A Movie
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''A Movie'' (styled as ''A MOVIE'') is a 1958 experimental
collage film Collage film is a style of film created by juxtaposing found footage from disparate sources. The term has also been applied to the physical collaging of materials onto film stock. Surrealist roots The surrealist movement played a critical role i ...
by American artist
Bruce Conner Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas.His well- ...
. It combines pieces of found footage taken from various sources such as
newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...
s, soft-core pornography, and B movies, all set to a score featuring Ottorino Respighi's ''
Pines of Rome ''Pines of Rome'' ( it, Pini di Roma, link=no), P 141, is a tone poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. It is the second of his three tone poems about Rome, following ''Fontane di Roma'' ...
''. The film is recognized as a landmark work in American experimental cinema, particularly as an early example of found footage. ''A Movie'' was inducted into the
National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...
in 1994.


Content

''A Movie'' opens with its longest shot, an extended production credit with Bruce Conner's name. After the opening credits, the countdown leader is interrupted by a shot of an undressed woman removing her stockings. Once the countdown completes, an intertitle falsely announces "The End" of the film. The film moves into a montage of cavalry, tanks, race cars, and a charging elephant. Another false ending precedes footage of zeppelins and tightrope walkers. In one well-known sequence, a man in a submarine looks through a periscope to see a woman posing in a bikini, leading to the launch of a torpedo and a mushroom cloud. This leads to water sporting accidents and racing mishaps. As the musical score swells, a succession of violent scenes ensues, including aerial bombings, the ''Hindenburg'' disaster, and firing squads. The film closes with a scuba diver exploring a shipwreck.


Background

Bruce Conner developed the concept for ''A Movie'' many years before he began working on it. He was inspired early on by a battle scene in the
Marx Brothers The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute (AFI) ...
' '' Duck Soup'' that builds a montage from stock footage. He envisioned a film combining images and sounds from many different movies and, when watching movies, often imagined possible sequences that could be created from them.Conner 2010, p. 93. Conner and
Larry Jordan Lawrence Jordan (born 1934 ) is an American independent filmmaker who is most widely known for his animated collage films. In 1970 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to make ''Sacred Art of Tibet''. Legacy '' Our Lady of the Sphere'', inspire ...
began the Camera Obscura Film Society during the late 1950s. Conner was interested in the
film leader A film leader is a length of film attached to the head or tail of a film to assist in threading a projector or telecine. A leader attached to the beginning of a reel is sometimes known as a head leader, or simply head, and a leader attached to the ...
used by projectionists that went unseen by the audience. He had a filmstrip given to him by writer Lee Streiff which showed a nude woman, and he thought about inserting the strip in the countdown leader at a Camera Obscura screening of ''
Triumph of the Will ''Triumph of the Will'' (german: Triumph des Willens) is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his n ...
''. When Jordan found out about the plan, he threatened to quit the society. Conner decided that the only way for him to carry out this vision would be to insert such a sequence in a film of his own.


Production

Jordan showed Conner how to edit film and offered him the use of a Griswold film splicer. Describing cinema as "a rich man's art form", Conner looked to store-bought footage as an economical alternative to shooting original material. He purchased a condensed Hopalong Cassidy western, a short novelty film called ''Thrills and Spills'', a Castle home movie containing German propaganda, and a newsreel compilation titled ''Headlines of 1953''.Zimmermann and MacDonald 2017, p. 172. Conner primarily worked in assemblage at the time, and he originally planned to use the film as part of an installation piece. The installation would fill a cube into which people could walk. The film would have no soundtrack; instead, the installation would play the film as a loop with sound coming from tape players, radio, and television. However, Conner was not able to fulfill his original vision. The cost of a rear projection machine for the installation was prohibitively expensive. He decided to make the film a stand-alone work and edited the segments together using a radio to time them. During one editing session, Respighi's ''Pines of Rome'' came on the radio and synced well with the ending. ''Pines of Rome'' had been used ten years earlier by
Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...
for his avant-garde short film ''
Fireworks Fireworks are a class of low explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a large number of devices ...
''. Conner made a recording from the first, second, and fourth movements and added the music to the completed image track. He was unsure how to clear the rights to the music and used the recording without authorization. He completed the film on a budget of $350 ().


Release

''A Movie'' premiered June 10, 1958, at the East and West Gallery in San Francisco. It was part of a reception for Conner's first solo art show. Shortly after, the film was acquired for distribution by
Cinema 16 Cinema 16 was a New York City–based film society founded by Amos Vogel. From 1947-63, he and his wife, Marcia, ran the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history, at its height boasting 7000 members. Histo ...
in New York. When local distributor
Canyon Cinema Canyon Cinema is an American nonprofit organization for distributing independent, avant-garde, and artist-made films. After starting in the 1960s as an exhibition program, it grew to include a nationwide newsletter and a distribution cooperative. ...
emerged in the early 1960s, ''A Movie'' was one of its more well-known offerings.


Legacy

At its 1960 Creative Film Awards Presentation, the Creative Film Foundation gave ''A Movie'' an Award of Distinction, with
Michael McClure Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous ...
describing its comedy "not sa free laugh but the reconstruction of human depth, achievement and emotion". It has gone on to be recognized as a landmark piece of avant-garde cinema. In 1994, ''A Movie'' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Filmmaker Peter Hutton has cited ''A Movie'' as an influence on his work. Artist
Christian Marclay Christian Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records ...
first saw the film as a student, and it influenced his own practice of appropriating materials and establishing new connections between them.
Alan Berliner Alan Berliner (born 1956) is an American independent filmmaker. ''The New York Times'' has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet... full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, ...
's 1985 film ''Everywhere at Once'' uses ''Pines of Rome'' for its soundtrack in an homage to ''A Movie''. Jennifer Proctor remade it in 2010 as ''A Movie by Jen Proctor''. Her digital remake follows the original nearly shot for shot, using footage downloaded from
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
and LiveLeak.


See also

*
List of avant-garde films of the 1950s This is a list of avant-garde and experimental films released in the 1950s. Unless noted, all films had sound and were in black and white. References {{Filmsbygenre Avant-garde 1950s The 1950s (pronounced nineteen-fifties; commonly ...
*'' Blonde Cobra'' *''
Rose Hobart Rose Hobart (born Rose Kefer; May 1, 1906 – August 29, 2000) was an American actress and a Screen Actors Guild official. Early years Born in New York City, Hobart was the daughter of a cellist in the New York Symphony Orchestra, Paul Ke ...
''


References


Bibliography

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External links


''A Movie'' essay by Kevin Hatch on the National Film Registry website
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''A Movie'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry
A&C Black, 2010 , pages 550-551 {{DEFAULTSORT:Movie, A 1950s avant-garde and experimental films 1958 short films 1958 films 1958 directorial debut films American black-and-white films Collage film Films directed by Bruce Conner Films without speech Non-narrative films United States National Film Registry films 1950s English-language films 1950s American films