The End

The sixties are over, the revolution failed and technology consumes us as we consume technology.

Ideas belong in a world context. Unfortunately this context is constantly changing and the ideas about identity, sexuality, society, revolution begin to show their age. They are interesting to learn about but can not take on the same meaning out of context. The ways in which these ideas were expressed and the techniques these ideas inspired however can be altered to fit the current context.

Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog and Agnes Varda continue to make films using 1960s aesthetics, aesthetics of aging, story telling, beauty, politics. New film makers are also inspired by the film techniques that emerged from the sixties. Jim Jarmucsh's Stranger than Paradise borrows from Cassavete's Shadows in content and style. The young characters full of existential angst move through an urban landscape and enclose themselves in apartments. Scenes are cut around partial and seemingly meaningless conversations. Like the repetition of the Charlie Parker riffs in Shadows, the music of Screamin' Jay Hawkins frames the action and represents transition.

We have certain expectations when watching films that these aesthetics did not conform to. At times we may struggle with what we are seeing and hearing because it is prompting a different kind of cinema experience from us. It's ok to let our minds wander, we won't miss that important plot twist, our heart does not have to race as the sound track crescendos, we don't even have to like what we see. The stimulation of an unique experience is what the aesthetic is designed to do and thus is expressed in different forms by different directors.

Sound

One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1968)
Jean-Luc Godard
Gimme Shelter (1970)
David Maysles, Albert Maysleys, Charlottle Zwerin

Traditionally in film sound compliments the vision. In One Plus One however Godard reverses the process using various sounds complimented by visions to construct his film. The film records the rehearsal process of the Rolling Stones song 'Sympathy for the Devil'. The sound is built up layer by layer, comparable to the development of a complex plot of characters. What is created is a space defined by sound instead of vision. The camera circles the room and at times focuses on minor visual details such as the unidentified man who looks like he has happened upon the rehearsal accidentally and has stopped to listen. For an audience used to vision guiding other senses the inclusion of the man is strange. Only when this imagined back story is applied, the music came first, the man followed, does it make sense.

Gimme Shelter was not intended to be a film about sound. The film makers were lucky enough to be following the Rolling Stones on their 1969 American tour which climaxed in the ill fated concert at Altamont, CA. A sight to be seen, the sound quality in the early concert footage is far superior to the visuals. The plot is carried on by other sounds as the brash American lawyer (apparently acting on his own hence he never speaks to Jagger) negotiates the concerts location with the sheriff who appears only via a speaker phone. At the Altamont concert the visuals blur. Away from the stage the desert and the crowds of people are matched with eager voices. Close to the stage the crowd is a moving blur and the music is mixed with the pleas of the musicians and organisers for calm. The British accents of the Stones and their manager Sam Culter are particularly cutting as their voices reveal a range of emotions. The concluding sound of the film is not the song which plays over the credits but the sound of the helicopter overloaded with the Stones entourage as it escapes the chaos of the festival.