Stan Brakhage | Interim / 1952

doomed love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stan Brakhage (scenarist and director) Interim / 1952

 

Stan Brakhage’s first from 1952, Interim, might easily be sloughed off as a minor love story featuring a short series of on-screen smooches. But, in fact, this short work is a far deeper study in social and cultural strictures and class differences, as well as a kind of exploration of a first heterosexual encounter from a sexually unsure man.

      The obviously bored and confused boy (Walter Necomb) stands on a busy bridge built over an industrial wasteland of a city. In the distance we can see a few skyscrapers, obviously suggesting the heart of the city, which he has, at least temporarily, left behind. Cars speed back and forth across the bridge as the youth looks over the barren landscape, apparently having an unsettling effect, particular given the music score by Brakhage’s friend James Tenney.

      On the bridge, one driver, perhaps districted by the handsome blond-haired boy, screeches to a momentary stop, waking the teenager up from the trance-like state of so many early experimental works, obviously influenced by Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (1950)—although expressed even earlier in Joseph Vogel’s 1947 short work, House of Cards and the several gay “coming out” films of Curtis Harrington, Kenneth Anger, and Willard Maas of the late 1940s and early 50s.

     A bit confused by his possible endangerment, the young man determines to follow the many-tiered stairway attached to the bridge to the unknown world below.

     In this barren, but architecturally fascinating underworld, the young man wanders without having any apparent goa, simply following the kind of vaulted underground “hallway” the bridges’ support system provides, which at moments suggests the inside of a vast cathedral.

     Without even knowing it, a young girl (Janic Hubka) is standing alone await in this wasteland. Why she is there, and who she might be waiting for is not revealed; but it is clear that in this lower world there are also nearby streets and homes, to which probably she belongs.

     Seeing the handsome boy enter her world, she follows along with him on a parallel course, without his being able to discern her presence. Yet when he comes to a barrier that holds back passersby from the railroad tracks, he suddenly notes her existence, and she quickly comes toward him. Within moments they have together ducked under the barrier, but just as quickly return to the arched “hallway,” where they wander now together.

     Suddenly the industrial wasteland is slightly transformed into a kind of untamed natural world, as Brakhage shows us a small stream, popular trees, birds, and other insects. As the two enter this “natural” world, strangely existing simultaneously with the junk dropped there by the society above, they perceive that a storm is brewing, and the rain quickly begins its steady beat.

     In this world, moreover, we observe Brakhage’s camera focusing on the minutiae of water ripples, clouds, peeling paint, and other phenomena that will a few years later become the subject matter of his films as opposed to people in a landscape.

   At first, the couple seems to have nowhere to go, as they try to wait out the storm beneath a tree. But they soon spot a barren shack into which they hurry as the rain grows more fearsome. Within the shack, they reach out to one another, briefly touching, and, finally, in a short and sudden frenzy intensely kiss.

     Soon after, the storm passes and they break away from one another, the young man taking the lead in moving out of the darkened spot in which they had momentarily taken refuge. The girl, a bit shaken, follows, but clearly realizes that the brief moment of passion between them—and anything it might have offered her regarding a way out of the world in which she is entrapped—is over. It was a mere interim, something between another, temporary and disposable as her world seems to be. Brakhage, in fact, has made this clear from the beginning by presenting both figures in a slight blur, their reality even for one another being somewhat under question.

     Afterwards, she leads the young man, taking him once again to the barrier, under which, this time, she ducks, before being forced to wait between the tracks for the passing of a train.

   As she looks back with a wistful smile, she observes that the boy turned to leave, making his way gradually back to the stairway and returning to his obviously socially superior world where his entire life seems much less determined and committed.

     The brief relationship between them, quite obviously, has been doomed before it started. If the girl might have wished for something more, for the bored and slightly confused boy it was nothing but a moment in his life, which gives this early version of speed dating almost a tragic quality. Did he even like what he briefly tried out?

     The poor girl, moreover, is doomed by the world in which we find her, a society apparently inferior to that to which the bridge leads, an urban space with people with the financial means to live in high rises atop one another. Where the boy stands in relation to these two worlds is indeterminate, apparently even in his own mind.

