Wavelength (1967) User Reviews

Hypnotic transport

[pstumpf · 5/10 · 23 August 2008]

A second-story room overlooking a busy New York Street. The camera is placed high in a corner of the room, looking toward the windows and the street. The room is sparsely furnished, with only a desk in front of the window, a wooden desk chair, a phone on the desk, and a yellow dinette-style chair next to the desk. Three photos are tacked on a narrow strip of wall between two windows, to the right of the desk. Two men enter, carrying an empty bookcase, which the woman with them directs to place against the wall to the left. They all depart. Traffic noise is heard, loudly, through an open window. A barely perceptible, incremental zoom begins. Two women enter: one goes to the left of the desk and turns on a radio or record player which plays "Strawberry Fields"; the other woman closes the window and sits by it for a while. After a while, mid-song, the radio or phonograph is turned off, and both women leave. The zoom continues. The ambient noise is replaced by a simultaneous low buzz and high-pitched whine, interrupted briefly by some clattering noises which may or may not contain a gunshot or shots. There are moments when the screen goes white for several seconds; it is not always evident if this indicates a cut, but often it seems to. The natural light changes, the street scene outside sometimes darkens, and there are optical changes in which the scene turns dark, or red, or green. The inexorable zoom narrows the visual field steadily, directed steadily toward the desk. A man enters from the bottom of the frame, seeming to walk normally, then clutches his chest and collapses on the floor. The slow zoom keeps him briefly in sight, then passes over him. A woman comes in and picks-up the phone, while staring toward the floor. She tells the man who answers that she is "here", but there's a dead man on the floor and she's frightened. She says she will wait downstairs, and leaves. In the film's most fascinating moments, her ghosted image reappears, superimposed several times on the present zoom.

Now the focal point of the zoom appears to be the three photos on the wall. However, it seems to me that at a certain point, the photo in the upper left changes, from what had appeared at a distance as some kind of photograph to two duplicate solid black pictures with a white silhouette of a woman. Perhaps I'm mistaken. But - if so, that, and the discontinuous zoom, throw into question, for me, the point of the film. If it's not an exercise in stillness in real time, what exactly is it? And why do avant-garde filmmakers of the 60's so often revert to B-movie genre tropes (like Godard, for example)?

The irritating soundtrack noise reaches a maddening crescendo as the image of the lower photo nearly fills the screen; a cut superimposes a ghosted larger image of the photo behind the actual photo on the wall. What had seemed, from a distance, to be photo of mountaintops amid swirling clouds turns out to be an almost abstract shot of oceanic waves. Finally, as the soundtrack is mercifully silenced, the entire screen is filled with the image of the waves. And the patient viewer is rewarded by suddenly being taken out of the present time, out of the time of the film, to an entirely different time and space.

Which, I suppose, is the point.

Concept over vision

[Polaris_DiB · 5/10 · 17 April 2008]

This is one of the most famous conceptual films ever made, and yet it's surprising how little the descriptions of it actually fit. It is most commonly discussed as "a single zoom", partially because of Snow's own description of it, whereas it's obviously and significantly several cuts with various camera effects added in for good measure. It's discussed as having a strange mix of sounds in its soundtrack, but the sounds are actually pretty isolated and easy to distinguish, from the whistling sine wave increasing in pitch to the glass breaking, Strawberry Fields Forever, sirens only at the end, and a line of dialog. It's also discussed as minimalistic, but there's actually a lot going on. Finally, and most importantly, it's a lot easier to watch than most people make it out to be.

In a New York loft, Michael Snow sets up a camera in the corner and, over a series of hundreds of cuts over two days, slowly zooms in to a picture of waves on the wall while putting in color gels, fiddling with exposure, staging a narrative scene (almost in real time), and playing with cuts and super-impositions. In his own words, it's as long as it is because he didn't have any money to make it longer, and one aside to the whole "continuous zoom" theme is that the zoom is at absolutely no point in the movie continuous, but protracted (there's a significant difference).

It's interesting to people in the way it plays with expectations (what does an audience want from a film?), the way it plays with narrative (by the time we've zoomed all the way in, the actions on the set are really mysterious), in the way that memory plays with our experience of the film (some sections seem to go faster than others because less is going on... it is possible to sleep through segments of the film and not miss anything), and some even discuss it in terms of discomfort (the sine wave is annoying to people, I guess, and after all the anxiety involved in getting to the end, the picture is, in theory, a purposeful let-down). A lot of people discuss it in terms of filmic space, and how by the time the movie ends, the camera has opened up to an entirely different space than the loft.

