"And then there is what may be called the Distorted Documentary a new
form of visionary art, admirably exemplified by Mr. Francis Thompson’s
film, NY, NY. In this very strange and beautiful picture we see the city
of New York as it appears when photographed through multiplying prisms,
or reflected in the backs of spoons, polished hub caps, spherical and
parabolic mirrors. We still recognize houses, people, shop fronts,
taxicabs, but recognize them as elements in one of those living
geometries which are so characteristic of the visionary experience. The
invention of this new cinematographic art seems to presage (thank
heaven!) the supersession and early demise of non-representational
painting. It used to be said by the non-representationalists that
colored photography had reduced the old-fashioned portrait and the
old-fashioned landscape to the rank of otiose absurdities. This, of
course, is completely untrue. Colored photography merely records and
preserves, in an easily reproducible form, the raw materials with which
portraitists and landscape painters work. Used as Mr. Thompson has used
it, colored cinematography does much more than merely record and
preserve the raw materials of non-representational art; it actually
turns out the finished product. Looking at NY, NY, I was amazed to see
that virtually every pictorial device invented by the old masters of
non-representational art and reproduced ad nauseam by the academicians
and mannerists of the school, for the last forty years or more, makes
its appearance, alive, glowing, intensely significant, in the sequences
of Mr. Thompson’s film."
Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
