Electric Boogaloo, Angel, Nymph-Light

The preternatural in a puddle: Joseph Cornell's Angel

Electric Boogaloo is an entertaining history of Cannon Pictures. The film is rather sparse in its detailing of the personal lives of Messrs. Golan and Globus, but that may have been because their professional lives were all consuming. The cheesy clips were well edited and the interviews were acerbic; my kind of combo.

If this enjoyable documentary won't leave much of an impression on me it is because of the revelatory color shorts by Joseph Cornell I watched beforehand: Angel and Nymph-Light, both from 1957. Cornell's pair of films are an expression of his faith (he was a devote Christian Scientist), a celebration of the patterns of the divine found in the natural world even in the heart of Gotham. The tattered parasol and frilly frock of the titular nymph are for Cornell just the transient fancies of our day to day lives. By the film's end, the parasol is in a waste bin, soon to be carted away.

Cornell is more taken with transcendent and less artificial signifiers of the Creator's plan, namely birds. They exist without self-consciousness or care, emblems of the divine found even in our most Babylonian metropolis, New York City. The birds are paralleled with the human denizens of a park, both watching the passing scene. While the birds seem to revel in nature's transcendent splendor, the humans, wrapped up in their day to day struggles and estranged from the natural rhythms of existence, merely bide their time.

Angel reminds me of a quote cited by my old professor, Larry Hall, on the Romantics, "...they could find the preternatural in a puddle." The fountain reflections and flowers in the film conjure a sense of mystery and mute beauty that spring from Cornell's spiritual yearnings. Cornell is one of the least chthonic artists of the modern era. The shot of the clouds that ends the film, with the angel in the foreground, expresses his desire for eternity in a world above ours.

I always enjoy seeing old color footage that shows how cities looked in mid-century America. I feel a nostalgic pang seeing the old fashions and people no longer walking the earth. I'm struck by the vividness of the advertising colors. I wonder if colors in advertising have changed in the last half century, more muted greens and oranges and less stark primary colors. A window into a past I only dimly remember. (2/4/16)