THAS: 'Eggshells' 1

Hopefully a day will come when Eggshells is as widely seen as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  Not because his first film is anywhere near as successful as his second film, nor because Eggshells will enter instant circulation in people's casual movie-night rounds, but simply so it is mentioned in the same breath as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - the less gripping one of the two, but the true progenitor and designator of the rest of a career.  Hooper's truly independent instincts and desires as a purely visual artist are exhibited to no lesser or less impressive a degree here - just less focused and knowingly, prudently channeled - and the film is intoxicating in that simple way: a pageant of fully-formed and fully-imagined aesthetics, moving beyond its conceptual insufferableness into a flora of endless visual prowess and cinematic/narrative authority, and resulting in the most genuinely hybrid feature film - between the narrative and emotional and the experimental and phenomenological - I can account of since the old Soviet masters conceived of cinema as something beyond the ken of cinema, an amalgam of the novelistic, the artistic, and the social document.  Eggshells may not hold the vision of Dovzhenko's Earth, but it, at times, can rival the sophistication and the poetry.

JRFB

Now if you're not quite buying the idea of narrative authority in a film like Eggshells, here is some modest evidence to the contrary straight from Hooper's mouth:

"To me, that [shot] said the time and the age.  That's a funky shot, 

someone popping their pimple.  (With some inspiration, animatedly authoritative:) 

Now we see her later, you know.  I mean, she's introduced later, but since she isn't a movie star, 

it may take you some time to notice that this is the girl we take our trip with into Austin."

  

[Austin film-scene public figure] Louis Black: "And what people who weren't (laughing) alive then don't get... is how serious the conversations often were.  You know, about meaning and religion and spirituality."

Hooper: (In agreement) "Oh. Oh. Oh. (laughs) People were serious."

Black: "And pretentious."

Hooper: "And pretentious."

 And allow me to bring this back:

"Eggshells is this remarkably kinetic scene of a communal house at daybreak that beats Scorsese by a few decades." (Myself on Eggshells in a previous post.)

 

[Quotations taken from the Eggshells commentary track recorded between Tobe Hooper and Louis Black (who rediscovered and helped produce the restoration of Eggshells).]

[Eggshells Digital Download/VOD and VOD Commentary track are available on Watchmaker Films (the restoration & distribution company)'s Vimeo page.]

[I mentioned Eggshells and its visual prowess, but the film may very well be most notable for its editorial prowess.  Eggshells may well be a masterpiece of the jump cut.]

(

"Actually... this is a tale... about my good friend, Ben Skabarsak.")

"Architectural Brace" Week End Blow-Out

Mr. Arkadin (1955), dir. Orson Welles

 Mr. Arkadin (1955)
 

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

 

Mr. Arkadin (1955)
 

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Eggshells (1969)

THAS: 'Eggshells' Is...

Eggshells is play.

Eggshells is a girl in the flatbed of her parents' truck.

Eggshells is inexhaustible fascinations, bold formal style, and filmic invention.  Yes, I love Eggshells now.

Eggshells is social portrait, despite my scurrilous bid to devalue the uncomplicated but sincere.  Eggshells is buoyant and wide-eyed.  Eggshells is culturally inquisitive.  Eggshells is surfeit of anthropological warmth, but with the infusion of Hooper's bracing formal irony found in his incessant formalist play.

Eggshells is Hooper being not want for staunch formalist daring in his first feature film out, his supposed free-wheeling hippie documentary: see him fold in time and maturity level with just the use of park benches, the camera, and a liberal use of sarcastic whip-pan.

Eggshells is truly hybrid: catching the real vérité world, catching an artistic and heightened rendering of it.

Eggshells is the story of a liberated girl... somewhat oblivious.

Eggshells is political, despite my cantankerous bid to devalue the elementary but spirited.

Eggshells is magic roaming forces.

