What I loved about Joseph Cornell's "Rose Hobart" was that it made no pretenses of being anything beyond what it was. The film made no grand statements; it was simply a film collage of scenes with the titular actress in scenes from a forgotten 1930s B-movie, "East of Borneo." It is a film that would hardly be expected to interest anyone beyond similarly creepy admirers of Rose Hobart. The film is undeniably weird in its repetition of seemingly random scenes, and it evokes a curious mix of nostalgia, obsession, and absurdity - all without the use of words and without filming any of his own material. Cornell's film for me is indicative of what can be so fascinating about film; what a movie like this shows us is that our definition of film benefits greatly by being expanded beyond the confines of mass entertainment. "Rose Hobart" works because it is so personal and so defiant of conventional analysis...How can we really be equipped to 'like' or 'dislike' this movie when it asks neither of us. It is simply a personal statement, an artist's product. And honestly, by the end, I was genuinely curious: Who the hell IS Rose Hobart?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Who is Rose Hobart?
What I loved about Joseph Cornell's "Rose Hobart" was that it made no pretenses of being anything beyond what it was. The film made no grand statements; it was simply a film collage of scenes with the titular actress in scenes from a forgotten 1930s B-movie, "East of Borneo." It is a film that would hardly be expected to interest anyone beyond similarly creepy admirers of Rose Hobart. The film is undeniably weird in its repetition of seemingly random scenes, and it evokes a curious mix of nostalgia, obsession, and absurdity - all without the use of words and without filming any of his own material. Cornell's film for me is indicative of what can be so fascinating about film; what a movie like this shows us is that our definition of film benefits greatly by being expanded beyond the confines of mass entertainment. "Rose Hobart" works because it is so personal and so defiant of conventional analysis...How can we really be equipped to 'like' or 'dislike' this movie when it asks neither of us. It is simply a personal statement, an artist's product. And honestly, by the end, I was genuinely curious: Who the hell IS Rose Hobart?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That's a neat observation about Rose Hobart as well as Cornell's methods. If you're curious, you can see what I made of both at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vimeo.com/983797