Windows

Politics is not the first thing you would think of when considering the films of Peter Greenaway. And if you watched Windows with no foreknowledge, it's fair to say that you would be hard pushed to detect any political content whatsoever. But it seems that Greenaway was quite politically charged back in the early 70's and was angered by events in apartheid South Africa, a related topic being defenestration, or the act of throwing someone out of a window. In South Africa at this terrible time, many black people befell this act of violence under the authorities. Greenaway wanted to make a film about this but realised he could hardly go to South Africa to do so, in any case his avant-garde style of film-making was much less literal and so he decided to make a metaphorical short that alluded to this subject. The result is of course Windows.

A static camera looks out of a variety of windows from the inside of a single 18th century country house. We see a variety of painterly compositions from this point-of-view. Meanwhile, a narrator details statistics about people who have thrown themselves out of windows in a fictitious parish called W, this is accompanied by classical music. Like other Greenaway experimental short films from the 70's this one focuses on the editing together of a series of static shots of quite everyday objects and scenery. It's made unusual by its lack of any kind of traditional linear narrative and has the further distancing effect of its narration. It's too short to really make very much of an impression but the imagery that Greenaway captures shows his definite eye for a shot, while the content overall displays the very distinctive and idiosyncratic style that would go on to typify all his later work.

This was filmed at the same location as H is for House, an early 19th century house in the English countryside at Wardour in Wiltshire that belonged to a friend of Greenaway's. Concerned with the statistics of the defenestration of political prisoners emanating from South Africa, Greenaway created this short film in which he narrates the statistics of people falling out of windows, while Rameau's La Poule plays in the background, and the camera looks out of the windows of the house onto the beautiful landscape of this area of rural England.

In 1973 in the parish of W, 37 people were killed as a result of falling out of windows. Of the 37 people who fell, 7 were children under 11, 11 were adolescents under 18 and the remaining adults were all under 71 save for a man believed by some to be 103.

Five of the 7 children fell from bedroom windows as did 4 of the 11 adolescents and 3 of the 19 adults. Of the 7 children who fell all cases were of misadventure save for one of infanticide.

Of the 11 adolescents, 3 committed suicide for reasons of the heart, 2 fell through misadventure, 2 were drunk, one was pushed, one was accredited insane, one jumped for a bet and one was experimenting with a parachute.

Of the 18 men, 2 jumped deliberately, 4 were pushed, 5 were cases of misadventure and one, under the influence of an unknown drug, thought he could fly.

Of the 11 adolescents who fell, 2 were clerks, 2 were unemployed, 1 was married, 1 was a window cleaner and 5 were students of aeronautics, one of whom played a harpsichord.

Among the 19 adults who fell were an air-stewardess, 2 politicians, an ornithologist, a glazier and a seamstress.

Of the 37 people, 19 fell in summer before midday, 8 fell on summer afternoons and 3 fell into snow. The ornithologist, the adolescent experimenting with the parachute and the man who thought he could fly, all fell or were pushed in spring evenings. At sunset on the 14th of April 1973, the seamstress and the student of aeronautics who played the harpsichord, jumped into a plum tree from the window in this house.

If the world of intelligent film were populated only by Greenaway, it would be enough for me. Many of his projects have a depth that surprises on frequent reviewing, and some of his earliest and most conceptual are the most captivating.

This is the earliest I have been able to see. Already, we have notions of taxonomy, flight and architecture made cinematic by suggestion. If I had to reduce his talent to one notion, it would be that power of suggestion — the ability to take a collection of surveyors tools (usually in terms of layers, manifolds, counting and accounting, and dissecting) and tease a semantics out of images by overlaying those tools on the images.

No one else does this. No one at all. It is no surprise because of the difficulties. Even Greenaway fails often (M, Dante and Belly come to mind).

This is not the first early film of his you should see. Go immediately to "A Walk through H" if you haven't yet experienced it. It transcends.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.