The thing is, I knew about pretty much all of this before I had ever seen the film (this happens sometimes when you're a film student; I also had pretty much "seen" A bout de soufflé a dozen times before actually watching the movie), and as a concept film, it's the concept itself that matters over the actual experience of it. Whereas it is still an important film, it is a famous film, and it is a heavily discussed film, "seeing it" is not all that important, and since it's a rare film, it's also not really worth tracking down. I think it should be made available on DVD so that it can lose a bit of its romantic mystery, but since it's also the type of film that's a "film" and must be seen projected as film, putting it on DVD can offend the people who enjoy it as a "film". You see the problem we're dealing with, here?

Anyway, if you've heard of Wavelength, you probably already know all about it, and if you don't, you're not reading this. It is eternally for an audience of avant-garde enthusiasts and film theorists (and, well, let's face it, the occasional pretentious jerk, though Snow doesn't strike me as one himself), and will maintain that audience for decades to come.

--PolarisDiB

It's a room.

[ofpsmith · 5/10 · 13 March 2014]

What can I say about a room. It's a nice room. I find the film to be interesting. It zooms in very slowly on this picture. It also has a number of filters that it appears to go through. There is no story nor characters. Sure people show up now and then but it's not like they are actual plot devices or anything. But I find it interesting that it zooms in on one particular item. However there are of course still problems with it. It's just a room. That's all we pretty much see. I'd love to see a novel of this. It would probably be like this. Chapter 1: Room. Chapter 2: Room. Chapter 3: Room. The second problem is the acting is pretty bad. Not that there's much acting anyway but there is a scene where a man walks into the room and is shot dead. Then later a woman walks in and quietly calls the police. She's pretty nonchalant about seeing a dead man in her office that she's never seen before! If that happened to me I would call the police and say "Get over here quick, there's a dead man in my office!" And the noise it makes is rather annoying. It get's higher and higher as it goes on. But other than that it's average.

Perhaps the CITIZEN KANE of Avant-Garde 60's Cinema

[gortx · 24 April 2005]

I've been wanting to see this film for over 20 years - Ever since my college days in Boston when a friend told me about this artsy experimental film he'd seen at The Massachusetts College of Art (or, as it was called, "Mass Art"). This week a co-operative effort between the Filmforum, the American Cinemateque and the Getty Museum brought director Michael Snow and several of his films to L.A..

Sometimes, perhaps OFTEN TIMES, hearing about a legendary "lost" or hard-to-find film is better than actually seeing it! Author William K. Everson has written about several "lost" films whose reputation sank once they were "found".

I wouldn't say that WAVELENGTH quite sinks upon viewing, but no film probably could withstand 20+ years of anticipation. Additionally, it doesn't help matters when the film is often described INCORRECTLY (as it was to me).

WAVELENGTH is NOT a 45 minute single-zoom shot.

In fact, it is a rather artfully orchestrated SERIES of individual pieces of film (and sometimes TWO layered upon one other). Cuts, flashbacks, repeated shots, different film stocks, assorted F-Stops, jump cuts, filters and lens are just some of the tools in Snow's bag of tricks to convey the illusion of a Single Shot broken up by alternate realities of perception. The Soundtrack as well, is a layered fusion of natural sound, synch dialogue, radio broadcasts and an overwhelming buzz creating by a crescendo sine-wave.

In some ways, I must confess, I "prefer" the purity of the film as it was described to me - a single shot. However, what Snow produced was an artistic depiction of space, time and movement all his own. The Sine-Wave is more annoying that edifying (though it does, at one propitious point, seemingly morph into an emergency vehicle siren). A unique experience that MUST be seen in a Movie Theater. I can see a home viewer grasping a remote control all too easily!

Snow was in attendance and did a Q & A. A couple of interesting notes. First, the Beatles' STRAWBERRY FIELDS was NOT the first song that he recorded off the radio (in appropriate 60's ethos, Snow said he originally intended to use "whatever happened to be on the radio" when they filmed it); Instead, it was Joan Baez' LITTLE DRUMMER BOY (which Snow called so dreadful he didn't use it!). Second, the final jump cut into the picture provoked more of a 'sexual connotation' in the minds of 60's viewers than it does today.