     The film announces its end. Yet it continues, repeating the original title frame and the earliest scenes with the boy on the bridge staring down into the wasteland, another image of him making his way down the staircase, and yet another repeat of the automobile that comes to a crash near him, all of which makes the experiences he have just witnessed even more ephemeral as if they might be a thing of his imagination or, perhaps, an event he wishes to repeat.

     It is particularly disturbing when we experience the car coming to squeal of a halt once more, stopping near him without moving just before he had, in the original scene, descended into the world below. Why has the car stopped so ominously close to him? Does the person or people inside know him? Have they stopped to pick him up or abduct him? Brakhage provides no answer, but in repeating the incident, he obviously wants us to think about what made this young man undertake his actual or imaginative voyage. Was it a temporary escape? And if so, from whom and what? From a different kind of life, a way of behavior, a sexuality? All we know is that he does return from the interim reality or fantasy to the bridge where he now must face whoever has come to a halt before him. Has he, all along, been waiting for the car to arrive, just as the girl in the world below must wait for the train to pass so she might return to wherever it was she had come.

    Like Orpheus he turns back, once again, to observe the car. Perhaps, it is not the wasteland that is hell, but the world connected to the bridge, and like Orpheus he has lost his Eurydice forever. Or perhaps the director is using the word “interim” in its archaic meaning of “meanwhile,” indicating something occurring at the very same time as another. Meanwhile…we’re back into the real world where there is no girl waiting for him, no possibility of encountering the remnants of a natural world, no love possible, at least not of the innocent kind that the girl represents.

 

Los Angeles, July 4, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2016).

 

 

Douglas Messerli | Four Early Films of Stan Brakhage (Note)

four early films of stan brakhage

by Douglas Messerli

 

There is nothing overtly gay or homosexual about any of these four early films by the heterosexual director Stan Brakhage.

     But these works, the earliest Interim made when he was only 19, present a very tenuous and intense relationship between males and males and females in general, and at moments seem to engage with characters who are not yet quite sure what to make of sex or even gender. All of the central figures of these works are outsiders to the worlds in which they suddenly find themselves and to one another.

     Moreover, there is a strange sense of alienation, both social and sexual, in these works that leave us with a sense of the figures attempts in their various gatherings to explore their sexualities, whether or not they perceive themselves as heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, or in the case of The Extraordinary Child simply confused by the macho world into which he has recently been born.

    There is also a strong sense in these clearly juvenile works (a couple of which Brakhage at various times as to be removed from his list works) of exploring some of his major influences which include Myra Deren, Marie Menken, Willard Maas, John Cage, Robert Duncan, and other poets of the San Francisco Renaissance. Both Deren and Menken, deep experimentalists, explored the body and sexuality, both straight and gay in their works; Maas, Cage, and Duncan were actively gay. These were the very figures with whom Brakhage was meeting and, in Deren’s case, actually living in her apartment during the years, 1953 and 1954, in which these films were made. Brakhage himself cited Menken: "If there is one single filmmaker that I owe the most to for the crucial development of my own film making it would be Marie Menken.” Menken was married to Maas and is said to have taught Andy Warhol how to use the Bolex camera.

    Perhaps even more importantly, we see in these works the influence of another 1950s experimentalist, the French writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, particularly his Orpheus of 1950.

    If nothing else, these very issues of societal and sexual norms would become major themes of s in Brakhage’s later films, although rarely approached so ambiguously.

    What these works generally have in common is a recognition of the enormous anxiety and angst among the young men and women of the early 1950s, which compels them into often temporary and uncomfortable sexual and social relations. These early films, despite Brakhage’s own dismissal of them, are important because they show us those very issues which would later become even more apparent in his later, resolved through art itself, an art free from storytelling and reportage, an art that sought to completely transform these more everyday worldly problems. It one truly wanted to see, he must perhaps blind himself to what he had been taught to see, discovering a whole new world in the process.

