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Wavelength (1967 film)

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Wavelength
A still of the loft from Wavelength
Directed byMichael Snow
Written byMichael Snow
StarringHollis Frampton
Roswell Rudd
Amy Taubin
Joyce Wieland
CinematographyMichael Snow
Edited byMichael Snow
Music byTed Wolff
Release date
  • 1967 (1967)
Running time
45 minutes
CountriesCanada
United States
LanguageEnglish

Wavelength is a 1967 experimental film by Canadian artist Michael Snow. Shot from a fixed camera angle, it depicts a loft space with an extended zoom over the duration of the film. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema,[1] it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967,[2] and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film",[3] calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."[4]

Wavelength is often listed as one of the greatest underground, art house and Canadian films ever made. The film has been designated and preserved as a masterwork by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.[5] In a 1969 review of the film published in Artforum, Manny Farber describes Wavelength as "a singularly unpadded, uncomplicated, deadly realistic way to film three walls, a ceiling and a floor... it is probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence."[6]

Synopsis

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The entire film is set inside a loft with four mullioned windows and few furnishings—a desk, a yellow chair, and a radiator against the far wall, with some photographs hanging above the chair. Starting from a wide shot of the loft, the image gradually zooms in on the wall over the course of the film. A woman in a red coat directs two men to place a bookcase against the left wall, and they leave. Later, she returns to the loft with another woman.[7] One turns on the radio, and the image takes a pinkish hue as the women drink beverages and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" by the Beatles before leaving abruptly.[8] When the image cuts briefly to a solid red screen, a low-pitched hum begins, gradually increasing in pitch until the end of the film. The image of the loft returns, shifting in and out of its negative, monochrome colors, or a blank screen.[9]

The sound of breaking glass is heard before a man staggers into the loft and dies, collapsing on the floor. As the zoom progresses, his corpse is cut out of the frame.[10] After some time, a woman arrives and makes a phone call to a man named Richard. She tells him about the dead body she found and agrees to wait outside. Once she leaves, silent images of her previous actions are superimposed.[11] The camera continues to zoom toward the photographs on the wall, two of which show graphics of a walking woman and another showing waves.[12] The hum from the soundtrack, now very high-pitched, becomes unstable and resembles the sound of a siren. The picture of waves is enlarged until it fills the entire frame. The film ends when the photograph comes out of focus and the image fades to white.[13]

Cast

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Production

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Pre-production

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Snow's production notes before Wavelength show variations on the concept of an extended zoom from a wide shot to a close-up.[14] The film emerged from an exercise playing with combinations of words, clustered around "room", "wave", "length", "Atlantic", "time", and "ocean".[15] Snow's ideas for the final close-up included a photograph of a "beautiful blond white nude girl", a window, a picture of Billie Holiday, a Tom Wesselmann painting, a photograph of a child, or a calendar featuring an autumn landscape.[14][16] Snow settled on a photograph he had taken of the East River, part of a series made for his sculpture Atlantic. He selected the image for its calm and undramatic qualities.[17][18]

Snow cast the film from his circle of friends. He selected Amy Taubin because of her previous acting experience in a Broadway adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Hollis Frampton volunteered to appear in the film after Snow asked for "somebody to die for me".[19]

Snow spent a year preparing notes and looking for a space to film.[20] To prepare the loft for filming, he placed the photograph of the East River on the far wall of the room.[17] Above it, he attached a pair of photographs of women walking, along with two silhouettes depicting a walking woman. The silhouettes are a design that he had created in 1961 for his Walking Woman series, which involved recreating the shape in different media and materials. Its inclusion in Wavelength marked the end of the project.[21]

Filming

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Wavelength was filmed at 300 Canal Street (left, pictured in 2012).[22]

Shooting happened in a loft on Canal Street, over the course of a week in December 1966.[23][24] Snow borrowed the camera he used from filmmaker Ken Jacobs.[20] He mounted it on a high platform from which it could capture more of the street scenes outside.[25] The distance from the camera to the opposite end of the room was around 80 feet (24 m).[26]

Because the 16 mm camera could only record 3 minutes of footage before needing to be reloaded, Snow divided the film's runtime into about 18 segments and marked the positions of the zoom lens for the start and end of each segment. The scenes were shot out of order, with Frampton's death scene recorded first to accommodate his schedule. For the final scenes showing the wave photograph, Snow had to physically move the camera from its original position, having reached the limitations of the zoom lens.[27]