Hmm. What does THAT mean?! :)

Utterly pointless

[saffron · 2/10 · 19 May 1999]

Do yourself a favor and instead of actually watching this film just read an analysis of it. Concept of the movie: stationary camera in an empty room zooms for 45 minutes. A few people visit the room, some of them play The Beatles for a while - for the rest of the movie, the soundtrack consists of a high-pitched whine. At three minutes, this would have been an amusing bit of '60s avantgarde nonsense. At 45 minutes, it's a dreadful experience. The movie provokes absolutely no emotional or intellectual response, and you can't even take a nap because of the soundtrack.

Artsy Piece For Sure

[ataylor-23766 · 3/10 · 24 July 2016]

Eons ago this film was presented in my history of art class at university. What I really remember is my professor claiming it as a necessity of any art student to view it as a right of passage. While viewing the film, though only 45 minutes in length I managed to fall asleep. This was the only time I have ever fallen asleep in class. Even watching my early film class with D. W. Griffith's Intolerance in a very hot, stuffy room in the most uncomfortable seats ever did not make me visit the land of Nod.

Yet it holds value to many others in its artistic nature. Sadly as I failed to consciously view most of it I can only give short and brief opinion on it as a good sleep aid.

Great Idea, Done Once

[dgookin · 7/10 · 21 May 2011]

Like others who've seen this film, I watched in film school. It's a one-gag joke that may seem boring but yet the film is unforgettable: A long, slow zoom through a window into a room, eventually closing up onto a picture of a wave.

During the painfully slow zoom things happen in the room, though it's never busy or plot-driven. The highlight for me was when someone snapped on a radio and the Beatles "Strawberry Fields" played. Was that an underhanded way of saying that the film was a bad LSD trip?

Beyond the Beatles, the soundtrack consists of a long, annoying, screeching crescendo. It's awful, but try as I could, I was unable to catch a short nap during the film because of the soundtrack. For that it earns my praise. I mean, if Hollywood can't keep me awake with their drivel, then this film deserves some kind of award.

Worse than my five days suffering a kidney stone.

[Brude_Stone · 1/10 · 4 November 2007]

Understand that I am a fan of avant-garde cinema. I have seen quite a lot of it - some very good, some very bad - but no film I have ever seen (avant-garde or otherwise) has ever been more excruciating to me than "Wavelength." Like the title of my post says, I know what excruciating means intimately and I do believe I'd rather suffer another five days with a kidney stone like I did a few years ago, than be forced to sit through this film for a third time (in film school I was forced to watch it twice for different teachers).

Stick to Maya Deren or Stan Brakhage or Bunuel or anybody to satisfy your avant-garde tastes. Experimenting with "Wavelength" might not be worth the pain.

we like the films, the films that go zoom...(SPOILERS)

[msic · 10/10 · 15 May 2001]

The thing about WAVELENGTH is, the zoom is only the overall shape of the film, and lots of fascinating things happen within the 45-minutes it takes for the zoom lens to cross the room. If you only care about "plot" or "characters" or human-driven "action" in cinema, no amount of persuasion is going to make you warm up to WAVELENGTH. It is more of an intersection between cinema and painting. It doesn't offer plot, like most films, and it occurs across a fixed span of time, unlike paintings which you can walk away from more easily. So it demands a different kind of patience, but I think it rewards that patience in spades. Here, the attractions are qualities of light, textures of swirling film grain, the sheer fascination with how a blue or green filter can change to optical world before you. Yes, it's possible that a film could give you all that, *and* plot, but I submit to you, you wouldn't feel those formal, painterly aspects with as much force. That's minimalism for you. And WAVELENGTH has sensual pleasure to spare.

I think one of the aspects of Snow's cinema which is most disconcerting to many filmgoers is his resolute disinterest in the human world. What do we make of a film in which someone drops dead, but the camera moves right past them? The soundtrack is a demonstration of pure sound, a sine wave which is an orderly but impersonal shifting of air. Like the light waves entering the zoom lens, mathematics and particle physics overtake "merely" human events. Isn't it possible to find interest in the space of the room for itself? Isn't it fascinating to stare into a world which, in its dogged pursuit of its own agenda, barely knows you're there? I think so. As much as I love this film, I must defend it in pretty hard-nosed terms. WAVELENGTH is not here to entertain, affirm, or even please you, any more than sunlight exists to make you visible to your friends. Light and sound are objective forces, and WAVELENGTH gives them a place to play.

Strange

[skrstenansky · 7/10 · 17 December 2021]

This movie really doesnt have any real meaning to it, it really is something you have to see and interperet for yourself. Either you like it or you dont depending on the interpretation. I enjoyed it with the interpretation of mine, that this is about a man nearing death, as the camera zooms he is getting closer and closer to being non existent, when he dies in the room it starts to fade, flashing lights, which i interpret as memories, his life flashing before his eyes as he lays there in his final minutes, and as the screen fades to nothingness, hes gone, there is nothing left of him. Not for everyone if you like experimental films you might like this.

Fascinating

[beckerthetrekker · 1/10 · 21 April 2006]

I found this film fascinating. It contains drama, suspense, mystery, and characters, although the whole thing takes place in one continuous shot, but with very subtle cuts, and some obvious changes in lighting effects and film stock. Some of the action takes place off screen, so the viewer can only hear what's happening and has to imagine it. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, because I was wondering what would happen next. The camera moves forward, but so slowly your eye can barely catch it. This film does more without moving the camera, than many films do with dozens of shots. If you like avant garde or experimental film, this is definitely worth a look.

Brilliant

[marino_touchdowns · 9/10 · 4 September 2011]

Michael Snow's masterpiece, or something like that, is a "structural picture" from 1967 called Wavelength. Though the film was incredibly painful to my ears, it for some reason has stuck with me. After a long thinking period, I have decided that I actually really liked it.

At a little under 45 minutes long, Wavelength is not an easy film to get through. It features a non-moving camera set in a large room, and nothing else. The camera captured the action that goes on in the room to create what Snow calls "a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas." On the surface it is merely a stiff frame of three walls, a floor and a ceiling with the occasional, but brief, interaction of a human variety. But once you look closer you will realize that your eyes have deceived you.

Through the entire film, Snow has his camera zooming in at an extremely slow speed. After realizing this, your eyes will be fixated on the screen in a desperate attempt to convince yourself that you are not insane. I found the entire concept to be so emotionally exhausting and frustrating that once the film was over I could do nothing but watch it again. It was a pleasantly unpleasing experience that did nothing but expand my conception of conventional filmmaking.

I have to admit that the soundtrack behind the film was a bit confusing for me. It was nonexistent for most of the film, but all of a sudden…WHAM! Imagine the most ear-piercing scream or squeal that you have ever heard. Now combine them to make the last half an hour of Wavelength. I honestly thought that I was going to disturb my neighbor's dog with the high pitched whistles and unexplainable wails that accompanied the actionless action. If you can handle the sounds you will be rewarded by the film.

With Wavelength, Snow created the most aesthetically praised work in all of avant-garde. His technique ultimately forced me into a starring contest with the screen. It was me versus the structure of a single room. It was me versus the nonexistent, but ever present, movement of the camera's lenses. I waited arrogantly for the film to flinch. It never did. And then it ended.

I'm glad those things don't have a director's cut

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 2/10 · 25 October 2013]

"Wavelength" is so avant-garde that it merges cinema with torture in a true definition without exaggeration. Right next to Warhol's "Vinyl" but almost without characters or dialog, the director holds us in a room where effects and editing dictate the changes going in there while the still camera records days going by, strange noises causing a great deal of pain in our ears. Like "Vinyl", the only salvation is in the brief soundtrack, here with "Strawberry Fields Forever" playing at the first minutes. Apparently there's a story involving new residents at this apartment, a dead body and all but most of the time it's a suffocating experience of being trapped in a nightmare that never ends until waves come crashing in. It goes on for 45 minutes. If you're brave enough like me, you endure the test until the final moment. Many collapse after 5 minutes. The ones who like this are just fooling everybody.

This is not a movie. This is the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and annoyance in whoever watch it, therefore torture. The difference is that you can walk out of if or turn it off. Art like great literature has the power of causing effects, sensations, feelings and above disturbance with the world we live in, almost as if a masochist device we proudly say we enjoy and appreciate and wouldn't hesitate in going through again. Why? Because the artists are giving us something, giving us life reflected as it is, they're sharing their views, they're telling the truth. Things like "Wavelength" shatters that notion because we're not getting anything but a pretentious saying that there's something in there, to quote his own words, Mr. Snow says of this film: "it's a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas". If analyzed movies as a person, well, then I wasn't pleased to meet you. Art disturbs but we can enjoy it. "Wavelength" disturbs but we don't enjoy. And I empathize the word art cause this can't be it's reverse, a simple entertainment, in no possible way. It's not easing my mind, it's not distracting me.

I made the comparison with Warhol, contemporary of Snow but a few miles distant and in the right road, because "Vinyl" was that painful but the Artist (with the capital A, indeed) was trying to create a story in a proper way so audiences would be part of it. It's hard to like but it's easy to understand. Not to mention, Andy could film the Empire State for 24 hours, a couple kissing for a long time, a guy eating mushrooms for 40 minutes AND make something out of those moments. The experimentation worked, life was there and possibilities along with it.

It gets two stars because I've seen more disastrous waste of time, and it was fun to sing along with The Beatles at the beginning. The noise that comes afterwards will haunt me for life. Once again, damn you, Schneider! 2/10

Avant-garde exploration of space and waves

[0roymeo0 · 31 January 2003]

Most will find this movie tedious. It is a 45 minute incredibly slow zooming in across a loft-type space. Most of the action is barely visible truck tops visible through the windows at the opposite side of the room. There is the occasional "happening" with a person or two, and there are a lot of experimental film and color effects (flashes of pure monochromatic orange fill the screen, the image turns sepia or red, etc. negative, etc.). The sound track may induce headaches, as it contains both The Beatles "Strawberry Fields" and later a track of several sine-wave tones which creep, barely like the zoom, slowly higher in pitch.

As I sat in the theater watching this, toward the end, I believe I finally "got" it. This may not be a spoiler in the traditional sense, but I warn you that reading on may spoil the sort of joy I felt as I put it all together. Of course it may also be that the subject matter is so minimal and lacking that one's mind works extra hard to try to come up with something there, but I don't think so.

SPOILER: But this piece is also somewhat brilliant in it's subtle exploration of waves, as layers of film roll back and forth under/over the 'main' track. SPOILER: And the audio itself is a set of sine-wave sounds which are slowly rising and not completely in sync, so one hears the wave addition and interference as the wavelengths peak together at different intervals. SPOILER: At the climax, some of the soundwaves drop back and build back up to crash, like waves on the shore. SPOILER: This combination of various waves is more than worth the wait for 'something to happen'. :SPOILER

Annoying, zero cinematic value

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 9 September 2015]

"Wavelength" is a 1967 45-minute film by writer and director Michael Snow. Now I really wonder what some people saw in this almost 50-year-old film. We stare at a window for the entire time and occasionally we see a couple people pass by. And at the same time we keep hearing the same sound for the entire film, only the frequency changes, so that it becomes more and more unpleasant to listen to. this is not really a film anymore. It's more of torture. Early on, there was a Beatles song that was kinda nice to listen to, but everything afterward is just a mix of boring and very unpleasant. Given the fact that Snow was still fairly young when he made this one, I have hope that he improved during his career, but I probably will never be too amazed by experimental films. This one here certainly wasn't a good watch at all. Highly not recommended.

Staring into Nothing

[nikitalinivenko · 1/10 · 28 October 2019]

There's nothing to see here. No, literally - it's 45 minutes of slowly zooming in on a picture hanging on someone's living room wall. That's it. That's literally the whole movie. Apparently a murder also happens off-screen at one point, which we can hear, but no time for that, there's this really neat blank wall with a couple indiscernible pictures hanging on it this movie just has to show you. Oh, and then there's cop sirens and that's how it ends. This is just white-noise background humming someone could've captured with their camcorder and then tried to pass off as an ambient art instillation meant to be projected on the blank walls of art museums. Or something. If you're curious, a few seconds is all you need because that's pretty much the whole entirety of the movie. There's a legend that says Bodhidharma spent 20 years staring at a cave wall. This must've been made with that in mind, as it's a sample of what that must've been like.

I found it....

[Doyalikedags · 1/10 · 9 May 2022]

I found it. The worst film I've ever watched, and yes I did watch it from start to finish.

I guess some people's argument of this film being Avant Garde and just "out of the mainstream film-goer's understanding of what a masterpiece is" have merit if you were to go by a quote of the Director himself -

"I make up the rules of a game and I play it. If I seem to be losing, I change the rules."

He can't lose. Anything anyone says to criticize it can be shot down with that quote as a basis.

