13 - Mind, Medium, and Metaphor in Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic

Summary

A work of art often implicitly offers a definition – and sometimes a redefinition – of its medium; through the way in which its materials are manipulated, it reveals presuppositions about the kind of object it should be understood to be. For an example from early film, Georges Méliès treats cinema as an analogue to theater, using the frame as a proscenium arch, and employing the full paraphernalia of the nineteenth-century theatrical apparatus in his magical feats. Méliès's conception of film as theater made possible the kinds of films he made, and prevented him from conceiving others.

Harry Smith's film no. 12, called Heaven and Earth Magic, is a work where a quite different vision of the nature of the cinematic medium performs a constitutive function in the organization of the whole film. No. 12 has a story of sorts. According to Smith.

The first part depicts the heroine's toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next the film follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land in terms of Israel, Montreal, and the second part depicts the return to earth from being eaten by Max Muller on the day that Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London.

This humorous and evasive description has been rendered less obscure through the admirable research of P. Adams Sitney.