A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

Breer:

One thing about narration is its effect on figure-ground relationship. One common form of narration is to have a surrogate self on the screen that people can identify with. In cartooning it's a cartoon figure. Grotesque as he or she might be, the figure becomes an identity you follow. If that figure is anthropomorphic or animal, it has a face, and that face will dominate, the way an active ingredient in a passive landscape dominates the field. It sets up a constant visual hierarchy that to me is impoverished. I want every square inch of the screen potentially active, alivethe whole damned screen. I don't want any one thing to take over. The problem with narration is that the figures always dominate the ground. In the theater, the actors have their feet planted on the stage, and there's a large space above them. That space is justified because the actors are three-dimensional, living, breathing, sweating human beings who make sound when they move and have real physical presence. It doesn't matter that gravity keeps them all at the bottom of the stage. But when it comes to a flat screen, I don't have to have gravity dominate, and I don't want it to dominate.

Felix the Cat is an interesting case. It was one of the first times cels were used. They drew the background on the cels and the animation on paperjust the reverse of what the cel process was finally used for. So that meant that Felix was on paper

underneath

his background. If he went over to a tree he'd have to go behind the tree. There was no way for him to go in front of the tree because the tree was on a cel on top of him. I think that made for a nice, agreeable tension between the background and the foreground. The foreground (which would normally be the background) fought back against the domination of the figure. And, of course, with Felix the foreground was very busy: everything was animated in those films. That's a case where all eyes were on Felix, but there was a nice playoff between the physical, plastic environment and the narrative of this little creature.

It came naturally to those early cartoonists to see narrative as a

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skeleton you could hang things on. Nevertheless, there was always anthropomorphism involved. I wanted to play with all those questions, but to avoid falling into them. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes not. Sometimes I guess I'm showing off my confidence that I can do conventional animation if I want to. But a nicer way to think of it is to see the figurative and narrative elements in my films as establishing norms from which to depart.

MacDonald: Image by Images

is the earliest of your films where you use actual photographed images of reality. Your hand appears in that film, and part of a face.

Breer:

And the eyeglasses, right. At a flea market one time we walked by a blanket on which this old ladyshe must have been a widowwas selling what looked to be parts of her husband. She had his teeth and his glasses and other parts of him out on this blanket. I think that's where that idea came from. It was a way of having a human presence without it taking over.

MacDonald:

Why did you begin to use sound? The first four films were silent.

Breer:

Well, sound was too big a deal to think about in the first films. But once I saw my films in public, I began to think about it. I had my first one-person show of paintings in Brussels in 1955, right after I got married, at Gallery Aujourd'hui. Opening in Brussels instead of Paris was sort of like opening in New Haven instead of New York. The idea was that I was then going to open at Denise René Gallery, but we had a falling out. Anyhow, I took

Form Phases IV

to Brussels, and Jacques LeDoux (I didn't know him then) arranged a screening of it in the gallery. The public at the gallery seemed indifferent to my paintings, but they reacted to the film. It was the first time I heard laughter, and then applause! As a painter I'd never encountered that. Suddenly there was a tangible, collective reaction. Here was a new ingredient,

sound,

even though it was coming from the audience, and not the film. I had to deal with it.

MacDonald:

Do you feel comfortable with sound? For some filmmakersKubelka in

Our African Journey

[1966], Len Lye in his direct animationssound is central to the making of the film.

Breer:

For me the most exquisite parts of a film have to do with some kind of plastic event that's silent. Generally I think that sound is padding in a predominantly visual experience, and necessary at times and fine, cathartic. Sometimes I'll use some sound just to announce that there is a sound track, so don't be uneasy, you're not going to have to suffer in silence and be afraid to cough, or whatever. But then once I've established some sound, I'll go into long periods of silence (especially in those earlier films), because looking at the images in silence is very important

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