Rose Hobart

An odd, dreamlike film cobbled together from bits and pieces of a 30s jungle-set melodrama (EAST OF BORNEO, I think) featuring the title actress. Like collage boxes that Cornell was famous for, it has a strangely haunting, yet elusive quality. Cornell strips away the original film's plot and dialogue, turning it into a fever-dream of hothouse exoticism, making even its obviously fake sets seem beautiful and mysterious.

This short film, (apparently made by cannibalizing George Melford's East of Borneo, also featuring Linda Randolph) hand tinted the used film stock red, or variations of red, pink, crimson, etc, has hilarious and serious moments throughout, and anticipates the editing and visual effects that Kenneth Anger and Chris Marker use later. While I am tempted to think that this film could be a sexy, campy, kitschy love letter to and about the films of Maya Deren, her work is a decade later, so Cornell must have come up with these "themes" and visuals himself. Quite an achievement. See it if you can and if anything by Anger, Marker, Brackhage and other avante garde film makers appeals to you, you may find this fascinating. Melford, by the way, made quite a name for himself with his 1921 film, The Sheik, starring Valentino, and his spanish language version of Dracula, from the same year as the Lugosi/Browning version, is actually supposed to be better! So Cornell was drawing from a "known" and interesting source.

Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart was, is and will always be a remarkable film. It was amazingly ahead of its time, and there's still little produced since that equals it. If you have focus and trust in it, Rose Hobert will take you on an increadible emotional journey through anger, anxiety, concern, lust, dissolusionment and even severe complasensy.

Of course, the images are now Cornell's. Nor is the somba music. His found object aesthetic is, however, unmistakably written in bold lettering all over Rose Hobart. His juxtapositions, editing and choice of music seem at first random, cluttered and even a little sloppy. Yet soon new and complex meanings and messages emerge from these "random" scenes. Like the expressive face of its namesake, Rose Hobart is at once humerious, sexy and chilling.

Footage selected from 'East of Borneo' and other films is arranged and edited so as to highlight actress Rose Hobart.

Joseph Cornell cut and re-edited the Universal film "East of Borneo" (1931) into one of America's most famous surrealist short films. Cornell was fascinated by the star of East of Borneo, an actress named Rose Hobart, and named his short film after her. The piece consists of snippets from East of Borneo combined with shots from a documentary film of an eclipse.

Salvador Dalí was in the audience, but halfway through the film, he knocked over the projector in a rage. "My idea for a film is exactly that, and I was going to propose it to someone who would pay to have it made," he said. "I never wrote it down or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it." Other versions of Dalí's accusation tend to the more poetic: "He stole it from my subconscious!" or even "He stole my dreams!" The Dali incident is interesting because when you think surreal, you think Dali or Bunuel, so this seems oddly appropriate. Even stranger is that this is now the way Rose Hobart is remembered. She had a long career, was a SAG official, wrote an autobiography... but if you look her up, you'll instead find this film. An odd tribute from an obsessed fan is her legacy.

I hate to pan a film that has been selected for placement on the National Film Registry, and I must confess my distaste for avant-garde films in general, which perhaps biased me towards a pan. But I got nothing from this film and couldn't wait for it to end. What did Joseph Cornell do merit any praise? None of the images were his. He re-edited portions of the film East of Borneo (1931) destroying any semblance of story. He projected it through blue-tinted glass. And he selected some samba music as background, again not his (although it's the best part of the movie). The result is a mishmash of meaningless images unconnected to itself or to the music. As bad as the movie East of Borneo was, I'd rather watch it than sit through this one again.