Drive-In Saturday:
Joe's Rose [Amour Fou en Bleu]
Joseph Cornell is best known for his boxes and collages, but he also dabbled in film. This is his first, Rose Hobart.
Having stumbled on a 16mm print of the 1931 "exotic" action romance East of Borneo, Cornell whittled away three quarters of the picture, leaving behind little but the shots that included the female lead, the aforementioned, titular Rose Hobart. Cornell shuffled the remaining bits, slowed some it down, stripped the soundtrack, and projected the result through a blue filter to an accompaniment of live cocktail music. The result was something like this:
[Downloadable .avi version available at UBUWEB.]
A story goes with it, per Ed Halter in the Village Voice:
Cornell's best-known film is his first, Rose Hobart (1936). Editing down a raggedy scrap-heap print of the 1931 jungle melodrama East of Borneo into 19 time-jumbled minutes, Cornell concentrates on the ethereal expressions of actress Hobart and set-piece moments that gain new surrealist power: crocodile-herding by natives, an eclipse, a volcano revealed behind a theatrical curtain, monkeys gamboling. When the movie premiered at one of Cornell's 'film soirees' at the Julien Levy Gallery, attendee Salvador Dalí flew into a rage and had to be restrained by his wife, Gala. Later, Dalí said he'd already thought of inventing the found-footage film, but Cornell beat him to the punch.
For an alternative version of the anecdote, see Brian Frye.
More Joseph Cornell film:
- A Legend For Fountains (1957, 1965).
More of Rose Hobart:
Its Secret Hidden in a House of Ominous Mystery!
"Everything points to you, even the cat! The cat knows!"
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