Cat's Cradle (film)

''Cat's Cradle'' is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, produced in 1959. The film was described by Brakhage as "sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a 'medium' cat."Cat's Cradle
Canyon Cinema: Film, Accessed 13 February 2011''By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 1,'' DVD menu

Production

''Cat's Cradle'' was filmed in Princeton, New Jersey.MacDonald, Scott (2005) ''A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers,'' p61 The film features Stan Brakhage and his wife Jane, as well as composer James Tenney and visual artist Carolee Schneemann.Banes, Sally (1993) ''Greenwich Village 1963: avant-garde performance and the effervescent body,'' Duke University Press, p90 Schneemann, who appeared in several Brakhage films, wore an apron at Brakhage's insistence."An Interview with Carolee Schneemann," ''Wide Angle,'' 20(1) (1998), p20-49 Despite her friendship with Brakhage, she later described the experience as "frightening," remarking that "whenever I collaborated, went into a male friend's film, I always thought I would be able to hold my presence, maintain an authenticity. It was soon gone, lost in their celluloid dominance--a terrifying experience--experiences of true dissolution."

The entirely silent film was described by Brakhage as "sexual witchcraft involving two couples and a 'medium' cat." The film features shots of the naked bodies that are, according to writer Walter Metz, "edited in such a way that very little narrative sense can be immediately gleaned from them. As the film wears on, however, it becomes clear that the viewer is witnessing some form of domestic conflict and the intimacy that follows (or perhaps precedes) it."Metz, Walter (2001) ""What Went Wrong?": The American Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1960s", ''History of the American cinema: 1960-1969. The sixties, Volume 8 ,'' University of California Press, p236 The editing style includes very brief "flash-frames" that interrupt longer shots, a technique that Brakhage would continue to use in such films as ''Tortured Dust'' (1984).Elder, R. Bruce (1998) ''The films of Stan Brakhage in the American tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson,'' Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, p256

Reception

Paul Arthur, in his essay for The Criterion Collection, wrote that ''Cat's Cradle'' "does not entirely suppress our recourse to naming but rather floods our typical eye-brain loop with stimuli for which attached language cues are either less than automatic or, in cases of purely sensory appeal, non-existent.""Before the Beginning was the Word: Stan Brakhage's"
Paul Arthur, published June 09 2003, The Criterion Collection. Accessed 13 February 2011 Fred Camper, in another essay for The Criterion Collection, remarked upon the mysteriousness of the four characters' interactions, but was nevertheless "kept on edge by the very rapid intercutting... the viewer is at once encouraged to come up with his own interpretations and prevented from settling on any one idea.""By Brakhage: The Act of Seeing..."
Fred Camper, published June 09 2003, The Criterion Collection. Accessed 13 February 2011

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved ''Cat's Cradle'' in 2006.

See also

* List of American films of 1959
* List of avant-garde films of the 1950s

References

External links

*

{{Stan Brakhage

1950s avant-garde and experimental films
1959 films
1959 short films
Films directed by Stan Brakhage
1950s English-language films
1950s American films
English-language short films