Hands

This film defies my ability to give it a numerical rating because it's just plain weird--definitely an example of an avant-garde art film. It consists of LOTS of pairs of disembodies hands that move about to the music. It's all supposed to tell a story but I just thought it was weird and difficult to love. The sets look a bit like German Expressionist sets--mostly to give a way for the people to hid themselves. Weird.

By the way, there is something interesting about this short film. It's made using an RCA sound system--one of the earliest forms of sound. While such sound experiments were becoming common in the US, for a European film, this is a very early example of sound.

A Bunch of Hands Wave at Each Other and Touch and Other Stuff in this thirteen-minute Short.

The thing that interests me most about these extreme experimental films is not the films themselves, but the outsized responses to them as works of genius. Looking at it, thoughts ran through my mind about a lot of things, some of them great, some of them silly, like Senor Wences. In truth, a piece like this demands so much of its audience that it seems less a work of art and more an object to meditate upon. Looking at a portion of this, entitled "Everyone goes to a party". and we are supposed to infer all sorts of relationships seems to me to be largely work on the part of the audience. The simple and often silly music by Marc Blitzstein doesn't help either.

Art requires work by the audience, yes, but works like this always leave me feeling as if people will laugh at me if I say the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes.