Wavelength (1967 film)

Infobox Film
name = Wavelength


caption =
director = Michael Snow
producer =
writer = Michael Snow
starring = Hollis Frampton
Roswell Rudd
Amy Taubin
Joyce Wieland
Amy Yadrin
music =
cinematography = Michael Snow
editing = Michael Snow
distributor =
released = 1967
runtime = 45 min.
country = Canada USA
awards =
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:249612
imdb_id = 0127354

"Wavelength" is a short, forty-five minute film that made the reputation of Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow. It was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967.Sitney, p. 375] It was released in May 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film." [Sitney pp. 368-397]

Outline

"Wavelength" consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three "character" scenes. In the first scene two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio. Later, a man (played by filmmaker Hollis Frampton) enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before.

In the end, one can hear what sound like police sirens, but could just as well be a part of the musical score, a distinct piece of minimalist music that pairs tones at random. These tones shift in frequency (and in "wavelength") as the camera analyzes the space of the anonymous apartment. What begins as a view of the full apartment zooms (the zoom is not precisely continuous as the camera does change angle slightly, noticeably near the very end) and changes focus slowly across the forty-five minutes, only to stop and come into perfect focus on a photograph of the sea on the wall.

tructural Film

According to P. Adams Sitney, the trend in American avant-garde cinema during the late 1940s and 1950s (such as the work of Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage) was towards "increased complexity". [ Sitney, p. 369] Since the mid-1960s, filmmakers such as Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad and Joyce Wieland produced works where simplicity was foregrounded. Sitney labeled this tendency "structural film." The four characteristics of structural film are "fixed camera position…the flicker effect, loop printing, and rephotography off the screen." [ Sitney, p. 370] Sitney describes Snow as the "dean of stuctural film-makers" who "utilizes the tension" of "Wavelength"'s use of a "fixed-frame and…the flexibility of the fixed tripod". [ Sitney, p. 370] Where Sitney describes stuctural film as a "working process," Stephen Heath in "Questions of Cinema" finds "Wavelength" "seriously wanting" in that the "implied…narrative [makes "Wavelength"] in some ways a retrograde step in cinematic form". [Heath, p. 166] The principal theme of "Wavelength" to Heath is the "question of the cinematic institution of the subject of film" rather than the apparatus of filmmaking itself. [Heath, p. 129]

Versions

In 2003, Snow released "WVLNT" (or "Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time"), a shorter (1/3 of the original time) and significantly altered version by overlaying the original film upon itself.

Honors

"Wavelength" is often listed as one of the greatest underground films and art house films ever made. It was named #85 in the 2001 "Village Voice" critics' list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The film has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada. [http://avtrust.ca/masterworks/2006/en_film_1.htm] In 2004, the film was named one of Canada's all time greatest film by the Toronto International Film Festival [http://www.theyshootpictures.com/website_Top1000_CriticsChoices_Dec07.pdf] .

Award

The film won the Grand Prix at the 1967 Knokke Experimental Film Festival. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127354/awards]

Distribution

* [http://www.cfmdc.org Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre]
* [http://www.artmetropole.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=shop.FA_dsp_browse_details&InventoryUnitsID=633e194f-f331-4979-8294-e2c5439cb06a&CategoryID=&UnitsType=0_0 Art Metropole]

References and notes

Bibliography

*Cornwell, Regina. "Snow Seen: The Films and Photographs of Michael Snow". Toronto: PMA Books, 1980.
*cite book
last = Elder
first = R. Bruce
authorlink = R. Bruce Elder
coauthors =
title =Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture
publisher =Wilfrid Laurier University Press
date =1989
location = Waterloo, Ontario
pages =
url =
doi =
id =
isbn = 0-88920-956-1
*Heath, Stephen. "Questions of Cinema". Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
*Shedden, Jim (ed.) "The Michael Snow Project: Presence and Absence (The Films of Michael Snow 1965-1991)". Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1995.
*cite book
last =Sitney
first =P. Adams
authorlink = P. Adams Sitney
coauthors =
title =Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978
publisher = Oxford University Press
date = 1979
location =New York
pages =368-397
url =
doi =
isbn =0-19-502486-9 Paperback