Frank Film

When it comes to experimental film-making, I am the worst possible critic. Where others see great beauty and vision, I see pretension and uselessness. As such, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the animated short, 'Frank Film (1973),' directed by Frank and Caroline Mouris, is a genuinely wonderful autobiographical piece of film-making. Over a five-year period, the directors collected a vast volume of magazine clippings, and these are used to animate the stunning visuals in the film. There are two soundtracks: in the first, Frank Mouris continually lists a number of words beginning with "f," as well as anything else that seems to come to his mind. In the second, he delivers a personal synopsis of his own life, touching on everything from school-life as a child to his career-choices in college. These two soundtracks play simultaneously, sometimes cutting over each other and occasionally seeming to merge into a single entity.

The animation works like an endless stream of the subconscious. As Frank's meandering autobiography turns its attention towards a particular topic, the visuals unleash a gush of related images. For example, as he discusses his endless love for food, we witness a collage of culinary images, each merging into the other, the memory of ten thousand past meals. This is what I like about 'Frank Film;' just like the best of cinema, this is a film that successfully connects with the way that the human memory works, a stream of long-forgotten recollections brought forth by a simple subliminal trigger. Oddly for an experimental film, 'Frank Film' was awarded an Oscar for Best Animated Short Subject at the 1974 Academy Awards, and, in 1996, was inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, alongside such iconic pictures as 'Broken Blossoms (1919) and 'The Graduate (1967).'

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.

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.

Frank Mouris's Academy Award-winning "Frank Film" consists of magazine articles forming a collage to two different sets of narration: one chronicling the narrator's life, the other a series of words beginning with F. It strikes me as an experimental movie. It's not anything special, but I appreciate how they laid everything out. I haven't seen either of the other shorts nominated for Best Animated Short that year (I guess that it depends on whether or not they're available online), but this one is still worth seeing. I understand that Mouris only made a few movies after this one. It's probably hard to make a career out of independent animated shorts.

Anyway, an interesting short. Available on YouTube.

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.