Eggshells is a regimented or ritualistic moving camera.  This can be seen in what one can say is Hooper's first clearly blocked narrative scene of his feature film career, depicted below, involving the restless and awkward "Ben Skavorcik" [sp?] maneuvering about for a place he finds comfortable.  Hooper was Hooper right out of the gate, being the point I'm trying to make:

 

Eggshells is our anti-hippie, Ben Skavorcik (again, there's no spelling for this name anywhere, so I'm constantly making up the spelling).

Eggshells is an enchanting, magical "gusting wind" conjuration (I choose not to picture the moment, for when you see it and its careful, rigid construction, you'll automatically get the idea that a stunning rigor and gentle realist artistry lies behind the filmmaker who summoned such a moment), a flying paper airplane reverie, and the war-colored explosion of the seemingly innocent plaything.  And the boy who tries to put it out with a little milk.

I do love Eggshells now.  It is endlessly inventive thus pleasurable, and not as disjointed as I thought, and truly inexhaustible a thing of play and formal ideas.  Its sociological interests and emotional throughlines become clear when finally getting a foothold on the characters and how they - their beliefs, their activities, their relationships - contrast and represent types and psychologies, representations enhanced by Hooper's simultaneously poignant and idea-driven cinema. With its fond fascination alongside its avant-garde segues of pleasure, alongside its exacting cinematic set pieces, it's like a warm, laid-back blanket made out of M.C. Escher lithographs.

Eggshells is this remarkably kinetic scene of a communal house at daybreak that beats Scorsese in the 1990s by a few decades.

... edited in classic, jagged Texas Chain Saw fashion...

Eggshells is a young and fresh-faced Kim Henkel.  Centrally placed, the future Hollywood writing partner as charismatic but sad, conflicted image of youth, his growing insecurity the core of the picture.

Eggshells is the idealism and adventurousness and sincerity of youth.

Eggshells is revealing the people doing what they do.  An impromptu and extempore kazoo performance becomes an intrinsic tour de force, where phenomenological magnitude is proffered to this blithe and unthinking one-piece ensemble, power given to the coded "frivolous activity," created through Hooper's regal cinema; where a performance of pure pastime suddenly commands space - collapses and symphonizes it - as if of the note of a philharmonic orchestra:

The kazooer kazooes, and the writer writes.  

People doing what they do.  The people, all, exist, powerfully.  Hooper does, and he does - is such an active "maker" of cinema - for much human sakes, and so notable is this in Eggshells.

Eggshells is animation.  Eggshells is this is a house.

Eggshells is magic smoke being.

Eggshells is a basement to a secret, gel-colored world.

Eggshells is a talky toilet.

Eggshells is magic-making.

Eggshells is people trying.  "What is wrong with this country?  Were they really bayoneted?"

Eggshells is David, Amy's shameless, work-averse, dandy boyfriend, who still will fight Amy on discussions of politics because, like said, he's shameless (endearingly so).

Eggshells is let's not forget Ben Skavorcik, his creepy artist's room, his weird self-portrait.

Eggshells is this scene.  Damn, this scene.

Damn.

Eggshells is the half of the narrative given over to the timid boy living with them but never acknowledged.  The "Ben Skaborcik" (as I've been erroneously referring to him as, although he's never named), being written of mockingly by carefree hippies, but really hoping to take part and engage in the world in some way of his own. He struggles just as our main protagonist hippies do.

Eggshells is a surprising ode to the meek, in a film about the liberated.

Eggshells is dreaming of balloons.

Eggshells is the bubble scene.

Eggshells is my hero David.  Eggshells is our most unapologetically fey male love interest.

Eggshells is the true creative spirit.  Here I am imposing some idea of Hooper as some demure, delicate artiste, but it turns out he can roll with the hippie-dippiest of them when the occasion arises.  "Let's paint some walls for my movie, guys!  Everyone take off your clothes!"

Eggshells is accumulating balloons of happiness.

Eggshells is a rather incisive examination of the marriage choice.

Eggshells is yellow dog, god damn Yellow dog!

Eggshells is two couples.

Eggshells is a should-have-been-better-put-together climactic wedding scene.

Eggshells is such creativity and social purposes and artistic purposes at a joined-together head.