“A Movie” was released in 1958 and was created by Bruce Conner. It is an eleven- or twelve-minute experimental collage short put together using what is referred to as “found footage”. The film clips are stock footage culled from newsreels and old movies as well as a bit of soft-core porn.
The music score for the short was taken from “The Pines of the Villa Borghese”, “Pines near a Catacomb,” and “The Pines of the Appian Way,” movements from Ottorino Respighi’s tone poem or symphonic poem “Pines of Rome”. The movements were performed by the NBC Symphony and were conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
Using various snippets of both wild action as well as serene images Conner reveals the world as a violent and fierce place among nature’s calmer moments. The abstract images appear random but with closer inspection seem to show the world hurdling toward an apocalypse.
Conner’s experimental films have given rise to his often being named as the father of the music video trend as well as his work sometimes being considered the precursor to the “found film” subgenre. The short has been seen by many film aficionados as a landmark work in American experimental cinema. It was inducted into the national Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 1994 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The opening credit of the author’s name runs for at least thirty seconds, so you need to be a little patient before you get to the actual clips. I honestly think the clip of the stripper is first just to get people’s attention. Conner’s films are filled with symbolism. In this instance the film is purportedly about the human condition. I’m assuming that the human condition is all about self-destruction in the face of destroying everything around you. The scorched earth syndrome. All that may be true or not, I don’t know. Much of the film is subject to interpretation. I remain clueless. I liked it, but I’m a fan of montages.
Some of the snippets include the Hindenburg crash, atomic explosions, the destruction of the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Washington as well as a whole bunch of random looking shots.