He shot on multiple types of film stock to produce changes in the light and grain in the image.[28] These included Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Kodak color negative, Agfachrome color reversal, DuPont black-and-white reversal, and Ansco stocks. Snow experimented with expired film, as well as film intended for outdoor lighting.[29][30]

Soundtrack

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For the film's soundtrack, Snow initially considered increasing the volume in an extended crescendo. After deciding a glissando would be more suitable, he developed plans to record it on a trombone or violin and mix together multiple takes to fill the duration of the film. Ted Wolff, who worked at Bell Labs, was interested in the project and suggested using an audio oscillator.[31] Wolff worked with Snow to build a motor that controlled the oscillator.[32]

Snow had intended to make use of whatever sync sound was recorded during filming but made an exception for the music on the radio. During the original shoot, Joan Baez's cover of "The Little Drummer Boy" was playing. Feeling it did not fit well in the film, Snow replaced it with "Strawberry Fields Forever", which had just been released when he was editing the film.[23][33] Snow initially mixed the soundtrack such that the sync sound was on the film's optical soundtrack and the electronic glissando was on a separate reel-to-reel tape. This would give him the ability to adjust the tape playback based on the acoustics of each screening venue.[19][30]

Release

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Director Michael Snow (pictured in 2013)

Wavelength was first shown at a private screening at the Film-Maker's Cinematheque attended by Shirley Clarke, Richard Foreman, Ken Jacobs, George Kuchar, Jonas Mekas, Nam June Paik, and Amy Taubin.[34] Mekas recommended submitting the film to the Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival [fr] in Belgium. However, Snow expected the separately recorded soundtrack to prove challenging for wider exhibition and decided it would be better to transfer the score to the film's optical track. Since Snow lacked funds to finish the film, Mekas secured the money to create the print.[19]

Snow submitted Wavelength to the New York Film Festival but was rejected.[32] Artist Richard Serra brought a copy of the film while traveling across Europe, exhibiting it a dozen times. When he screened it at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a group of enraged audience members knocked over the projector.[35][36]

Snow did not release Wavelength for home media, preferring that it be screened on film in a cinema.[37] In discussing the shortcomings of digital projection, Taubin emphasized the importance of presenting the various film grains of Wavelength and the difference in "visual cues through which we read space".[38] As of 2024, a restoration of the 16 mm print is being overseen by John Klacsmann, archivist at Anthology Film Archives.[29]

Analysis

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The primary structure of Wavelength is defined by its zoom. Over the course of the film, the angle of view narrows, making the far wall appear closer and closer. This experience cannot be recreated with the human eye and is unique to the mechanical eye.[39] Annette Michelson proposed that Snow's use of the zoom "produces the formal correlative of the suspense film."[40]

With Wavelength, Snow seeks to balance "fact" with "illusion".[24] The soundtrack incorporates both representational sync sound and the abstract electronic sine. Images of movement are often balanced with changes in how the viewer perceives the room. The entry of the dying man is preceded by fluctuations in the color of the image.[25] The scene of the woman making a phone call is shown twice, the second time through a superimposition over the continuing zoom.[41]

In his 1969 article "Structural Film", film historian P. Adams Sitney identifies a shift within avant-garde cinema away from complex forms and toward "a cinema of structure wherein the shape of the whole film is predetermined and simplified, and it is that shape which is the primal impression of the film."[42] Analyzing the emerging structural film movement, Sitney highlights Wavelength for its use of a fixed camera position in defining the shape of the work.[42]

Where Sitney describes structural film as a "working process," Malcolm Le Grice finds the film's approach to durational equivalence "seriously wanting", in that the "implied…narrative [makes Wavelength] in some ways a retrograde step in cinematic form".[43] To Stephen Heath, the principal theme of Wavelength is the "question of the cinematic institution of the subject of film" rather than the apparatus of filmmaking itself.[44]

Critical reception

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The screening of Wavelength in 1967 was, according to filmmaker Jonas Mekas, "a landmark event in cinema."[23] The film won the Grand Prix at the 1967 Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival in Knokke, Belgium.[45] Film Culture magazine presented Snow its 1967 Independent Film Award.[46] In a 1968 Film Quarterly review, Jud Yalkut describes Wavelength as "at once one of the simplest and one of the most complex films ever conceived."[32] In a 1968 L.A. Free Press review of the film, Gene Youngblood describes Wavelength as "without precedent in the purity of its confrontation with the essence of cinema: the relationships between illusion and fact, space and time, subject and object. It is the first post-Warhol, post-Minimal movie; one of the few films to engage those higher conceptual orders which occupy modern painting and sculpture. It has rightly been described as a triumph of contemplative cinema.'"[47]

