Before his untimely death at age 48 in 1984, Hollis Frampton had distinguished himself as a still photographer, an essayist, a teacher, and one of the preeminent avant-garde filmmakers of his generation. During the eighteen years in which he experimented with making movies, he produced almost one hundred shorts ranging from those running only a few minutes to adventurous film cantos which were intended to be feature length. His most elaborate venture, an experimental odyssey called Magellan, was left uncompleted at his death, but in the films he left behind, he left no doubt of his singular gift for imagery and for the fun he had trying out new motifs for his most unusual products.
A Hollis Frampton Odyssey (Blu-ray)
Directed by Hollis Frampton
Studio: Criterion
Year: 1966-1979
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 266 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: PCM 1.0 English
Subtitles: none
Region: A
MSRP: $ 39.95
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Review Date: May 6, 2012
The Films
3.5/5
The disc arranges the twenty-four selected movies into four groups. The first group shows us samples from his first four years of trial and error moviemaking. We see the director dickering around with focus, panning, tinting, silhouettes, montage, double exposures, dolly shots, time lapse and accelerated time sequencing, and stop motion and well as experiments with using and manipulating the soundtrack. The films themselves with titles like Process Red and Lemon aren’t particularly interesting in and of themselves, but we see the genesis of ideas in these early shorts that would later be developed into something unique in his later, more adventurous films.
Frampton’s reputation would be made by Zorns Lemma, his 1970 film which was the first avant-garde work ever selected for the New York Film Festival. The astounding montage of images, meant to suggest the frenzy of a typical day in New York City, begins with graphics of words alphabetically arranged encountered across the city and as the new sets of words repeat and repeat each time going through the alphabet, they’re systematically replaced by images of people at work or nature at play until we get to a mesmerizing image of Central Park in winter. This one hour piece is undoubtedly the jewel of this collection.
The subsequent pieces, excepts from two elaborate collections entitled Hapax Legomena and his final work in progress Magellan likewise contain some startling imagery even if there is a bolder if more esoteric method to his madness. His film nostalgia which finds treasured photographs being burned on a hot plate while an offscreen narrator describes the picture which is next in the sequence has startling views of photographic paper turning to ash, but seems a bit gimmicky and repetitive. Even more offbeat is Critical Mass where an arguing couple of NYU film students are manipulated via picture and sound into a rather rhapsodic rap far ahead of its time. The excerpts from Magellan are arresting to the eye but the director’s purpose seems cloudy.
Video Quality
3/5
The film transfers are all presented in their 1.33:1 aspect ratio and are in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Filmed in 16mm, the movies look as good as they can, but time has not been kind to some of them with noticeable scratches, occasional damage, and dust specks somewhat heavy at times. Sharpness can be quite stunning (nostalgia is the best looking film in the set), and the black and white films seem to fare better than the color ones in terms of sharpness even if black levels are never very deep. Color is occasionally bold but more often a bit faded and unimpressive.
Audio Quality
3/5
Many of the films are silent, but for the films that have soundtracks, the PCM 1.0 (1.1 Mbps) soundtrack does its job reasonably well. There is prominent hiss in some of the audio vocal tracks which were recorded into a tape recorder to use as accompaniment for the films, but sometimes, there is no hiss or other distracting artifacts.
Special Features
4/5
Seven of the shorts have accompanying remarks by the director recorded in interviews over the course of some years. Though he often tells the genesis of his ideas and what his aims were in these remarks, the accompanying booklet in the set does a far better job of explaining each of the movies in this package.
A 1978 interview with Hollis Frampton was videotaped and is presented here in a 20 ¼-minute excerpt in 1080i. He discusses his career as a photographer and why he left the field, his influences, his move into film, and what he felt the future had in store (one word: computers).
“A Lecture” is a simulation of a 1968 performance piece Frampton and friend and fellow filmmaker Michael Snow presented at Hunter College. It runs 23 minutes and is in 1080p.
By Any Other Name is an art gallery of xerographic advertising images prepared by Frampton. The viewer can step through the gallery at his own pace.
The enclosed 45-page booklet provides a terrific film-by-film discussion of the contents of this Blu-ray disc. The essay on Hampton’s career is by critic Ed Halter with program notes on all the films by Bruce Jenkins, Ken Eisenstein, and Michael Zryd, and an afterword about the man and his work by film professor Bill Brand.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Though not for all tastes, A Hollis Frampton Odyssey offers a collection of the intense and unusual working mind of one of cinema’s true artists. Those looking for something cinematically different might well be interested to sample the wares in this package.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
