"The Birth of Magellan: Cadenza I" is a fairly late effort from the career of American experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton and once again he pays tribute to the era of silent film in his usual clumsy manner. I cannot say that this 5.5-minute film here seemed memorable to me for whatever reason. It looks as if a young filmmaker is still trying to find his style, but actually the opposite is true. But then again, it is probably not among the very worst Frampton has done, but that is just because his lows were as low as it gets. As for this one here, it lacked creativity to me and I did not find it inspired. Thumbs down.
2 Reviews
Unrelated Sound and Image
Tornado_Sam11 August 2019
Warning: Spoilers
"The Birth of Magellan: Cadenza I" was originally intended to be part of Hollis Frampton's enormous film cycle "Magellan", on the first day of the work and also as the very beginning of the entire thirty-six hour cycle. Like several others of his career, including "Public Domain" (1972), and "Magellan: Drafts and Fragments" (1974), this six-minute segment incorporates scenes from silent films as part of the work, not remade as the previous reviewer has stated but actually copied directly for the project. In addition, it revives the old but still worthwhile concept experimented earlier in the filmmaker's career: the disconnection of visual and audio aspects which seek to confuse the viewer's senses. In this case, the aforementioned idea is particularly effective in what it does, and due to the sound being part of the short, it feels more complete than others made for the work which seem more like raw footage.
The opening minute-and-a-half of "The Birth of Magellan: Cadenza I" is entirely a black screen save a few quick flashes. During this time, the viewer is treated to the audio of an orchestra tuning up and a violent thunder storm, none of which is seen and can only be imagined. The film then devotes the rest of its time from cutting between a 1902 comedy film entitled "A Little Piece of String" and a color scene of a bride and groom in the woods accompanied by canned applause. An abstract image presumably cut from film leader serves to separate the two.
Although simplistic, the separation of sound and image is undeniably different and used even more effectively than the directer had before in previous years. Furthermore, it would certainly have worked as an excellent, not to mention engaging, opening to the cycle and I would be interested to see what further films in the work were like. On its own, without the unmade/unavailable films following it, the film is interesting in how it executes its ideas, and despite the lack of context for it today is a good work in experimental filmmaking regardless.
The opening minute-and-a-half of "The Birth of Magellan: Cadenza I" is entirely a black screen save a few quick flashes. During this time, the viewer is treated to the audio of an orchestra tuning up and a violent thunder storm, none of which is seen and can only be imagined. The film then devotes the rest of its time from cutting between a 1902 comedy film entitled "A Little Piece of String" and a color scene of a bride and groom in the woods accompanied by canned applause. An abstract image presumably cut from film leader serves to separate the two.
Although simplistic, the separation of sound and image is undeniably different and used even more effectively than the directer had before in previous years. Furthermore, it would certainly have worked as an excellent, not to mention engaging, opening to the cycle and I would be interested to see what further films in the work were like. On its own, without the unmade/unavailable films following it, the film is interesting in how it executes its ideas, and despite the lack of context for it today is a good work in experimental filmmaking regardless.
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