Hall of Mirrors1966

"Hall of Mirrors connects directly to Warhol via Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga… a triptych in seven minutes’ time, the film begins by repurposing an NYU editing assignment for which students were instructed to reassemble a narrative climax from loose ends of an old Hollywood programmer." —Max Goldberg, Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive, 2020

About Hall of Mirrors

Hall of Mirrors is an outgrowth of one of Sonbert’s film classes at NYU. It was taught by Carl Lerner, the editor of (among other films) On the Bowery (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), Come Back Africa (1959), and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Sonbert was provided with outtakes from a Hollywood film photographed by Hal Mohr to re-edit into a narrative sequence. One can conjecture that Sonbert’s early contact with Carl Lerner in the editing sphere may have influenced his later evolution into the silent montage films he made beginning with Tuxedo Theatre (1969) and Carriage Trade (1972).

During the mid-1960s, Sonbert was one of the denizens of Andy Warhol’s universe (as made evident by a sequence he filmed inside of The Factory, which appears in Where Did Our Love Go?, 1966). Adding to this found footage that opens the beginning of Hall of Mirrors, Sonbert included scenes he shot of Warhol’s superstars Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga in more private and reflective moments.

"In brilliant and deft fashion, Sonbert created a circular structure to his movie, beginning with actress Florence Eldridge trapped in a fun house hall of mirrors from the film An Act of Murder (1948), and ending with Gerard Malanga caught in the reflective web of artist Lucas Samaras’ 1966 sculpture Mirrored Room. Samaras wrote that with this work he was engaging with the entire history of mirrors, from their appearance in fairy tales to fun houses. He felt the end result created ‘a space, an environment, a fantasy, a world of artificiality, a complicated panorama.’ He continued: ‘Being imbedded in this huge crystalline structure that has no top, bottom, or sides, this feeling of suspension, this feeling of polite claustrophobia or acrophobia, this feeling of fakery or loneliness seems complex, associatively enveloping and valid to me as a work of art, wonder, sensuality, pessimistic theory, and partial invisibility.’ Sonbert’s Hall of Mirrors is an especially poignant film in this era of Covid-19, as it expresses in emblematic fashion the sadness, anxiety and disorientation caused by solitude as a result of social distancing." —Jon Gartenberg

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