Examples:

1) It's not entertaining

"well it isn't meant to be"

2) The soundtrack (for lack of a better word at the moment) is too jarring to be enjoyed

"You're missing the point, he didn't want you to enjoy it"

In my opinion, films are meant to be some form of entertainment and they're supposed to be enjoyed. Looking at art at a museum (as some reviews compare this to) is entertainment too, and people who have an interest in art will enjoy it - but comparing this to that is simply not the same. It's comparing apples to syphilis. Can you study syphilis? Sure. Is it pleasant? No.

But another quote by the director gives equal firepower to both the people who like and dislike the film -

"Perception of the work is the on-lookers department."

Do I perceive this film to be unforgettable?

Yes

Do I perceive this film to be good?

Absolutely not, and I think this is where the people in support of this film get confused...

Unforgettable =/= good.

Not for Everybody

[framptonhollis · 9/10 · 13 May 2015]

5.9? Really? A rating that low? I know the reason. THE WRONG PEOPLE SAW THE FILM! Why did they? They probably weren't warned.

"Wavelength" is about as far from mainstream you can go. An experimental film, zooming in on a window, over a week period. Of course, other things happen. A man(played by experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton) dies, probably murdered. Then, we continuously watch to see what happens. The screen changes color, and we just see what happens to this dead body!

I, personally, find "Wavelength" to be a brilliant Avant-garde masterpiece. A film unlike almost any other, powerful and interesting! But, you may not, and that's okay. This is because ITS A MOVIE WHERE YOU LOOK AT A WINDOW FOR 40 MINUTES! That is certainly not going to be for everybody! So, I'd recommend this to people to enjoy experimental film, or at least have a strong interest in it. Everyone else, I don't really think so.

Unintentional art?

[bjruddock · 5/10 · 3 January 2023]

When I was in college I was walking down a hallway at 3AM drinking a cup of coffee. There was an art exhibit on the wall consisting of paper cutouts in various shapes. So I ripped my coffee cup into a weird spiral kind of thing and pinned it up on the art exhibit. It remained there for weeks until the exhibit was taken down. At some point I'm sure that someone probably admired my work. And that basically sums this movie up. Surely nobody could have had art in mind when making it, yet for some reason people seem to infer art from it. And, yet, maybe that's what makes it a great film. Who knows!

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding, all you see."

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 3 January 2017]

Experimental cinema doesn't get more difficult or perplexing and yet all the same rewarding in some hard to define sense than Wavelength. I might feel like I'm less writing a review than I am writing some homework assignment for an art history class, but Michael Snow's film, which is all in one 42 minute shot, is something that can be said that is literally unlike any other film - one might want to compare it to Andy Warhol's stationary exercises, but that is just putting a camera down and not doing anything as far as doing motions or effects or audio treatment, it's more about the subjects in the frame doing things.

With Snow, there *is* a process, and it's something that could possibly make some of you sick. But first, here's what should be noted: this is not entirely an unbroken take. It is "unbroken" as far as the camera's set-up, since it isn't moving from its spot like on a dolly track and the zoom is moving at a pace a snail would go, 'catch up, man, Jesus!' But all cameras holding film need to change the reels, so every so often as Snow is zooming in on the inside of a room that has about four windows looking out over a city, with two chairs, and three pictures on the farthest wall, he does cut in with what could be called visual static. He also does some treatment to the image as far as super-imposed colors and strobes, or what may be the 1960s take on that, and then near the very end of the film (in the last two/three minutes) there is what one might call a dissolve. There may be more dissolves here, but I lost count by a certain point.

Wavelength is not frustrating to look at since every so often it'll throw in some people to look at - and sure, one of them, for no reason, drops dead (this is the experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton making an appearance - I think, though I'm not sure, future film critic Amy Taubin shows up later on as the woman making a phone call telling someone that there's a dead man on the floor) - or even a song (the Beatles's 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is the one sliver of music to pipe in on a radio). But the audio of it is unique, and I'm not sure if it's in a way that is meant to make one curl up into a ball. It's borderline torture; think of when a tea kettle is ready and keeps on whistling - it's that, times a hundred. As the image in Snow's lens brings us inexorably, every so slowly but in that gradual way that you WILL focus on what he wants you to look at, the audio becomes ever so sharply loaded with noise. Compared to this, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music is easy listening.

