Shift1972

“If Table is pure visceral sensation, Shift (which Gehr worked on between 1972 and 1974) is more dramatic. The actors, however, are all mechanical – a series of cars, cabs, and trucks, filmed from a height of several stories as they perform on a 3 lane city street. Gehr usually isolates one or 2 vehicles at a time, inverting some shots so that the cars hang from the asphalt like bats from a rafter. A sparse score of traffic noises, obviously culled from a sound effects record, accompanies the spastic ballet mechanique. Trucks run over their shadows or lurch across each others paths, cars unexpectedly reverse direction or start up and go nowhere. The 8 minute film is structured as a series of obliquely comic blackout sketches, and the general acceleration of the last third is signaled by the sound of an off screen crash. Here, Gehr throws the film registration out of alignment so that parts of 2 frames are visible at once and the traffic becomes an aesthetic blur of opposing diagonals. Although the urban scene has been Gehr’s recurring subject, and he has more than once used city traffic as a ready made energy field, it has never been with this degree of individualization. More importantly, Shift is his first film to employ extensive montage.
                                       – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice, Jan 27-Feb 2, 1982