. For the most part, it is quite appealing visually, due to the film's visual tone being a dark red color, which is an interesting technique. Brakhage knew how to be somewhat playful with the entire idea of cinema itself, which is why he remains such a great figure in film history.

There isn't all too much to say about this film, since it is basically just your typical Brakhage affair, it contains a lot of great visuals and editing tricks that Brakhage is famous for. If you're at all a fan of his, this film will likely interest you.