Bruce Conner’s film career began explosively in 1958 with the release of a 12-minute black-and-white film simply titled A Movie, composed exclusively of found footage material. What made the film an iconographic component of American avant-garde cinema was Conner’s exquisite editing and his ability to craft a moving image artwork that was at once an incisive, if elusive, critique of American pomposity and a profound meditation on visual rhythms and textures. Conner went on to create an inimical body of work that includes more than 20 remarkable avant-garde films before his death in 2008, and his acute critical eye contributed to a larger fascination with media-based analysis that continues to thrive today.
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FILM QUARTERLY | Marilyn Times Five
Marilyn, Bruce Conner’s eleventh 16mm film, is constructed of brief segments excised from two Marilyn Monroe softcore nudies of the early forties (she was about 19). The clips are few, and are repeated over and over, punctuated heavily by black spaces of opaque leader. The sound track is the song “I’m Through with Love,” which Monroe sings in Some Like It Hot—repeated five times. The images: Monroe lying down and smoothing her hair, Monroe playing with an apple, Monroe stepping out of a skirt, Monroe rolling onto her back, etc. She wears only panties. The effect is hypnotic and depressing.
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