Soho Weekly News December 22, 1977

Reel Magic

AmyTaubin

David Haxton Anthology Film Archives

David Haxton, who showed five recent films at the Anthology Film Archives last week and who will be having a Cineprobe at MOMA on January 16, is a coolly modern cinematic magician. The figure of the magician winds its way throughout the history of cinema, binding together such divergent filmmakers as Melies, Vertov, deSica, and Anger, among others. The most usual instrument, the wand, of the cinematic magician, is the splice which connects now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t or vice-versa. But there is no editing in any of Haxton’s films. Nor is there camera movement. Because of the continuity of time and space within his films, his mode of presentation is more akin to that of the stage magician than to that of the film magician. However the instrument of his magic is uniquely cinematic: it is the instability of the illusionistic space of the film image, which in several films is heightened through negative printing (both color and black and white). For example, in Painting Lights, the darkening of the image which would occur when either the lens of the camera is closed down, or when the light source is faded, becomes, in negative, a white smoke or fog which envelops the film space. In Pyramid Drawings, what appears to be the black diagram of a cube on a white surface is revealed to be a three-dimensional white string construction in a dark space, filmed in negative. The basic structure of all the films is the same. Haxton, the low-key, task- oriented, minimalistic magician enters the frame. He goes through the process of building or destroying (and con- sequently revealing) an optical illusion within the space. He leaves the illusion for the viewer to contemplate for several minutes. What is most interesting about the films is the awareness that they create in the viewer of the tenacity with which she/he holds on to the illusion even after it has been deconstructed before our eyes. The films are very precise and elegant. But they exist only as visual puzzles and at this point in the history of cinema, that makes them of only slight interest. These films are limited in much the same way that Ken Jacobs’ Apparition Theatre, reviewed here last week, is limited in its present incarnation. Because some of that review got lost at the printers, I want to remake certain points this week. Jacobs is also involved with the creation of optical illusions, in his case 3-D shadows. The power of 3-D shadows is their transgression of the space of the viewer by a three dimensional, yet incorporeal image. Jacobs’ performance last week was stronger than the ones of previous years in only one respect. Because it took place in a proscenium theatre, where the separation between audience space and performance space is more clearly defined than it is in a room or a gallery, the sense of transgression was heightened. Nevertheless, Jacobs’ performance, like Haxton’s films, is about demonstrating optical illusion, and nothing more. And there is a young audience which will be knocked out by Jacobs’ performance just as for him, these days, there is, each year, a new class of cinema students who will be seduced by the revelation of step one. That’s why teaching can be so debilitating to certain artists. But I can’t believe that these kinds of demonstrations are so satisfying to Jacobs any more. No more than to his audience of some 15 years, who nevertheless turn up year after year and who continue, as I do, in anticipation. The real cinema magician must appear to be more than her/his bag of tricks.