By Diana Bilbao
Upon viewing Bruce Conner’s A Movie
(1958) in class, I was struck by one particular sequence. As Sjoberg discusses in his
introduction to The World in Pieces,
compilation films provide a heightened opportunity for examining montage as a
technique (32). Because the images
are pulled from different sources, the act of juxtaposing them together is more
loaded and audacious.
Although
Conner’s entire film is an exercise in combining fiction and nonfiction footage
to create an incisive, semi-satirical collage, one sequence of shots in
particular seemed an excellent example of the potential in compilation
film. About midway through the
film, there is a shot of a man in a submarine looking through a periscope. Conner then cuts to a shot of a woman
in lingerie looking at us and posing, creating an eyeline match between the
sailor and the woman. In this way,
he makes it appear that the man using the periscope to ogle her. The next shot is of the man again,
pulling back from the periscope and yelling to his comrades. Next, there is a
closeup of a hand pressing a button. Conner then cuts to a torpedo being fired
underwater from a submarine, and the next shot in the sequence is of a mushroom
cloud erupting from the ocean.
This begins the sequence of mushroom clouds and apocalyptic images, a
running motif throughout the rest of the film.
The
way Conner edits this sequence exemplifies the potential of compilation film to
use montage to create meaning between clips from different sources. By combining the shots in a specific
order and rhythm, Conner creates a story in which a man looks through a
periscope at a woman, then fires a phallic torpedo at her and causes a mushroom
cloud.
There
are numerous meanings one can draw from this sequence, but the primary commentary
in my view is on the fetishization of violence and weapons technology. The phallic shape of the torpedo and
the direct connection Conner creates between the male libido and the firing of
the missile can be read as a pointed jab at the masculine martial impulse and
the Cold War obsession with nuclear weapons.
This
fetishization of military technology is a motif we’ve encountered multiple
times in this course. Tanks (1942) centered on the camera and
Orson Welles’s prodigious voice describing and admiring the tank manufacturing
process. The Battle of the Somme (1916), despite being much longer and more
complex, also contains a significant amount of this fetishization. The extended
shots of the various cannons firing, combined with the intertitles describing
their specifications, create a profound impression of the guns’ phallic nature
and of the filmmakers’ obsession with it.
While
these two films, as military propaganda, are engaging in this fetishization in
earnest, Conner is using the medium of compilation film to ingeniously comment
on this trend in our society. His
argument, one could interpret, is that such a childish focus on the power of
our technology is what directly leads to the proliferation of weapons like the
atom bomb. Indeed, in his film, it
is what leads to the Dr. Strangelove-like
apocalyptic chain of mushroom clouds and destruction. A Movie is a
brilliant example of how compilation film can use footage from diverse sources
to comment on the media and our society at large. Because of its ability to combine fiction and nonfiction in
absurd yet insightful and pointed ways, compilation film has the potential to
be one of the most aggressive and incisive forms of media commentary.