Legacy

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Considered a canonical avant-garde film, Wavelength's 45-minute running time nevertheless contributes to a reputation for being a difficult work:[48]

[G]iven the film's durational strategy, we feel every minute of the time it takes to traverse the space of the loft to get to the infinite space of the photograph of waves—and the fade to white—at the film's end. The film inspires as much boredom and frustration as intrigue and epiphany....[48]

Wavelength is part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.[49] The film ranked 102nd in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made, and also received three directors' votes.[50] It was named #85 in the 2001 Village Voice critics' list of the 100 Best Films of the 20th Century.[51] The Toronto International Film Festival's experimental film section Wavelengths, created by programmer Susan Oxtoby in 2001, takes its name from the film.[52]

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Wavelength established a template for many of Snow's later films, which critic J. Hoberman characterizes as "anti-illusionist, reflexive, and often paradoxical investigations of cinema's unique, irreducible properties."[53] Snow has grouped it with <---> and La Région Centrale as trilogy of "camera motion" films.[54] His photographic slide installation Slidelength features images from Wavelength alongside objects used in its production and other related images.[55] His 1976 Breakfast (Table Top Dolly) is a parody of Wavelength, in which a single tracking shot across a breakfast table shows the contents being physically displaced by the camera.[53]

In 2003, Snow released WVLNT (or Wavelength for Those Who Don't Have the Time), a shorter and significantly altered version, on DVD.[48] WVLNT transforms the original film by breaking it into three 15-minute segments that are superimposed.[37] Snow's treatment is satirical, condensing the original "for the viewer who inevitably is in a hurry because all the world's info is pressing to be seen."[56]

Wavelength was an early influence on minimalist composer Steve Reich, and his 1970 recording of Four Organs uses the film's closing photograph for its cover artwork.[57][58] Anthony McCall has detailed how descriptions of Wavelength influenced the development of his 1973 work Line Describing a Cone, pointing to "the possibility that a single idea can define the essential outline of an entire film."[59][60] James Benning's 1978 film Grand Opera makes explicit reference to Wavelength. The film opens with black leader accompanied by a reworking of Amy Taubin's phone call about discovering a dead body.[61] In 2015 Benning created a remake of Wavelength from two stills of the original film. His version uses digital effects to create a perfectly smooth, continuous zoom between the start and end points.[62] Yvonne Rainer used an excerpt of Wavelength in her 1985 film The Man Who Envied Women. In it, the loft serves as an example of the sort of spaces to which artists had access prior to the gentrification of New York.[63]