 

Los Angeles, November 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

John Foster and Mannie Davis | A Romeo Robin / 1930 [animated cartoon]

one for the birds

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Foster and Mannie Davis [directors] A Romeo Robin / 1930 [animated cartoon]

 

Before their far more surrealistic cartoon series, Tom and Jerry, the Van Buren Studios major claim to fame was the animal-based Aesop’s Fables series for RKO.

    There are also many strange moments in these picaresque syncopated stories such as that in A Romeo Robin, which is one for the birds, except for a starved cat who can’t even seem to trick the kid canaries later in the work.

     Frankly, this is such a disjointed piece that I found it difficult to get up the energy to describe the various song and dance routines of the first part of this 8-minute movie, and Rik Tod Johnson, writing on his Cinema 4: Cell Bloc has already done it so precisely, I will simply quote him:

“The film opens with a quartet of blackbirds of assorted sizes and a lone owl, all dressed in shabby castoffs, and sitting along the top rail of a fence while whistling a merry little tune (which might be The Man in the Flying Trapeze; it is too short and offkey for me to tell). A sixth bird sits off on a post to the side: he is small and wears lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat with a tiny feather in it. He stretches out his stick-thin legs until he is about four times his previous height, and starts to perform The Swiss Yodel, with the other birds performing backup to his loopy warblings. As they proceed with the song, two birds are spotlighted in a demented little stomp n' shuffle: wearing top hats and sporting cigars, the birds have overly large feet on the long legs that sprout from their squat black bodies. As they cavort, one of their legs ties itself in a knot but then continues its course until each is unknotted again. After they each repeat this action, their bodies transform until they bear a striking resemblance (not fully, though) to Clampett's Dodo Bird from Wackyland. Bells looped around their now shoe-clad feet jingle insistently as they leap, flap their arms and turn their heads about in circles. Suddenly, another transformation is made, and we see only their skeletons, their ghostly bones making some of the same motions as they literally dance themselves to death. Finishing a tap dance with Shave and a Haircut, the two avian skeletons grab some grass, pull it over themselves, headstones with wreaths pop up, and they are buried for good.”

    The macabre bird parade continues with two crows performing, one on a large kernel of corn as if it were a piano, the second turning his pipe into a trumpet. The cat, pretending to be a bird with the intention to prey on three dancing canaries follows, the fledglings quickly escaping his attack. Two storks to a quick-step across a couple of frames.

     The next sequence actually brings us a little narrative as a remarkably effeminate duck takes his young duckling “protégé” on a trip through the woods to teach him, with effusive hand gestures pointing up his constantly limp wrists, the wisdom of the old song:

 

“Listen to the mockingbird! / Listen to the mockingbird! / Oh, the mockingbird is singin' in the tree. / Listen to the mockingbird! / Listen to the mockingbird!”

     The mockingbird, who a couple of times has dared to stick his head out of the inner tree to see what all the fracas is about, finally blows the singing duck a raspberry, in response to which the sissy goes off in a huff, lisping out “Oh, for goodness sake!”

     I do suggest the folks at the IMDb site go back and examine this cartoon so that they might correct the episode that is also described on their “official” film page, changing the singing conversant from being a “lady duck” to a 1930s “panze.” Some young intern on their staff, evidently, doesn’t get out in the world very much.

    Finally, half way through this short cartoon, we meet up with the titular Romeo, a joyful Robin, stethoscope around his neck apparently out to listen to and catch the worm, in this case, the second non-avian figure in this animated work, named Willy Worm.

     He lures the worm out with his beak which contorts into a flute, Willy snaking up a fireman’s pole to surface at Romeo’s feet. The robin attempts to grab the worm, who quickly escapes, apparently not being named Willy without reason.

     No matter, our “hero” quickly dons a high top hat, an overcoat, and a beard, becoming a Hassidic Jew who obviously attends more to G-d than to a worm. But this time, Willy’s outsmarted as the Robin quickly conks the worm over the head, puts him into a can, and hurries off to his Robin chick who’s impatiently waiting.

