{{Short description|1958 experimental collage film directed by Bruce Conner}} {{about|the 1958 experimental film|the topic at large|Film|"A movies", the high-budget films accompanying B movies|B movies (Hollywood Golden Age)|movies named "A"|A (disambiguation)|other uses|Movie (disambiguation)}} {{Use American English|date=January 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2018}} {{Infobox film | name = A Movie | image = A Movie (1958).gif | caption = The title cards from ''A Movie'' | director = Bruce Conner | released = {{Film date|1958|6|10}} | runtime = 12 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = $350 }} '''''A Movie''''' (styled as '''''A MOVIE''''') is a 1958 experimental collage film by American artist Bruce Conner.<ref>[https://vimeo.com/12621091 Fog City Mavericks by Gary Lava - Part 2 of 5 on Vimeo]</ref> It combines pieces of found footage taken from various sources such as newsreels,<ref>[https://bampfa.org/program/loose-ends Loose Ends|BAMPFA]</ref> soft-core pornography, and B movies, all set to a score featuring Ottorino Respighi's ''Pines of Rome''.<ref>[https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/07/15/creepy-world-of-bruce-conner/ The Creepy World of Bruce Conner-by J. Hoberman-NYR Daily-The New York Review of Books]</ref>
The film is recognized as a landmark work in American experimental cinema, particularly as an early example of found footage. ''A Movie'' was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1994.<ref>{{Cite news|date=1994-11-15|title=25 Films Added to National Registry|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/15/movies/25-films-added-to-national-registry.html|access-date=2020-07-28|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
==Content== thumb|''A Movie'' has multiple false endings announced in its intertitles. ''A Movie'' opens with its longest shot, an extended production credit with Bruce Conner's name.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Horne |first=Jennifer |date=March 2000 |title=Guilt by Association |magazine=Afterimage |volume=27 |issue=5 |page=13 }}</ref> After the opening credits, the countdown leader is interrupted by a shot of an undressed woman removing her stockings. Once the countdown completes, an intertitle falsely announces "The End" of the film. The film moves into a montage of cavalry, tanks, race cars, and a charging elephant.<ref>Sterritt 2013, pp. 95–96.</ref>
Another false ending precedes footage of zeppelins and tightrope walkers. In one well-known sequence, a man in a submarine looks through a periscope to see a woman posing in a bikini, leading to the launch of a torpedo and a mushroom cloud. This leads to water sporting accidents and racing mishaps. As the musical score swells, a succession of violent scenes ensues, including aerial bombings, the ''Hindenburg'' disaster, and firing squads. The film closes with a scuba diver exploring a shipwreck.<ref>Sterritt 2013, pp. 96–98.</ref>
==Background== Bruce Conner developed the concept for ''A Movie'' many years before he began working on it. He was inspired early on by a battle scene in the Marx Brothers' ''Duck Soup'' that builds a montage from stock footage.<ref name="culpa-damage">{{cite magazine |last=Culpa |first=Mia |date=January 1980 |title=Bruce Conner: Part Two |magazine=Damage |pages=7–8 }}</ref> He envisioned a film combining images and sounds from many different movies and, when watching movies, often imagined possible sequences that could be created from them.<ref name="radical-light-93">Conner 2010, p. 93.</ref>
Conner and Larry Jordan began the Camera Obscura Film Society during the late 1950s. Conner was interested in the film leader used by projectionists that went unseen by the audience. He had a filmstrip given to him by writer Lee Streiff which showed a nude woman, and he thought about inserting the strip in the countdown leader at a Camera Obscura screening of ''Triumph of the Will''. When Jordan found out about the plan, he threatened to quit the society. Conner decided that the only way for him to carry out this vision would be to insert such a sequence in a film of his own.<ref name="radical-light-93"/><ref name="bass-jotufa">{{cite journal |last=Bass |first=Warren |year=1981 |title=The Past Restructured: Bruce Conner and Others |journal=Journal of the University Film Association |volume=33 |issue=2 |page=15 }}</ref>
