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Puccini in the Middle: An Alternative Understanding of Film
By Matthew le Cordeur
Every sensory antenna in my body is on full alert. The smell of chocolate, which is being eaten close by, the taste of beer in my mouth, the comfortable feeling from sitting in a cosy theatre and, finally, the sight and sound of PUCCINI CONSERVATO by Canadian filmmaker Michael Snow. The latter two senses are joined with that of late entries, dark silhouettes against the screen and hard footsteps intruding on the sound of opera composer Giacomo Puccini. These sensory feelings are confusing, but essential for viewers hoping to take something out of this complicated combination of experimental art and cinema.
Snow, considered the father of formalist film, collaborated with the founder of Paris Expérimental publishing, Christian Lebrat (V2 PUCCINI), and one of Britain’s most visually rich filmmakers, Stephen Dwoskin (ASCOLTA!), in the TRE PUCCINI collection. Their three films were part of a series commissioned by the Lucca Film Festival in Italy last year, which asked 20 expressionist filmmakers to explore Puccini’s work.
These films are more like installations, which would normally be placed in art galleries, but for the last four years the Berlin International Film Festival has hosted a programme called Forum expanded, which attempts to bridge the gap between classical film formats and art gallery experimental works. It’s a refreshing alternative to feature films and demands a very different concentration. The psychological feeling it evokes is strange as viewers either lose focus, letting the music take them away, or they focus with intensity trying to control the cognitive experience.
The three selected pieces are similar in style in that each director uses extreme close-ups and distorted images to explore elements of Puccini’s music. With Snow, it is the curiosity about a CD player and the understanding that listening to music via a secondary source lacks authenticity. Lebrat seeks the origin of music and does this by exploring the process a celloist undergoes to release the sound of Puccini. The out-of-focus shots create a melody in itself as the director plays with sound and visuals. Dwoskin’s extreme close-up looks at an opera singer’s eyes. They stare, close tightly, and then open to release a tear drop. Her intensity is unnerving. Is she staring at the audience, because a sense of responsibility suddenly came over me? What have we done to our opera singer?
The use of distorted images in TRE PUCCINI makes the sound even clearer, while also enabling the viewer to meditate over artistic visuals that are trying to tell us something in a more open, engaging way. The visuals not only create an atmosphere, they also direct the viewer in the way they listen to Puccini. This refreshing and experimental concept of film is complicated in its meaning, but helps audiences re-evaluate the broader power of cinema.