FRIENDLY WITNESS
The first thing one notices about Friendly Witness is that not only is there no dramatic narrative, but there is no continuity in space or time. Sonbert cuts effortlessly across several continents and several decades, juxtaposing footage of parades, circuses, cathedrals, cities, natural settings, couples, people alone. If there is one central principle operating in his editing, it is that each cut pulls the viewer away from an image just at the point when one is becoming most involved with it. Since the image that follows is almost invariably very different, one feels the film as a perpetual pulling away, tearing apart. That Sonbert is quite conscious of this is apparent in his remarks to an interviewer: “My cuts are almost like slaps in the face–you get one reality, but then, no, this next scene cancels it, trumps it, by another kind of reality . . . yanking you away from it before you can actually be satisfied.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Sonbert began making films as a teenager in the 1960s. His early films–the third of which, Hall of Mirrors, will be shown this Sunday with Friendly Witness at Chicago Filmmakers–were mostly edited-in-camera portraits of his friends and acquaintances, with rock songs on the sound track. The interaction of his spontaneous, energetic filming and the driving beat of the songs produced films with almost ecstatic rhythms. In about 1970 he abandoned sound filmmaking and produced a series of extraordinary silent films, beginning with Carriage Trade (1971). These films are all edited with great care, and the absence of sound allows the filmmaker to concentrate on rhythms derived solely from the imagery. In Friendly Witness, however, sound once again returns, in the form of four rock oldies (including “Runaway,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”), followed by Gluck’s overture to Iphigenie en Aulide, heard in two different performances. The contrast between rock and classical helps divide the film into two sections.
But sensuality for Sonbert is also something dangerous, not to be trusted–it can betray even while it seduces. In an image that appears twice, once in each section, we see a view from a Chicago el train in the Loop that’s approaching a grade crossing. Our view through the front window carries us forward into the image with the train, and just as we think we are about to cross the perpendicular track, the train veers off to the right. At this point Sonbert cuts away. To continue with the train image would be to suggest that the image is a world that can be entered into and lived in. Instead at the point of the viewer’s maximum attention and pleasure but before any real involvement can develop, he moves on to another image; thus the train’s veering can be seen as a metaphor, within a single shot, for the consciousness of the film as a whole.
The first section also consists mostly of footage filmed in the 60s and early 70s; those who know Sonbert’s early films will recognize imagery from them. The second section has more newer footage mixed in with older shots. While the contrast between sections is interesting in itself as a contrast between two states of mind, a few basic facts about the filmmaker reveal that the film also has an autobiographical dimension. During the 1960s and early 70s Sonbert had multiple partners; fro 1978 to the present he has been monogamous with a single lover. This interpretation is clinched by the fact that this lover appears in a single shot in the film in which Sonbert is seen playing with a cat–at the exact dividing point between the two sections.
