Joseph Cornell Rose Hobart (1936)
Rose Hobart consists almost entirely of footage taken from East of Borneo, a 1931 jungle Bfilm starring the nearly forgotten actress Rose Hobart. Cornell condensed the 77minute feature into a 20minute short, removing virtually every shot that didn t feature Hobart, as well as all of the action sequences. In so doing, he utterly transforms the images, stripping away the awkward construction and stilted drama of the original to reveal the wonderful sense of mystery that saturates the greatest early genre films. While East of Borneo is a sound film, Rose Hobart must be projected at silent speed, accompanied by a tape of Forte Allegre and Belem Bayonne from Nestor Amaral s Holiday in Brazil, a kitschy record Cornell found in a Manhattan junk store. As a result, the characters move with a peculiar, lugubrious lassitude, as if mired deep in a dream. In addition, the film should be projected through a deep blue filter, unless the print is already tinted blue. The rich blue tint it imparts is the same hue uni
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