Untitled1977

"Untitled begins with a flat, out-of-focus, reddish-pink screen on which blurry white patterns quickly appear and disappear.  After awhile a space seems to emerge behind the screen.  The swiftly changing patterns generate an experience of soft floating motion, through a field of snowflakes that whirl about in the wind.  There is simultaneous serenity and agitation in the portrayed motions.  The background appears soft, almost quivering at first, as if alive, and the reddish color suggests warmth and contrast with the snow.  As the film progresses the snowflakes get smaller and better focused, yielding a kind of distance perspective and the background acquires more and more substantiality.  At some point and often quite suddenly, the trans-like floating experience is broken by the discovery of what lies ahead: a red brick wall!  The entire meaning of the earlier experience undergoes a sudden shift as this prototype of the impenetrable obstacle becomes apparent.  Softness shift to hardness, warm to cold, animateness to inanimateness, temporality to permanence.  The effervescence of the snow-flakes which live but for a few seconds before turning into water-drops is heightened by the sense of timelessness conveyed by the wall.  Then, with gleeful mischief, Gehr reminds us that the wall is no more permanent than the flakes because it is not after all real.  A flare at the end looks like a giant snow-flake engulfing the entire film.  Gobbling up the entire event, celluloid and all!  All that is left is a screen on a wall…. "

                          – Robert Becklen in Films of Ernie Gehr, S.F. Cinemateque l993