Chance Within Structure: Blues and Fog Line

“[Art’s] nature is a conflict between natural existence and creative tendency.” - Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form”

“But it is precisely from the dialectical synthesis of contrary values, namely artistic order and the amorphous disorder of reality, that it derives its originality.” - Andre Bazin, “De Sica: Metteur en Scène”

I am open to chance juxtapositions of elements, but once I accept them I work with them very specifically, letting the implications of the structural process lead to deep but unexpected thoughts. Acceptance is very important. I often think of the phrase from the soundtrack of Mouches Volantes: ‘he accepted a bowl.’ - Larry Gottheim

Blues

To begin, we must first explain in basic terms the contents of Blues. Gottheim films a bowl of blueberries in milk, we then see Gottheim’s wife, Deborah remove berries from the bowl at regular intervals; this continues until all the berries have been removed.

The single-take film is deeply Bazinian in conceit. Notoriously, in his essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema”, Bazin discusses Von Stroheim’s rejection of “photographic expressionism and the tricks of montage” (Andre Bazin, 1950), suggesting that “One could easily imagine as a matter of fact a film by Stroheim composed of a single shot as long-lasting and as close-up as you like.” (Bazin, 1950). Where Gottheim differs is the interruption of this continuous flowing shot with the frequent invasion of the spoon from the left. This divides the duration of the film into “micro-events” connected by the spoon, just as distinct events are connected by cuts in montage. Like the spoon, the cut intrudes upon the image. Think of the trick films by Melies, where a cut between two images of the same scene gives the impression of a single shot, wherein an item suddenly disappears, appears or transforms, however, because the spoon is visible during the transformation of the scene, there is no trick in the internal montage.

The camera is angled towards the bowl, and due to the film not being shot with sound, we cannot hear whether the food is being consumed—through this, Gottheim emphasises the berries’ image while de-emphasising their purpose (the fulfilment of that appetite through consumption). The removal and implied consumption of the berries highlights that to be properly experienced, food must be destroyed through the process of eating. As such, the film becomes the document of a form as it is destroyed. In Hollis Frampton’s 1971 film Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia) numerous photographs Frampton has collected over his life are filmed as they burn. The desynchronised narration in nostalgia distinguishes the real event from what we see on screen; the onscreen image is distorted by narration that describes the subsequent image, creating a concept of the described image for the viewer. This conceptual image then comes into conflict with the reveal of the real image. Again, the cut invades what is previously established and abstracts the event. The silence in Blues has a similar effect, as without sound off-screen events can only be understood through what has been within the frame. Our understanding of the current image is abstracted by our memory of what has occurred previously.

We can also compare Blues to Feuillade, this scene from Fantomas I: À l’ombre de la guillotine opens with a long static shot of the room as Princess Danidoff enters and places her precious necklace within a cabinet.

This established image is then disrupted with a cut to Fantomas, reflecting his own disruption of the room; we cut back to the original position as he attempts to steal the necklace, before disappearing back into his hiding spot. While the new shot is extremely similar to the original one, it has been impacted by the intrusion of the cut and of Fantomas’s movement—the same connections between movement and montage found in Blues.

Fog Line

Unlike Blues, where the intrusion of the spoon allows for sharp distinction between each composition, Fog Line, and the central lifting fog, is less clear. In this sense it's easier to conceptualise it in contrast to Blues as that of a fade. While traditionally a fade is between two clearly defined images starting and ending separately respective to each other, the fog is a permanent element of the frame, it never exits or stops moving. The “fade” is an illusion that relies on the viewer’s perception of stillness, a defined image that is “faded” to.

As a result, the experience of watching Fog Line is akin to that of a mystery film. The narrative structure of the mystery film is one of gradually uncovering an obscured truth in a way that allows the viewer to understand the truth before the character does. Mystery is cemented in the cultural perception of fog partly because it obscures your vision, preventing you from understanding the entire visual truth, while also gradually lifting, uncovering that truth. In Fog Line, the fog slowly uncovers an obscured truth for the entire duration of the film, and the camera takes the role of the character. At a certain point, the viewer has enough information to fill in the obscured details of the landscape, leading to the illusion of stagnation. On further inspection, the fog continues to reveal information as it clears, most notably, a tree to the right of the frame.

This structure is a result of the conflict between Gottheim’s creative action and the fog’s natural influence over the image. Gottheim knew that he wanted to film fog lifting, and woke up early every day to check whether it would be a foggy day, attempting to film if it was. While the majority of these attempts failed, they were essential to Fog Line as the process of waiting for the right conditions provided experience both with the process of preparing the camera and with the landscape. “I would have to arrange the composition anew each time. I got to know the elements of the scene” (Gottheim, 2020). Gottheim’s experience recording the film mirrors the viewer’s as both gradually come to understand the landscape; every attempt revealed to Gottheim part of a larger truth about the steps he needed to take to create the film, in a sense relaying his newly acquired knowledge. This process of repetition created one of the core elements of the film; the telephone wires that “bisect[ed] the image, creating a border between the upper part and lower part of the landscape” were a result of chance and Gottheim’s increased understanding of the landscape. The final composition is not found in Gottheim’s initial idea or selected from a handful of different angles, but in his acceptance of the situation and immediate response based upon the previous conflicts between 'creative tendency' and the nature of fog.