==Production== Jordan showed Conner how to edit film and offered him the use of a Griswold film splicer.<ref>Wees 1993, p. 81.</ref> Describing cinema as "a rich man's art form", Conner looked to store-bought footage as an economical alternative to shooting original material.<ref>Sterritt 2013, p. 93.</ref> He purchased a condensed Hopalong Cassidy western, a short novelty film called ''Thrills and Spills'', a Castle home movie containing German propaganda, and a newsreel compilation titled ''Headlines of 1953''.<ref>Piranio 1999, p. 188.</ref><ref name="flaherty-172">Zimmermann and MacDonald 2017, p. 172.</ref>
Conner primarily worked in assemblage at the time, and he originally planned to use the film as part of an installation piece.<ref name="bass-jotufa"/> The installation would fill a {{convert|10|ft|m|adj=on}} cube into which people could walk. The film would have no soundtrack; instead, the installation would play the film as a loop with sound coming from tape players, radio, and television. However, Conner was not able to fulfill his original vision. The cost of a rear projection machine for the installation was prohibitively expensive.<ref name="culpa-damage"/><ref>Aitken 2006, p. 93.</ref>
{{listen|filename=Respighi Pines of Villa Borghese.ogg|title="Pines of the Villa Borghese"|description=A performance of the first movement of ''Pines of Rome'' (1924)}} He decided to make the film a stand-alone work and edited the segments together using a radio to time them. During one editing session, Respighi's ''Pines of Rome'' came on the radio and synced well with the ending. ''Pines of Rome'' had been used ten years earlier by Kenneth Anger for his avant-garde short film ''Fireworks''.<ref name="culpa-damage"/><ref>Piranio 1999, p. 189.</ref><ref>[https://www.artforum.com/print/201607/shine-a-light-the-art-of-bruce-conner-63005 SHINE A LIGHT: THE ART OF BRUCE CONNER-Artfourm International]</ref> Conner made a recording from the first, second, and fourth movements and added the music to the completed image track.<ref name="culpa-damage"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=Gerlach |first=John |year=1973 |title=A Movie is a Movie is a Movie |journal=Journal of the University Film Association |volume=25 |issue=3 |page=54 }}</ref> He was unsure how to clear the rights to the music and used the recording without authorization.<ref name="flaherty-172"/> He completed the film on a budget of $350 ({{Inflation|US|350|1958|fmt=eq}}).<ref name="culpa-damage"/>
==Release== ''A Movie'' premiered June 10, 1958, at the East and West Gallery in San Francisco. It was part of a reception for Conner's first solo art show.<ref name="radical-light-93"/> Shortly after, the film was acquired for distribution by Cinema 16 in New York. When local distributor Canyon Cinema emerged in the early 1960s, ''A Movie'' was one of its more well-known offerings.<ref>MacDonald 2008, p. 249.</ref>
==Legacy== At its 1960 Creative Film Awards Presentation, the Creative Film Foundation gave ''A Movie'' an Award of Distinction, with Michael McClure describing its comedy "not [as] a free laugh but the reconstruction of human depth, achievement and emotion".<ref>Vogel 2002, p. 385.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Thurston |first=Wallace |year=1961 |title=Creative Film Award Winners: 1959 and 1960 |journal=Film Quarterly |volume=14 |issue=3 |page=34 |doi=10.2307/1210066 |jstor=1210066 }}</ref> It has gone on to be recognized as a landmark piece of avant-garde cinema.<ref>Frieling and Garrels 2016, p. 9.</ref> In 1994, ''A Movie'' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/ |title=Complete National Film Registry Listing |publisher=Library of Congress |access-date=June 27, 2018}}</ref>
