elag

This is one of my favorite experimental films. Emshwiller has created a dynamic visual poetry in graphic black and white. It is a dance of emotion and anguish. The sound track is equally dynamic: an audio collage of power saws and heartbeats which create great tension as well as excruciating beauty.

The 1st third of the film is densely textured with text and image overlays (as in his last few films). The effect reminds me of nothing more than the collages of Tom Wesselman and to some extent the paintings of Sigmar Polke. The interactions of the many layers is quite masterful & I especially like the way that everything, including actors dialogue and plot are treated equally as texture.

Each section of the film begins with a text overlay of the scene description from the script. The full text is never on screen long enough to be read in its entirety. This reinforces the sense of story and dialogue as texture... of text as texture.

The 2nd third of the film moves away from the visual overload mode as the theme of collecting sexual fantasies (represented by the women in the harem built by the Father and Son) comes into focus. It reminds me a bit of the collage-novels of Max Ernst in that it hangs a string of reveries on the framework of linear narrative... but the narrative is really just an excuse for manipulating images.

The 3rd third becomes a bit turgid, probably because the pattern of collecting women (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...) has become obvious by this time. In fact the film shows itself for what it really is.... a catalogue of desires. It is not particularly erotic though it represents a list of fantasies... whatever the subject is, it still retains the character of a list. This has the effect normalizing the erotic. One no longer questions whether the pleasures depicted are "normal" or "perverse"... they all become equal... a decorative pattern.... in much the same way that the dialogue resembles a complex pattern more than it does naturalistic speech.

In many ways it reminds me of De Sade's "120 days of Sodom" (an old Surrealist favorite) which I also find to be as un-erotic as a list. As one of the characters in the film states: (it simply) "follows the fantasies to their logical conclusion". It seems to be more of an intellectual exercise aimed at unshackling desire... it does not seem to be aimed at provoking desire (in the viewer).

There are, however, many poetic passages. During a scene in which one of the women is shaved bald the father and son pick up clumps of hair and attempt to describe the smell:

"it smells like canaries...'

"like brown sugar taken out of a damp paper bag..." &tc.

The images are also poetic. My favorite is a japanese woman clad in a very red kimono singing nasally in front of a very blue door & next to a very pink pig.

The sons (apparent) ability to invoke earthquakes (orgasms?) is also an interesting poetic touch.

I saw the restored version which is an hour longer than the print commonly available. Lang did some amazing things with text and graphics. His great reputation for innovation is well deserved.

This film is also very funny at times... as a result of intentional exaggeration for the most part. The level of expressionist abstraction allows one to view the mechanisms of the plot at some distance... the better to enjoy the formal qualities of Lang's vision.