H2O

Still photographer Ralph Steiner picked up a movie camera and created a visual documentary on water in 1929's "H2O." This 'cinepoem' consists of patterns seen through reflections of bodies of water. Steiner, a freelance photographer whose work was seen in a number of publications such as 'The Ladies Home Journal' as well as in Madison Avenue advertisements, joined a New York City film group and immediately immersed himself in the medium.

As the name implies, Steiner filmed miles of footage of water patterns, scenes such as rain water descending down a drain and larger bodies of water creating artwork on their surfaces. His moving images showed natural patterns that modern canvas artists could only dream of painting. He varied the speed of his film rate, lingering on those images he found unique by its shapes and lines.

Steiner's career bounced between the still and the moving photography. He even did a stint in Hollywood for four years before moving back to his New York City and New England roots. A close friend of his, Nathanial Dorsky, said the photographer "didn't want to make anything fancy but was an old man who appreciated life itself and wanted his film to simply show the special magic there was in our visual world in the most ordinary circumstances."

A study on water, the reflections and motions of the liquid that accentuates its ethereality and metallic beauty.

What can you say about this? It is a few minutes of water in various forms. Beautiful, yes, though without a crisp picture it really loses something. I am not quite clear on what makes it historic or why it is worth preserving over any other footage. Was there something I missed? But it does make you think about water, how important it is and how it is everywhere. Maybe someone ought to try to do this again, only with better cameras and light? Sort of seems like a precursor to Kenneth Anger... but only in the most general sense.

To begin with, the title of this one refers to the scientific designation of water. The film, then, is 12 minutes of just that: the element is shown in all its various forms, from the industrialized (pumped for consumption) to the natural (rivers – also tackled in a 1938 Pare Lorentz documentary I watched recently) and the atmospheric (rainfall – the subject of an upcoming effort in the Kino "Avant-Garde" collection, dating from the same year, by Joris Ivens).

There is only so much of interest (and that is primarily visual) you can glean from such material; in the final analysis, its experimental connotations have as much to do with photographic ingenuity (when catching reflections in pools of water) as editorial technique and musical underscoring.

In the book The Immense Journey (1957) by American anthropologist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) is a wonderful quote--"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Twenty-eight years before Eiseley's book, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) created a short paean to water, a 12-minute silent film entitled "H20". He, incidentally was a cinematographer for the fine Pare Lorentz documentary, "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936).

Steiner's "H2O" film has a very brief introduction with rain the focus; it quickly becomes more abstract. Steiner is obviously fascinated by the remarkable kinetic action of water and how the motion created an endless variety of water reflections. This occupies half of the film. He then follows up with some brief textural aspects of the water, and finally ends with the effects of light on the ever-moving liquid--the shimmering, glowing, sparkling. With pattern merging into pattern, amazing abstractions appear, startling in their beauty. The film is an aquaphile's delight.

As an amateur still photographer, I've taken numerous water abstraction photos. I would love to see what a cinematographer might do with these water features in color. It's easy to envision a kaleidoscopic short which features the patterns created by reflections, the textures and the impact of light. The poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from the Leonard Cohen novel Beautiful Losers would aptly describe such an effort and does indeed describe what Steiner did in 1929.

H2O (1929)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This avant-garde film from director Rob Steiner was selected to the National Film Registry and it's this honor that got the film some much needed attention. The twelve-minute film has a pretty simple execution and that's to show as many forms of water as possible. Meaning, you might see a lake, a pond or water splashing in a tub or you may see various images reflected off the water. You see it rain, coming from a faucet and various other forms. You might wonder who would want to look at water for twelve straight minutes but the film is actually very well done and almost comes off like a surreal dream or some sort of poetic exercise in images. I think some of the best moments deal with the reflections because the images almost come off like animation or something that just seems so fake yet you know it's all real. Another great part was when we see various objects floating in the water. Steiner does a very good job at editing the scenes together and make no mistake this isn't some simple film with a bunch of images thrown together. That there could have been a mess but instead you can tell that a lot of thought went into the movie and it easily shows.