Castro Street (1966)
By Bruce Baillie
I was so struck by the beauty of Baillie's Castro Street (1966) the first time that I saw it, that I immediately wanted to see it again. The contrasting images (steel/flowers) and sounds, (metal grinding/piano tinkling) are stunning. Shot at the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California the film is full of textured images of trains, metal and machinery. Mixed in are shots of sky and vibrant flowers. One particular scene focuses on the trains which are now moving at a faster pace and opens to a field of stunningly beautiful purple violets set in a field into which another train enters the frame from the right. Baillie's use of negative black and white images in combination with vibrant color images and subtly textured images is magnificent. At times things seems to be sliding over each other, and the viewer is treated to a visual collage of color and form. Baillie describes the contrast in images as being shot in "masculine" and "feminine", and goes on to explain this in an interview with Scott MacDonald for A Critical Cinema 2, "I wanted to visualize that ancient, universal fact of opposites that are one, both in conflict and harmony---opposing each other and abiding togethe…
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