Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was a master of the "found footage" movement, shaping previously existing footage into collage films that were complex and important documents of the radically changing world during the Cold War. A Movie (1958) and Cosmic Ray (1961) are among the most durable and audience-friendly experimental films from the fruitful New American Cinema period (circa 1943 to 1966), with their playful cutting, and ironic juxtapositions.
Like many experimental filmmakers, Bruce Conner worked in other mediums than celluloid. His sculptural assemblages were identical to his cinematic output, in that each discipline showed the artist creating abstract collages from found materials. During his best-remembered period of filmmaking, he also created such assemblages as "Child" (1959), "Bride" (1961) and "Looking Glass" (1964), with humanoid figures covered in wax or nylon.
The 12-minute A Movie was originally intended as one of his installations. The film's selections of images are ordered in a way that the movie would appear to have no logical beginning or end, especially not when looped to run perpetually in his installation. Even seen on its own, A Movie has that strange illusion that if left alone, it would continue to unspool without coalescing to any kind of distinguishable pattern. (In fact, Conner even considered his visual art to be "unfinished", in that they became living things that took on existences of their own.)
A Movie begins with the title "Bruce Conner", shown onscreen for what feels like minutes, followed by leader, then the classic shot of the naked girl that projectionists would use to ensure the film was in focus, followed by more leader. Shots of cowboys and Indians appear. This western montage gently gives itself over to racing footage, then stampeding elephants, followed by shots of tanks. These fast action sequences blend together seamlessly. This busy decoupage is suddenly hushed with the title "End". Then we witness a person performing a tightrope act. Title: A MOVIE.
This is followed by the perhaps the film's most memorable scene. A man in a submarine looks into his periscope. Cut to a shot of a sunbathing girl. Cut to the submarine shooting a missile, followed by the inevitable shot of the mushroom cloud. This sequence is the ultimate expression of sexual longing in the atomic age. Keeping with the motif of water, we next see some surfers, intercut with some natives in kayaks and water skiing.
A bicycle sequence then blends into aerial footage. Shots of a collapsing bridge. More planes. A blimp. Go kart racing. Parachuting. The Hindenberg explodes. Mankind is going out of control. Suddenly, pastoral shots of deer and swans fill the screen. This is filled with a violent image taken on a bridge during an earthquake. The Hindenberg is aflame. A ship sinks. People hang upside down. Footage of war casualties. A mushroom cloud. A dead elephant. The Hindenberg collapses. People search through wreckage. End of film.
The title "Bruce Conner" at the opening suggests than what we're seeing is the end first (as experimental filmmakers often put their names at the end of their pictures). Thus, if we looped the film as such, what we see at the "real" ending of A Movie seems like a logical conclusion, as the tone and tempo of the piece mounts to a crescendo of chaos. The film is ordered by sequences with harmonious images pertaining to a consistent tone: the machismo of mankind with warlike tendencies (cowboys, tanks); machismo in the atomic age (missile=phallus; atomic cloud=orgasm); mankind's inventions out of control thusly bringing the destruction of all living things- human or animal.
