Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

William Greaves

Writer:

William Greaves (writer)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

Filmmaker William Greaves auditioned acting students for a fictional drama, while simultaneously shooting the behind-the-scenes drama taking place.

Plot Keywords:

Central Park | Actor | Actress | New York | Film In Film

Cast

Patricia Ree Gilbert	...	Herself / Alice
Don Fellows	...	Himself / Freddie
Bob Rosen
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Susan Anspach	...	Herself / Alice
Jonathan Gordon
William Greaves	...	Himself
Robert L. Rosen		(as Bob Rosen)

Runtime:

70 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Take One Productions

Movie Connections:

Followed by Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2 (2005)

Soundtrack:

In A Silent Way

Grade School

This was recommended by a reader, and I'm glad to have seen it. But that's only because I'm interested in anything that contributes to the vocabulary of folding or self-reference. But I would not recommend this to you as a film experience. It is a clever idea: film acting students in Central Park doing a screen test. The lines they play with are capriciously malleable. Meanwhile a camera documents the events behind the first camera. There's sometimes a third camera as well, and from time to time that camera focuses on a discussion of the crew. They're discussing — with amazing vacuity — the advanced implications of the film.

In other words it is explicitly self-referential in the simplest of ways. There are many more clever folds in the film world, and certainly from that period, so this isn't rare or even novel. It would be something to recommend if all this relatively sophomoric enlightenment had been turned to something that had blood and muscle of some kind.

But it hasn't. Its one tool in a collection of several that have to be applied to the real building material of life. It lacks any of that and isn't a particularly sharp tool at that.

Perhaps Part 2 1/2 will be worth it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.