Chris MacLaine: "The Man Who Invented Gold"

Abstract

The virtual neglect of Chris MacLaine's films over the past 25 years constitutes one of the major embarrassments in the history of American experimental cinema. His work had originally been distributed by Kinesis in San Francisco (Bob Greensfelder of Kinesis provided funds, equipment, and space for the making of The End) but when Kinesis closed in 1957 and offered its holdings to other firms, MacLaine's films found no takers. It was only through the efforts of Stan Brakhage and Willard Morrison of Audio Film Center that MacLaine's works were brought back into circulation in 1962. The few facts that are known about MacLaine are, at best, sketchy. His real name was Clifford, but he adopted Christopher, perhaps to allude to his carrying of many burdens. He was a published poet, a sort of down-and-out San Francisco bohemian who-largely through repeated methedrine use-later became one of the psychic casualties of that scene. A destitute and destroyed human being, MacLaine spent his last years confined to a state mental hospital where he died in April of 1975. Except for the better known The End (1953), it is not even possible at this point to date Beat, Scotch Hop, and The Man Who Invented Gold or to say conclusively that they represent MacLaine's entire output in film. Nevertheless, these films along with the plotless, visually oriented narratives of Ron Rice-The Flower Thief (1960) and Senseless (1962)-are clearly the most significant work to come out of the so-called beat period. Generalizations are difficult to make about Chris MacLaine's films. Although there is a certain consistency of style about them, each manages to have its own particular idiosyncrasies. It is interesting to note, however, that the filmmaker appears as a character in three of them-Scotch Hop being the exception-while all four films contain allusions to bagpipes and MacLaine's Scottish heritage. Beat and Scotch Hop are short visual poems. Beat is a somewhat improvisational attempt to capture the mood of this particular cultural period. The images tend to be casual, carefree, even silly, while the erratic cutting and incongruous relationships contribute to the sense of visual play. Scotch Hop is more tightly structured, more formal in its attempt to correlate images of Scottish musicians, dancers, and other activities to the music of bagpipes. Action is speeded up, slowed down, interrupted, and juxtaposed in a carefully controlled work that presents subtle correspondences between sound and visuals. The film was somewhat influenced by MacLaine's friendship with Jordan Belson (who was, briefly, cameraman on The End). The End and The Man Who Invented Gold are narrative compilation films. They consist of a wide variety of images, some pertaining directly to the narrative, others less so. Both films are remarkably sophisticated in construction, especially in terms of their editing and for their exploration of various narrative possibilities. MacLaine's editing is conceptual and nonlinear. Meaning is often derived from association, such as in the fourth section of The End where Paul passes a statue of the Venus de Milo while he contemplates attaching himself to the most hideous leper in the world. At other times, meaning results from accumulation. The metaphorical implications of the bagpipe player proudly marching through a battlefield in the opening shots of The Man Who Invented Gold, for example, are only realized later on as the madman-protagonist relates his tale. In both films, images repeat, combine, and in the process create interesting and unusual juxtapositions with t e soundtrack. Through the use of repetition, an image that first appears ambiguous is often later clarified through its inclusion in another context. In relating its prophecy of atomic destruction, The End employs intriguing strategies for dealing with narrative. The primary one is a self-conscious parody of the synthetic and illusionistic nature of