Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1941
Moods of the Sea
Buy Moods of the Sea now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Moods of the Sea' (1941) is a non-narrative experimental film by Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman, set to the music of Felix Mendelssohn known as the 'Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture'.
The film is considered to be an early example of American avant-garde and experimental film. It is currently held in the Vorkapich Hoffman Collection at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Synopsis
'Moods of the Sea' contains no dialogue and features footage of the sea and surrounding wildlife. Examples of the "moods" of the sea include waves crashing against a rocky cliff and calmly lapping at a beach and rocks.
Production
The short film was created around 1941; some sources list the creation date as around 1940-1942. Vorkapich's title card for the short states that it was copyrighted in 1942.
Release and restoration
Vorkapich was unable to release 'Moods of the Sea' upon completing it alongside Hoffman, due to a lack of funding and studio interest. The short was released in 1979 and has since received critical attention from film critics and academics. 'Moods of the Sea' was later restored by film preservation expert David Shepard and the UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2004, utilizing grant funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation. It was then included in the 7-disc DVD collection 'Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941', released in October 2005.
'Moods of the Sea' has screened at multiple film festivals that included the UCLA Festival of Preservation, Muse de l'Orangerie, and the 2013 Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival.
Reception
The film is considered to be an early example of American avant-garde and experimental film by critics such as Jan-Christopher Horak. Horak has stated that "True to Vorkapichs interest in montage, the images from the constantly moving camera are cut precisely to the music, and each sequence reaches a rhythmic crescendo with the melody, emphasizing the subjective nature of the cameras point of view." 'The Chicago Reader' noted that the film was an example of films that "register quite differently than their makers intended: Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman's impressionistic, somewhat pompous 'Moods of the Sea' (1942) tries to marry ocean imagery with the Mendelssohn on its sound track (crashing waves for loud sections, birds for calm ones), and while it's hard to take as seriously as it seems to demand, it fascinates by pushing the visualization of music to such an extreme."
Charles Silver, the curator for the Museum of Modern Art's department of film, compared 'Moods of the Sea' to others shown by the museum, specifically Jean Epsteins 'Le Tempestaire' and Arne Sucksdorffs 'Trut! (The Sea Hawk)'.
Legacy
Vorkapich's experimental films, including 'Moods of the Sea', were an influence on film student and future director George Lucas.
Further reading
*[https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/true-cinema-vlada-petric-on-slavko-vorkapich True Cinema: Vlada Petric on Slavko Vorkapich] at the Harvard Film Archive
References
Buy Moods of the Sea now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1941