All the Vermeers in New York
United States
1990
87 Min
Color
1.85:1
English
Synopsis
The film begins with a static shot of the tops of buildings, turrets and spires, an unnamed city that looks old and European but eventually turns out to be Manhattan. Three young, pretty female roommates in a big apartment, one an aspiring actress, another a singer, the third involved in the art world. There’s some cutesy, inconsequential dialogue; we are struck right away with the director’s command of image, sound (particularly off-screen) and his exquisitely put together sets. Soon we move to an art gallery setting, a young man in a leather jacket arguing angrily with a dealer who is trying to sell his work — will he be the protagonist? The film in its first couple of reels doesn’t give us any answers here; the man leaves with a wealthy patron and potential buyer, but we don’t follow them and move on instead to another a brief scene set in the financial world, as a broker or buyer of some kind (Stephen Lack) alternates between shouting about business and some kind of personal issues on the phone. Close on the heels of this scene, we enter another segment of the art world, as one of the roommates – aspiring French actress and student Anna (Emmanuelle Chaulet) is seen perusing the old masters – chiefly Rembrandt and Vermeer – at what turns out to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is in turn perused by our stockbroker, who hands her a note at which point she leaves.
This is the scene that introduces the spectacular and fairly indescribable avant-jazz/classical score by Jon English, one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard, and it also seems to introduce the rest of the film as we will now focus on these characters, and on the difficult lives they lead while being surrounded by and comforted by all the great art – photography, painting, music and architecture – that suffuses the film. An awkward scene in which Anna pretends to not speak English and is accompanied by her roommate Felicity (Grace Philips) as pretend-translator meets Mark (Lack) at a restaurant seems distancing and off-putting, and it seems very uncertain as to whether these two can or should meet again. There’s also a very subtle and only briefly stated minor theme here about “home” and what it means; Mark is clearly Canadian and Anna French, and neither seems to really be comfortable – in Mark’s case, with his profession and his inner life, in Anna’s with America and perhaps her career. IMDB
Director
Jon Jost
Born in Chicago on May 16, 1943, of a military family, Jon Jost grew up in Georgia, Kansas, Japan, Italy, Germany and Virginia. Expelled from college in 1962, he began making 16mm films in January, 1963. He is self-taught. He has made some 20+ shorts and 14 feature length films on celluloid, 16 and 35mm, all of which he has conceived, written, photographed, directed and edited; most of these he also produced. Since 1996 he has worked only in Digital Video (DV), completing 18 full-length works and many shorts, as well as one large-scale 7 screen installation work, TRINITY, presented at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Germany, in this medium as of 2009.
After 10 years of making short works, Jost made his first feature-length film in 1974, and since devoted himself to the making of a wide-ranging series of films, largely focused on specifically American topics, in forms ranging from essays (Speaking Directly, Stagefright, Plain Talk & Common Sense), to fictions (Last Chants for a Slow Dance;… read more
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chris naughton
29Jul10
Jon Jost's largest budget and probably most widely-released film. Originally intended to have Tom Noonan in the lead role. The carries a strange sleepwalking feel throughout - possibly intentional. The camera seemed to me a real presence in the film, gjost-like and hovering. I prefer other Jost films but still unique and engaging film.
Yuki Aditya likes this
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