I had a different experience watching this than maybe some of you; it's available online so I hooked up my hd TV and watched it on a big screen as as I could, but I also could turn down the volume. If I saw this on 35mm in a theater with good light and good sound, I wonder if I would be more put off. But this isn't a knock against Snow exactly; I realized that the sound wasn't going to go down, so I decided to go with it. If this is the artist's process, to bring one into... well, what? I hasten to call it an 'avant-garde masterpiece', or some pretentious disaster, because I feel like/know I would need more of a critical justification. What is this TRYING to do, and does it accomplish it? Simply put: everyone who comes to this will get something out of it (for me, one part that I found compelling is how my mind might wander while looking at this shot zooming closer, and ten SNAP back into Snow's aesthetic when he messed with the image, adding color and more ferocious noise).

Maybe all you need to make a movie isn't a girl and a gun, but a single room with an interesting look and ideas that push the boundaries of what one expects to see in a motion picture. Snow may be saying, 'look at this room, look at what's going on, listen to it, and there may be things going on you didn't expect - look closer.' Or it could be a fantastical trip to do drugs to. This does move, but in such a way that creeps up on you as it creeps along. And ultimately it is... unique.

Yup, sat through all of it!

[SPZMaxinema · 5/10 · 12 April 2022]

I give this "film" some * very slight* credit for the symbolism and the guy dying in the middle to create 5 seconds of drama, other than that it's nothing special at all needless to say. There are dumber things I've seen but nothing more boring! (Seriously, a guy dies after he walks into an apartment and a woman finds him and calls the police or something, that's it). Btw, James Rolfe made me want to watch it, so thanks a lot James, lol.

Beyond my appreciation, which I don't think is all my fault

[bob the moo · 21 January 2014]

I watched this film/installation from Michael Snow in MoMA recently and in a way I feel lucky to have seen it in the way I did, particularly in light of the comments here from those that also saw it. For me the good fortunate comes from seeing a version called WVLNT, which is also known as Wavelength for Those Short of Time, or words to that effect. Essentially this version was the original film broken down into three parts and then laid over one another. Maybe this loses something by doing this but for me I'm not sure what I would have gained from seeing the longer version.

Apparently the film is important in an artistic influence sense but I really think that whatever group appreciates this is not a group I will ever be able to join. I took nothing from it and wasn't able to find anything to really grasp onto as a starting point. Even in the context of having spent the morning in an art gallery trying to be open minded to things, I couldn't find space for this. I would love to sound intelligence and art-savvy but WVLNT really just seemed difficult and obscure for the sake of it.

I'll never see this, but

[harryt-448-610169 · 1/10 · 12 April 2022]

In this one rare occasion, I'm happy to give it a 10 as a joke. Clearly this film is BS. Releasing trash like this is akin to writing a novel which is only 10% real words. There is a minimal requirement to even qualify for avant garde.

Please do better.

I want my time back.

[jordanstuck · 1/10 · 1 July 2022]

A friend showed me this recently.... I'm assuming as a joke. Beyond the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life and I hope no one else has to endure it.

Wavelength

[jboothmillard · 5/10 · 2 January 2017]

I would have never have found this short avant-garde film from experimental Canadian filmmaker and artist Michael Snow if it wasn't featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and to be honest, that is the only reason I watched it. Basically it is a 45 minute film all set in one room, and the filming consists of the camera very slowly zooming in to the windows and wall. It takes place over what is meant to be a seven day period (that's essentially five minutes per day) in what looks like a near empty apartment or loft space. All that is in the room is the distant table with a telephone, a chair, two windows that look onto the street below, and a photograph of the sea on the wall, which is what the camera is zooming in on. At the beginning three people entering, a woman with a fur coat and two men carrying a bookshelf or cabinet. Halfway through, a man walks in and suddenly collapses on the floor, he lies dead for some time. Near the end, the woman in the fur coat finds the man lying dead, makes a telephone call to report his demise, then she disappears. Besides these three events, the only action that takes place are the many vehicles driving on the road passing by, the room going through the days in daylight and nighttime, and of course the gradual zooming of the image on screen. Besides the transition from day to night, there are also occasional colour changes, going red and blue, the camera going blurry and distorted in moments, short fades to black, and some flickers of whiteness, but nothing in the room or elsewhere changes. The title relates to the constant tone that plays through the film, it starts low and gradually increases in frequency and pitch. This has been called a "masterpiece", and I have read critics giving it four stars out of five, it certainly explores what can be done with a camera without movement, and almost no action going, but the continuous tone sound playing throughout is very likely to cause a headache and perhaps irritation, it certainly did for me, I can't myself watching this again, but it was a fairly interesting experimental film, for both good and bad reasons. Worth watching, at least once, in my opinion!