Wavelength (1966 film)
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| Wavelength | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Michael Snow |
| Written by | Michael Snow |
| Starring | Hollis Frampton Roswell Rudd Amy Taubin Joyce Wieland Amy Yadrin |
| Cinematography | Michael Snow |
| Editing by | Michael Snow |
| Release date(s) | 1967 |
| Running time | 45 min. |
| Country | Canada USA |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Wavelength is a short, forty-five minute film that made the reputation of Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow. It was originally made in 1966.
What follows may be considered a kind of "spoiler," but as the plot is largely ignored in this film, so a description of plot will not "spoil" anything.
Wavelength consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three "character" scenes. The first in which two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio. Later, a man (Hollis Frampton) enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before.
In the end, one can hear what sound like police sirens, but could just as well be a part of the musical score, a distinct piece of minimalist classical that pairs tones at random.
These tones shift in frequency (and in wavelength) as the camera analyzes the space of the anonymous apartment. What begins as a view of the full apartment zooms (the zoom is not precisely continuous, the camera does change angle slightly, noticably near the very end) and changes focus slowly across the forty-five minutes, only to stop and come into perfect focus on a photograph of the sea on the wall.
In 2003, Snow released WVLNT (or "'Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time'"), a shorter (1/3 of the original time) but significantly altered version of the original film.
[edit] Honors
Wavelength was named #85 in the 2001 Village Voice Critics' list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The film has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada’s audio-visual heritage.[1]
