Frank Film

This is one of those film where there is little middle ground. You must be able to listen to two people talk at once and still capture where the main story is. I tried so hard, but soon was only listening to the biographical part, pushing out all the F words (not those F words). Anyway, it is a fully creative visual and auditory experience. One needs to watch it twice to grasp it, I guess.

An almost kaleidoscopic review of images from the last fifty years bombard the screen accompanied by a dual narration. One stream is more continual but is gradually beaten into the background by the other which calls out in a keyword/phrase style. I didn't love this. The presentation of the photography does work well enough for a while, but I felt it quickly became quite repetitious and the manipulation of not just the imagery but of the focus too started to grate a bit. When the random sound track resorted to the calling out of people's names or expressions that begin with the letter "f", I sort of gave up. It's original and quirky, certainly, but I found it increasingly quite annoying to watch. Be careful if you're averse to flickering.

This short, which most deservedly won the Academy Award and I believe has been included in the Library of Congress's Film Preservation listings as well, defies description with mere words. It must be seen to be appreciated. At first I found the two separate soundtracks jarring, because the same person recorded them both. But gradually, I began to flow with the two distinct, yet equally interesting, narratives. The visual images correspond to one or the other narrative at different points. Compelling to watch.

This clearly was a labor intensive project, as any form of stop-motion animation has to be. Think about how long it took to shoot just 60 seconds worth of film and realize this is nine minutes long! Well worth tracking down, I saw this on Sundance Channel last night. Most highly recommended, but if your idea of animation begins and ends with Bugs Bunny or Speed Racer, you may not care for this at all.

I have a fetish for films made entirely of cutout images. There's an NFB film called "This is a Recorded Message" made right around the same time that also uses a similar cutout technique. Both films use advertisements to create their point. However, where "Message" is scathing critique of advertising, "Frank Film" uses advertising images to construct a moving autobiographical portrait of the film maker, Frank Mouris. I was amazed at the way Mouris was able to find all these thousands of images and then stick them all together with two overlapping soundtracks that perfectly match up. It works beautifully, without at all being confusing or hard to follow. I wish there was more I could say about the film, but words escape me.

Of course, I should mention some specific moment from the film that had an effect on me, but in this case the whole film is that one moment. It never gives you time to reflect on what you've seen until its over. When Mouris' voice mentions television, hundreds of T.V sets fill the screen, forming complicated patterns. Similar things happen throughout the film: specific words trigger an array of objects, forming intricate designs. It's stunning.

Arguably the first mixed media collage film to win the Best Animated Short Film award, Frank Mouris's experimental compilation of magazine images is executed through two interwoven narrations (one autobiographical and the other stating words relating to the images). Admittedly, the overall presentation of the film is conceptually fascinating and it manages to provide a lot of insight into American iconography through said images. However, the rapid fire speed of the images jumping about between every second may cause divide amongst viewers depending on their tolerance for flooded images. While not deliberately photosensitive in concept, the film's overall flashy speed could cause sensory overload to any given individual.

So while Frank Film is definitely historically innovative for its time and at least has a lot to offer in terms of personal interpretation towards modern American culture, it winning the Oscar doesn't feel as warranted given its polarizing overwhelming nature, at least compared to the more palatable nominees.