   If we thought this worm might be an edible gift for his lady love, however, we’d be mistaken. What he intends is to use it as a rudder hooked to the propeller of his two-seater plane. Almost immediately the propeller is spinning away, and they take to the sky. Why birds need a plane to fly is not explained. But then Van Buren films never truly bothered, fortunately, to take logic into account.

     Flying along, the robin couple seem to be almost in heaven until a much large bird lands on the plane’s tail, pulls the worm from the engine, and flies off fully fed.

     Below the now quite starved cat who previously tried to eat the canaries, mews out its sad situation:

 

 “Oh my gosh, I'm hungry, me-yow-yow-yow!

Oh, my tummy's empty, me-yow-yow-yow!

All I want is a bird, sparrow or quail, me-yow-yow-yow!

All I have is a very sad tail, me-yow-yow-yow!”

 

     Now, without power, the plane begins to plummet, the cat looking up in expectation of a feast.

The plane does indeed crash right into his mouth, but its passengers have escaped and are still alive, proving it with a quick kiss as the camera iris curls to close.

 

Los Angeles, November 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).

Dave Fleischer | Dizzy Dishes / 1930 [animated cartoon]

bimbo’s nervous breakdown

by Douglas Messerli

 

Grim Natwick and Ted Sears (animators), Dave Fleischer (director) Dizzy Dishes / 1930 [animated cartoon]

 

In this, the very first of the Betty Boop cartoon appearances, the singing sensation was represented with dog’s ears since she was intended to be the “love interest” to the Fleischer Studio’s character Bimbo, the dog. She sang and looked mostly like a human, but contained elements of a Cocker Spaniel, with a droopy face, oversized eyes, and a button nose. But when she sang and danced, with the voice of Margie Hines, she became a kind of sex sensation which would mean that within just a few films later, she would be transformed almost entirely into a human being, despite the fact that her films still often contained Bimbo and animal friends.

   This cartoon begins with four anthropomorphic dancing flappers, singing “Crazy Town.” The club’s chief chef, Bimbo waits on a hungry gorilla who orders up a roast duck. Bimbo returns to the kitchen to prepare the duck, but almost immediately besieged by other customers ordering up “one beef stew,” and adding, “make that two.” Yet a third queries, “Why don’t you wake up and chop that steak up.” A sissy, emphatically batting his eyes orders up “One cup of custard,” and is immediately pulled away by another customer demanding, “plenty of mustard,” while yet another insists the chef “Change those potatoes to French-friend tomatoes,” and so it goes.

    The frustrated chef finally just ignores the other’s orders, pulling the turkey out of the oven, setting it atop the counter beneath of which he drapes a white barber’s cape, and applies what looks to be shaving lather, all with the intention to cut away any bits of feathers still remaining on the cooked bird.

     The orders continue to come in, but he simply ignores them.

     Meanwhile, our gorilla customer is growing more and more impatient, growling in hunger.

    Finally finished with the turkey, Bimbo puts it upon a platter and proceeds to dance it across the room, but as Betty begins her performance, is so taken by her song that he stops before the stage and begins to join in, dancing along with the headless turkey, and adding to her song verses the now-common “Boop, boop-ye-doo,” which soon Betty will add to her repertoire.  

     Betty quickly enchants him, as he finds it difficult to even keep his heart from leaping out of his waiter’s suit.

     Still waiting for his dinner, the gorilla salts a plate, inverts another plate atop it, and consumes the dinnerware as if it were a sandwich. Bimbo has now begun to perform a new song, with the flappers in the background and the turkey joining once again in his syncopated taps.

     The gorilla begins now to eat “leg of table,” gnawing away at the furniture. But still hungry, when he spots Bimbo and his turkey on the stage, goes on the chase, Bimbo and the dinner bird.

     When the chef is finally cornered in the kitchen, he pulls down his pots and pans and taking up two cleavers goes mad as he chops up everything in sight, finally whittling it down to a child-size choo-choo train upon which he sits as it chugs off, breaking through the wall of the club and taking him away into an escape in the surrounding natural landscape.

 

Los Angeles, November 7, 2025 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).