Mother's Day. 1948. Directed by James Broughton.

(9/11/00-9/14/00)

This is one of the most famous of the American avant-garde films of the 1940s. It seems to be a reverie about childhood and especially about the figure of the mother. It really didn't come alive for me or involve me--to the extent that I find that I can barely remember it.

It is about the figure of mother and the figure of father and childhood. It's tempting to read it as being about the filmmaker's memories of his own mother and father, but I think they were intended more as archetypes than as Broughton's actual parents.

The film has poetic intertitles ("Mother was the loveliest woman in the world and she wanted everything to be lovely"--as closely as I can remember it.) There is no dialogue in this film and the intertitles help us to keep our bearings and have some idea of what is going on--unlike The Potted Psalm which really seems like a collection of random shots, whatever it may have meant to the people who made it.

The film has an old-fashioned quality which reminds me of the work of Joseph Cornell, while at the same time it is very modern. Figures appear and disappear through stopping the camera and there isn't the narrative logic and continuity one would have expected in a non-avant-garde piece.

I do remember the face of the father presented to us as a photograph in a frame. But it isn't a photograph--it moves. Then there are images of adults playing in the street like children. That scene had a Paul Delvaux-like quality, I thought. Otherwise, I wasn't very open to Broughton's Mother's Day, even though it is a classic. It may take me several more viewings before I really start to see it.