The Lead Shoes |riˈspäns|

When we began watching Sidney Peterson today I really liked his play on forward and reverse motion and simple camera tricks in The Cage. It seemed very coherent as a whole. As we continued to watch I picked up on some elements that be to be arbitrary or over used. This may just be me projecting other stereotypes about avant-garde film in the present state upon this film, but to me the repeated shots of the nude woman seemed a bit gratuitous. Not that I mind seeing a naked woman run across the screen 5 times in a row in slow motion, but it made me think more about the shots relevance. When we moved onto The Lead Shoes i found myself taking every shot with a grain of salt. It seemed that I could really tell that this film, as opposed to The Cage was though up by students as well as Sidney. It made me thing a lot about the stigmas of American Avant-garde films being just recreations of the European films of the 40's and 50's. The Lead Shoes seemed to fall into this category for me. The most obvious example was the ending. A man ripping apart what looks like a loaf of french bread sitting outside on a sidewalk at a small table. It seemed like a shot out of a french avant-garde film. I'm no 1940's california historian but the mise-en-scene and stylistic choice seems out of place to me.