While not a landmark in documentary filmmaking, Steven M. Martin's 1993 documentary, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, is almost the documentary Kijack's is, as it has a far worthier subject- electronic musical pioneer and inventor Leon Theremin, but a bit more scattershot execution, cinematically. The 83 minute long film mixes traditional biography of Theremin's life, his loves (marrying a black ballet dancer in the 1930s), his political persecution in the Stalin era Soviet Union, details on the history, construction, and musical influence of the theremin, and a summary of it all.
The film features interviews with Todd Rungren, Robert Moog, who discourses on Theremin's role in electronic music, his own influential career, and has a number of lesser known talking heads, and one transcendently silly interview with a literally batshit insane Brian Wilson (of The Beach Boys fame), who speaks wanderingly of how he got the idea to use the theremin for his hit song Good Vibrations. Archival footage and audio only clips of theremin music, as well as clips from many films- including 1940s A films like Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, and 1950s B and sci fi films, like It Came From Outer Space and The Day The Earth Stood Still, testify to the influence of the film.
However, the film's star is not Leon Theremin, but his younger protégé, the great theremin player, Clara Rockmore. And when I state that this woman was great, I mean it. Her handling of the theremin dwarfs all the other players. This virtuoso could literally make the instrument, which could range from producing eerie to barely tolerable sounds, into an instrument of, well, to beg the cliché, genius. In Rockmore's air divining fingers, the theremin could sound like the most virtuoso female singing voice ever recorded. Her talent level, on this instrument, is so staggeringly far above any of the other on screen players that it is akin to watching humans and a cvreature from another species do the same task.
Additionally, this film, unlike the first, is much more dependent upon the technical aspects to cohere it into a narrative and artistic whole. Aside from director Martin, kudos must go out to cinematographer Robert Stone and, especially editor Robert Greenwald. Rare is the film where the editor plays a larger role than the cinematographer, but this is one of those films. By the end of the film, we get to see the long awaited reunion of Theremin and Rockmore- who long feared Theremin was dead, after he was kidnapped in 1938 and forcibly returned to the Soviet Union. The film deserved its many honors at film festivals.
The film features interviews with Todd Rungren, Robert Moog, who discourses on Theremin's role in electronic music, his own influential career, and has a number of lesser known talking heads, and one transcendently silly interview with a literally batshit insane Brian Wilson (of The Beach Boys fame), who speaks wanderingly of how he got the idea to use the theremin for his hit song Good Vibrations. Archival footage and audio only clips of theremin music, as well as clips from many films- including 1940s A films like Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, and 1950s B and sci fi films, like It Came From Outer Space and The Day The Earth Stood Still, testify to the influence of the film.
However, the film's star is not Leon Theremin, but his younger protégé, the great theremin player, Clara Rockmore. And when I state that this woman was great, I mean it. Her handling of the theremin dwarfs all the other players. This virtuoso could literally make the instrument, which could range from producing eerie to barely tolerable sounds, into an instrument of, well, to beg the cliché, genius. In Rockmore's air divining fingers, the theremin could sound like the most virtuoso female singing voice ever recorded. Her talent level, on this instrument, is so staggeringly far above any of the other on screen players that it is akin to watching humans and a cvreature from another species do the same task.
Additionally, this film, unlike the first, is much more dependent upon the technical aspects to cohere it into a narrative and artistic whole. Aside from director Martin, kudos must go out to cinematographer Robert Stone and, especially editor Robert Greenwald. Rare is the film where the editor plays a larger role than the cinematographer, but this is one of those films. By the end of the film, we get to see the long awaited reunion of Theremin and Rockmore- who long feared Theremin was dead, after he was kidnapped in 1938 and forcibly returned to the Soviet Union. The film deserved its many honors at film festivals.