Popular reviews

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  Review by St. Sebastian

  In this eternal ballet of existence, where youth and love entwine, my heart's rhythm reverberates, a symphony of life. Amidst the rural landscapes, zephyrs caress the emerald grass, whispering tales of a fading summer painted with countless lovely faces, each uniquely feminine.

  This summer, an untamed spirit, bursts forth from the confines of houses and bridges, refusing to be tethered to the city's concrete jungle. Its pulse, the heartbeat of the open road, beckons us to embark on new adventures, to explore uncharted territories and embrace the boundless possibilities that lie beyond the horizon.

  Though time's relentless march may have claimed their physical presence, these souls, captured in frames of memories, transcended mortality through the magic of visual poetry. They…

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  Review by Wayne

  This short film from the year 1932 is simply one of the greatest examples I have ever seen in terms of a film that remains as simple as it can possibly be, yet it ends up seeming to be as profound as ever. In other words, if there was just a way to put it, then this film would be the film that goes to show how utterly profound and powerful the art of motion picture can be as with just 20 minutes of moving pictures, we get an array of emotions being depicted through the big screen, and thus, showcase the amount of poetry and profound ambiance possible in the world of cinema. 

  To simply put it, in today's…

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  Review by Theresa (TracerGazer) ★★★★

  Remind me not to watch beautiful, organic, fluid, and celebratory candidness at it's nascent finest when I've also had a day of particularly invasive and stabbing death anxiety/spite for the inevitability of time, death, and the removal of the souls you see.

  Haunting, and it didn't have to be. But I'm glad for it.

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  Review by 𝐷𝑖𝑒𝑔𝑜𝑝𝑠𝑦 ★★★★★

  Podemos ver uma dualidade das formas na representação em que o Emlen Etting desenvolve sua obra. O pintor americano, agora se entrega à sétima arte e representa de forma dúbia o cinema. Inicialmente o palco principal é a natureza, assim como em imagem de sua gênese, o cinema está contemplado o mundo como obra de arte essencial, finda em si mesmo, sem a necessidade de interferência. A arte ultrapassa a natureza poética e representa o corpo humano, também natural, mas esse agora ativo, que se movimenta e se torna exibicionista, entre as curvas corporais e os movimentos antes impensáveus de representar na pintura. O foco muda para a representação da cidade, da metrópole e da multidão, a natureza agora se…

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  Review by Milo ★★★½

  Etting shoots for the wind in the trees: momentary; ephemeral. Bearing the tone of a Terrence Malick feature in an angst (however disembodied) between grace and nature (here, as ever, the countryside and the city), Etting’s quality is less in the exact progression of events – a sequence of beautiful places and beautiful women – than his capture thereof. Poetry, a term overused and misappropriated in cinema, is here a justified descriptor. His camera, often representing a point-of-view shot, sways and billows while his subjects beam or frolic; it is the rhythm of the shots as much as their pleasant composition that provides this film its soul. The movement of his camera is then doubled by his performers, dancing against the wind, their gauzy frocks sprightful in the rural bluster. There is a roughness to the film’s mechanics, Etting’s inexpert hand scrawling the page – his poetry lighter than words.

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  Review by Heph Nova

  Simple cinematic beauty. I know Etting wanted to make this feel poetic but I'm almost reminded of a more warm and well-made version of a home film in the intimacy and the personal detail

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  Review by Henrique Quadros

  Beauty in focus

  Poem 8 becomes Poem ∞, as it seems to imply the infinite layers of poetry in the photographed images. So many of the shots are explicitly representing someone's point of view, to the point where the montage and the imagery evoke the idea of someone's memory or a subjective poetic interpretation translated into moving images. It's pretty ahead of its time in that sense since the only type of movie to be this open about subjective points of view at this time were home movies and the only artsy ones I can think of are the Man Ray stuff

  It's beautiful, it's erotic, and also modernist in a way. Glad I checked this one out!

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  Review by ᴀʟᴇᴋ ★★★★½

  [Andrei Tarkovsky saying "Poetic Cinema."]

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  Review by Kendoval ★★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by Thalia ★★★½

  The camera is man's eye.

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  Review by damfino99 ★★★

  An early attempt at experimental film whose purpose isn't narrative or documentary but poetic.

  
  Women frolic in fields, a train travels to cities, women writhe rapturously in gardens, we watch the wake of a ship. There's an enthusiasm for the female form and female ecstasy, though I'm not sure all the elements work together. The sequence with the gauze-enshrouded nude dancer is stunning.

  
  from Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941

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  Review by Steve Garden

  While it may well have been something of an achievement in its day, and while it definitely boasts certain attributes, not least making a virtue out of the filmmaker's enthusiastic handheld amateurism with genuine grace on the one hand and inebriated kinetic abandon on the other, it has to be said that it's also rather corny, and one can't entirely turn a blind eye to the "first floor above the newsagent" sensibility that colours a goodly portion of Mr Etting's gaze. Lol.