Filmmaker Peter Hutton has cited ''A Movie'' as an influence on his work.<ref>MacDonald 1998, p. 250.</ref> Artist Christian Marclay first saw the film as a student, and it influenced his own practice of appropriating materials and establishing new connections between them.<ref>Frieling and Garrels 2016, p. 202.</ref> Alan Berliner's 1985 film ''Everywhere at Once'' uses ''Pines of Rome'' for its soundtrack in an homage to ''A Movie''.<ref>MacDonald 2006, p. 149.</ref> Jennifer Proctor remade it in 2010 as ''A Movie by Jen Proctor''. Her digital remake follows the original nearly shot for shot, using footage downloaded from YouTube and LiveLeak.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Baron |first=Jaimie |year=2012 |title=The Experimental Film Remake and the Digital Archive Effect: ''A Movie by Jen Proctor'' and ''Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake'' |journal=Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media |volume=53 |issue=2 |page=468|doi=10.1353/frm.2012.0020 |s2cid=192024264 }}</ref>
==See also== * List of avant-garde films of the 1950s *''Blonde Cobra'' *''Rose Hobart''
==References== {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== {{refbegin}} * {{cite book |last=Aitken |first=Doug |author-link=Doug Aitken |year=2006 |title=Broken Screen: 26 Conversations with Doug Aitken |publisher=Distributed Art Publishers |isbn=978-1-933045-26-9 }} * {{cite book |last=Conner |first=Bruce |editor-last1=Anker |editor-first1=Steve |editor-last2=Geritz |editor-first2=Kathy |editor-last3=Seid |editor-first3=Steve |year=2010 |title=Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/radicallightalte00anke |publisher=University of California Press |chapter=How I Invented Electricity |isbn=978-0-520-24911-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/radicallightalte00anke }} * {{cite book |editor1-last=Frieling |editor1-first=Rudolf |editor2-last=Garrels |editor2-first=Gary |year=2016 |title=Bruce Conner: It's All True |publisher=San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |isbn=978-0-520-29056-3 }} * {{cite book |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |author-link=Scott MacDonald (media scholar) |year=1998 |title=A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalcinemain0000macd |url-access=registration |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-20943-5 }} * {{cite book |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |year=2006 |title=A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-93908-0 }} * {{cite book |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |year=2008 |title=Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-94061-1 }} * {{cite book |editor-last=Piranio |editor-first=Michelle |year=1999 |title=2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II |publisher=Walker Art Center |isbn=978-0-935640-61-8 }} * {{cite book |last=Sterritt |first=David |year=2013 |chapter=Wrenching Departures: Mortality and Absurdity in Avant-Garde Film |editor-last=Pomerance |editor-first=Murray |editor-link = Murray Pomerance|title=The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema |publisher=Wayne State University Press |isbn=978-0-8143-3855-1 }} * {{cite book |last=Vogel |first=Amos |author-link=Amos Vogel |year=2002 |chapter=Program Notes Compiled by Amos Vogel for the 1960 Creative Film Awards Presentation, in January 1961 |editor-last=MacDonald |editor-first=Scott |title=Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-1-4399-0530-2 }} * {{cite book |last=Wees |first=William C. |year=1993 |title=Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films |publisher=Anthology Film Archives |isbn=978-0-911689-19-8 }} * {{cite book |last1=Zimmermann |first1=Patricia R. |last2=MacDonald |first2=Scott |year=2017 |title=The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-02688-0 }} {{refend}}
==External links== *[https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/movie.pdf ''A Movie'' essay by Kevin Hatch on the National Film Registry website] *{{IMDb title|0051952|A Movie}} * [https://books.google.com/books?id=deq3xI8OmCkC ''A Movie'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry], A&C Black, 2010 {{ISBN|0826429777}}, pages 550-551
{{Bruce Conner}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Movie, A}} Category:1950s avant-garde and experimental films Category:1958 short films Category:1958 films Category:1958 directorial debut films Category:American black-and-white films Category:Films directed by Bruce Conner Category:Films without speech Category:Non-narrative films Category:United States National Film Registry films Category:1958 English-language films Category:1958 American films Category:English-language short films Category:American collage films