References

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  1. ^ MacDonald, Scott (1985). "So Is This". Film Quarterly. 39 (1): 34–37. doi:10.2307/1212281. JSTOR 1212281.
  2. ^ Sitney 1979, p. 375.
  3. ^ Sitney 1979, pp. 368–397.
  4. ^ Sitney 1979, p. 374.
  5. ^ "Trust Blog".
  6. ^ Reprinted in Manny Farber, Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies, London: Studio Vista, 1971, p. 250
  7. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 2–5.
  8. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 5, 12.
  9. ^ Legge 2009, p. 8.
  10. ^ Turim 1985, pp. 114–115.
  11. ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (February 1975). "Wavelength". The Monthly Film Bulletin. Vol. 42, no. 493. p. 42.
  12. ^ Turim 1985, p. 116.
  13. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 10–11.
  14. ^ a b Windhausen, Federico (2023). "The Wavelength Papers". October (184): 29–32. doi:10.1162/octo_a_00483.
  15. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 1–2.
  16. ^ Legge 2009, p. 64.
  17. ^ a b Rockwell, John (August 25, 2002). "At Play With Weirdly Morphing Images and Sounds". The New York Times. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  18. ^ Legge 2009, p. 66.
  19. ^ a b c MacDonald 1992, p. 66.
  20. ^ a b Mekas, Jonas; Sitney, P. Adams (October 1968). "Conversation with Michael Snow". Film Culture. No. 46. pp. 1–3.
  21. ^ Kunz 1979, pp. 39–40.
  22. ^ Reichert, Jeff (March 16, 2015). "Wavelength". Reverse Shot. Museum of the Moving Image. Retrieved July 18, 2024.
  23. ^ a b c Enright, Robert (May 2007). "The Lord of Missed Rules: An Interview with Michael Snow". Border Crossings. Vol. 26, no. 2. pp. 22–23. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  24. ^ a b Snow, Michael (October 1968). "A Statement on 'Wavelength' for the Experimental Film Festival of Knokke-Le-Zoute". Film Culture. No. 46. p. 1.
  25. ^ a b Snow, Michael (October 1968). "Letter from Michael Snow". Film Culture. No. 46. pp. 4–5.
  26. ^ Tuchman, Mitch (April 27, 1976). "Star Billing for a Sound Track". Los Angeles Times. p. E7.
  27. ^ Legge 2009, p. 20–21.
  28. ^ "Ten Questions to Michael Snow". The Collected Writings of Michael Snow.
  29. ^ a b Foye, Raymond (2024). "You Don't Buy Poetry at the Airport: John Klacsmann and Raymond Foye". Gagosian Quarterly. Gagosian Gallery. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  30. ^ a b Foye, Raymond (June 2021). "Michael Snow with Raymond Foye". The Brooklyn Rail: 19–26. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  31. ^ Varela, Willie (2005). "Canada's Multimedia Master: An E-Mail Interview with Michael Snow". Journal of Film and Video. 57 (1/2): 25. JSTOR 20688481.
  32. ^ a b c Yalkut, Jud (1968). "Wavelength". Film Quarterly. 21 (4): 50. doi:10.2307/1210605. JSTOR 1210605.
  33. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 22–24.
  34. ^ Legge 2009, pp. 13, 80.
  35. ^ Michelson, Annette; Weyergraf, Clara (1979). "The Films of Richard Serra: An Interview". October. 10: 71. doi:10.2307/778630. JSTOR 778630.
  36. ^ Steeds, Lucy (November 13, 2009). "Richard Serra in conversation with Lucy Steeds". Afterall. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  37. ^ a b Clark, George (January 2009). "I'm not a storyteller". Sight & Sound. Vol. 19, no. 1. p. 11.
  38. ^ Taubin, Amy (October 2015). "The Last Picture Show?". Artforum. Vol. 54, no. 2. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  39. ^ Wees 1992, pp. 156–157.
  40. ^ Michelson, Annette (Spring 1979). "About Snow". October. 8: 118. doi:10.2307/778229. JSTOR 778229.
  41. ^ Kunz 1979, p. 98.
  42. ^ a b Sitney, P. Adams (1969). "Structural Film". Film Culture. No. 47. pp. 1–10.
  43. ^ Heath 1981, p. 166.
  44. ^ Heath 1981, p. 129.
  45. ^ Sitney, P. Adams (October 1968). "Report on the Fourth International Experimental Film Exposition at Knokke-le-Zoute". Film Culture. No. 46. pp. 6–9.
  46. ^ "Ninth Independent Film Award". Film Culture. No. 46. October 1968. p. 1.
  47. ^ Youngblood, Gene (14 December 1968). "Intermedia". Los Angeles Free Press. Vol. 5, no. 230-Part Two. p. 29. JSTOR community.28039775.
  48. ^ a b c Zryd, Michael (2007). "Avant-Garde Films: Teaching Wavelength". Cinema Journal. 47 (1): 109–112. doi:10.1353/cj.2007.0053. JSTOR 30132005.
  49. ^ "Essential Cinema". Anthology Film Archives. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  50. ^ "Votes for Wavelength (1967)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on January 18, 2017. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
  51. ^ "100 Best Films - Village Voice".
  52. ^ Sicinski, Michael (September 14, 2023). "< --- >: A Quick Pan Across TIFF's Wavelengths". Notebook. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  53. ^ a b Hoberman, J. (December 3, 2021). "A Conceptual Artist of Cinema". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved June 4, 2024.
  54. ^ Legge 2009, p. 71.
  55. ^ Bellour, Raymond; Hardyck, Allyn (2017). "Layers of Images". Critical Inquiry. 43 (3): 617–649. doi:10.1086/691003. JSTOR 26547719.
  56. ^ Picard, Andréa (Summer 2015). "Behind the Work of Michael Snow and Sharon Lockhart". Mousse. No. 49.
  57. ^ Maizels, Michael (2017). "Steve Reich, Richard Serra, and the Discovery of Process". PAJ. 39 (1): 25. JSTOR 26386821.
  58. ^ O'Brien 2023, p. 250.
  59. ^ MacDonald 1992, p. 65.
  60. ^ McCall, Anthony (2003). "Line Describing a Cone and Related Films". October. 103: 58–59. doi:10.1162/016228703762874214. JSTOR 3397608.
  61. ^ MacDonald 1992, p. 240.
  62. ^ MacDonald 2019, p. 409.
  63. ^ Legge 2009, p. 19.

Bibliography

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