Nymphlight (made with Rudolph Burckhardt) (1957)
By Joseph Cornell
A young girl in a frilly, old-fashioned gown walks hurriedly through New York's Bryant Park. She is out of place, like a figure from another era. She has a broken parasol. We see shots of the people in the park and at the end we see a man emptying out the trash barrels who misses the parasol. I liked this particularly for showing a slice of New York life from the 1950s. It is interesting to see the people in the park, especially in color. I wish more had been done with the girl in the old-fashioned dress. She doesn't really do anything and nothing really happens to her. She could have just appeared for a moment in the background, but she is given prominence at the beginning of the film so we are led to pay attention to her and then nothing happens. -- Film Notes, John C. The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds o…
Watch Nymphlight (made with Rudolph Burckhardt) on Fast Ubu