Film Portrait

Jerome Hill"s “Film Portrait,” a 90-minute recapitulation of his early years and subsequent career as a movie maker, is an utterly charming swan song by the screen experimentalist who died in 1972 at the age of 67. The film, using old home movie footage, covers his childhood in a happy, wealthy Minnesota home and then shifts to his later avant-garde filming.

There is an endearing freshness to all this. A director, composer and painter, Mr. Hill outlines the course of his career in a simple, crystal-clear narrative. He loved the camera, we sense, as a wonderful toy of unlimited possibilities.

In spite of the acclaim his more conventional documentaries on Albert Schweitzer and Grandma Moses have received, this last work of his may turn out to be the most impressive of his efforts. Everything here flows steadily, skillfully and pointedly, starting with his evocative chapter on his early life in St. Paul, which imaginatively blends photographs, animated stills and color that has the quality of Tiffany glass.

Then as a wealthy young American roaming Europe in the nineteen-twenties, Mr. Hill slips behind the camera and remains there—a determined independent movie-maker, influenced by Dreyer, Melies and other pioneers. The Cocteau influence is obvious as we see in a runoff of his 1930 short, “Fortune Teller,” in a flickering print.

Toward the end, the film dissolves kaleidoscopically within the image of a movie-ola as the spry, aging Mr. Hill demonstrates the vital role of editing (“alchemy”) in his laboratory. These scenes were made shortly before his death. —NYTimes.com