Cinéma "expérimental"

"Christopher Maclaine, a beat poet of the 1940s and '50s living in San Francisco, made only four films in his lifetime; — The End (1953), The Man Who Invented Gold (1957), Beat (1958), Scotch Hop (1959).

Born in Oklahoma in 1923, Maclaine graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1946 and soon founded a small literary magazine; he also published his poetry in other small magazines and in several small-press books, the last in 1960.

Frequently broke and dependent on friends, he cultivated the image of the mad artist; both Brakhage and Murphy compare him to Antonin Artaud. He became a drug casualty when Methedrine was introduced into the Bay Area in the late 50s; much stronger than the amphetamines he'd previously taken, it caused permanent brain damage. When Brakhage describes visiting him in the early 60s, Maclaine sounds like the classic speed freak; at about that time he also made at least one suicide attempt. By the mid-60s he no longer recognized his friends, and in 1969, unable to care for himself, he was placed in a state institution, where he died in 1975.

I know of five treatments of Maclaine in print that go beyond a few sentences. Jonas Mekas wrote a very short rave review in 1963, and Brakhage offered enthusiastic appreciation in his 1989 book Film at Wit's End. The End is treated in P. Adams Sitney's Visionary Film, and filmmaker J. J. Murphy has published two articles, one in Film Quarterly (Winter 1979-80) and the other in Film Culture (1983).

The wonderful Scotch Hop (1959) : In that film Maclaine intercuts a small band of bagpipers with other scenes, making some costumed young women appear to dance to the bagpipes' rhythms. Scotch Hop is animated by a tension between synchronicity and asynchronicity — the rhythms of the images and the music converge, then diverge. Each image feels as if it were perched on a knife-edge between a world of smooth, lyrical dance and a world about to be torn apart."

(Mad Genius; The Films of Christopher Maclaine, By Fred Camper)

En 1970, Jim Morrison réalise avec quelques amis son film expérimental HWY, An American Pastoral. Il travaille depuis fin 1967 sur son scénario surréaliste L'Auto-stoppeur, l'histoire d'un tueur en série qui parcourt le désert en auto-stop. Paul Ferrara, rencontré sur les bancs de UCLA, est chef opérateur sur le tournage, tandis que l'ami Frank Lisciandro assure le montage de ce qui restera l'unique film de Jim Morrison. La Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500 bleu foncé que l'on voit dans le film est celle de Jim Morrison. C'est un cadeau que Jac Holzman, patron des disques Elektra, fit au chanteur quand la chanson Light My Fire atteignit la tête du hit-parade en 1967. Le premier n°1 des Doors. Ce bolide racé, baptisé Blue Lady par le preneur de son Babe Hill, fit de Jim Morrison un véritable fléau sur Mulholland Drive où il conduisait le plus souvent ivre. Lorsqu'il décolla en mars 1971 pour Paris, Jim Morrison emporta les copies de Feast of Friends et HWY qu'il chercha à faire projeter en France.