Rose Hobart

Bathing his disjointed valentine to a homegrown, third string Marlene Dietrich in purple and slapping a spicy little rhumba to the soundtrack Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart can for some beg interpretation, others, be a waste of time.

Rose seems pensive (and naturally alluring) in most of the scenes with a variety of diverse studs in jump cut, her most relaxed moment spent with a monkey. Cornell clearly has a crush on this movie queen of indeterminate title as well. I'm not certain if it is Dada or a spoof on Dada but after two viewings can conclude, a waste of time.

This short film, (apparently made by cannibalizing George Melford's East of Borneo, also featuring Linda Randolph) hand tinted the used film stock red, or variations of red, pink, crimson, etc, has hilarious and serious moments throughout, and anticipates the editing and visual effects that Kenneth Anger and Chris Marker use later. While I am tempted to think that this film could be a sexy, campy, kitschy love letter to and about the films of Maya Deren, her work is a decade later, so Cornell must have come up with these "themes" and visuals himself. Quite an achievement. See it if you can and if anything by Anger, Marker, Brackhage and other avante garde film makers appeals to you, you may find this fascinating. Melford, by the way, made quite a name for himself with his 1921 film, The Sheik, starring Valentino, and his spanish language version of Dracula, from the same year as the Lugosi/Browning version, is actually supposed to be better! So Cornell was drawing from a "known" and interesting source.

This is one of 50 films from the DVD collection "Treasures from American Film Archives (2000)". It is perhaps the strangest film as I have no idea why the film maker decided to string together all these clips of the actress Rose Hobart and then use a blue filter on them. Was he some sort of obsessed maniac or was this meant as an art film? And whose decision was it to include the bizarre and rather intense musical score? Was the original film maker or the folks at the film archive or the people who compiled the films for the collection? All I know is that the film was awfully weird and not one that the average person would enjoy. Plus, many of the clips are in very rough shape--making viewing a less than pleasurable experience.

An odd, dreamlike film cobbled together from bits and pieces of a 30s jungle-set melodrama (EAST OF BORNEO, I think) featuring the title actress. Like collage boxes that Cornell was famous for, it has a strangely haunting, yet elusive quality. Cornell strips away the original film's plot and dialogue, turning it into a fever-dream of hothouse exoticism, making even its obviously fake sets seem beautiful and mysterious.

I hate to pan a film that has been selected for placement on the National Film Registry, and I must confess my distaste for avant-garde films in general, which perhaps biased me towards a pan. But I got nothing from this film and couldn't wait for it to end. What did Joseph Cornell do merit any praise? None of the images were his. He re-edited portions of the film East of Borneo (1931) destroying any semblance of story. He projected it through blue-tinted glass. And he selected some samba music as background, again not his (although it's the best part of the movie). The result is a mishmash of meaningless images unconnected to itself or to the music. As bad as the movie East of Borneo was, I'd rather watch it than sit through this one again.