Image in the Snow

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.

"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.