Wyborny’s previous film, Birth of a Nation, was organised around a narrative exposition, there is a repetition of the titles and some of the elements of the narrative. This problematic, of the importance of enunciated speech, is thematised in the title of this film, Pictures of the Lost word, the lost word is sought for in a series of images, accompanied by a few short, possibly autobiographical statements.
The image band presents a series of static views of a small number of rural and urban scenes (the prominence of Battersea power station probably a cinematic reference (LeGrice) with a few people present. Each scene is presented several times in succession, each time by a lens of different focal length, such that the impression is both of repetition (shots of the same ‘content’) and difference (different focal length). As the film progresses the shots become shorter and of a more exotic locale, as Wyborny follows Werner Herzog to Ireland and Morocco, and with increased emphasis on the processed image using colour negative similarly to Birth of a Nation but even more aestheticised. The film evokes an overwhelming impression of nostalgia, reinforced by its use of music (reminiscent of Satie) the flow of which is, however, constantly interrupted creating uncertainty as to its interpretation. – Mark Nash.
‘Wyborny trained as a mathematician, worked as a cameraman on Werner Herzog’s Kasper Hauser. He first attracted the attention of the New York and London avant-gardes five years ago for his elliptical narratives, Dallas Texas – After The Gold rush (1971) and The Birth of a Nation (1973). Their plots, ‘collapsed’ by the optical transformation and repetition of individual shots, move from anecdotal narrative to an examination of narrative construction itself. His method was analogous, in a way, to that of novelists like Robbe-Grillet (e.g. ‘Jealousy’), though Wyborny was far more interested in the actual materials of film than were the french ‘new novelists’ when they turned to cinema. His work was further characterised by a romantic appreciation for desolate, ruined vistas. The 1975 Pictures of The lost Word is clearly an outgrowth of this concern and, in its virtual abandonment of storyline, forms a bridge to his subsequent, more purely structural films.
For 50 minutes or so Pictures presents a series of static, or gently swaying images which are sometimes bucolic landscapes but more often industrial ones (sludgy harbours, power lines, abandoned railway stations or deserted factories). The interplay between the two sets of imagery is not simple. Wyborny photographs his modern ruins at their most ravishing – at dawn or sunset, partially reflected in the water or glimpsed through the trees. Shots recur throughout, optically printed into brilliant colours or else, given the washed out quality of fifth generation Xeroxes. As there are few people shown, one’s impression is of a planet that is populated mainly by cows, barges and hydraulic drills.
On the soundtrack, a pianist improvises a slow, chord-heavy piece that adds to an overall sense of lush melancholy. Towards the end, Wyborny begins to parody his own nostalgia. The images repeat in rapid-fire clusters while the pianist switches to a maddening seven-note phrase, playing it over and over, like a record stuck in a groove. In its mock symphonic form, the film is an ironic exaltation of the ‘pastoral ideal’ (still a strong strain in both British and German avant-garde films) as it celebrates the entropic beauty of the same satanic mills that drove Wordsworth in the countryside and Schiller to decry the ‘degeneration’ of European culture.’ – J.Hoberman, The Village Voice, May 1978.
German soundtrack only.
Made with the same cast of actors as The Birth of a Nation and makes and double programme with it.
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