Early Film Documents

This selection of early texts consists of proposals for Peter Whitehead's first two short films, The Theft (UK, 1963) and Parallels (UK, 1963)—here called Images. They were written as funding applications submitted to the British Film Institute's (BFI) Experimental Film Fund. In the event, the productions were cofunded by the Slade and Whitehead himself. The additional selections, One of the Last Fragments and Parallelism, represent writings composed in conjunction with the development of these film projects. They demonstrate the wide range of Whitehead's intellectual influences and highlight his maintenance of a creative link with the literary arts that is possibly just as strong, if not more so, than his investment in the cinema. That Whitehead regarded literature and cinema as maintaining a productive intersection is highlighted by the line of analysis followed in New Formal Structures in the Cinema, an extract from a thesis proposal he composed at the Slade in 1963. In this instance, his ideas in relation to Alain Robbe-Grillet closely foreshadow his ideas of "objectivity" applied to Wholly Communion (UK, 1966).

Taken as a whole, this section provides an insight into the emergence of Whitehead's work at the beginning of his film career while also pointing to the primary lines of continuity that, once established, would be followed through a number of subsequent projects. The conception of time and space that appears in Notebook 11, for example, is one that Whitehead returned to in his most recent film, Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts (UK/AT, 2009).

The Theft, Film Treatment, 1963

A 12 Minute Experimental Film, Black and White, 16 mm

written
photographed
edited
directed
music composed and played
by
Peter Whitehead.

Synopsis

A young sculptor is at work. His sculpture unmistakably resembles the female form. He is in a state or emotional anxiety, being confused between his love for art and his love for a woman. To resolve the problem he decides to act. He has fallen in love with a poster painting that is hanging outside the Royal College of Art and decides to steal it—the painting is a collage of images, photographs, sculpture, drawings of animals, drawings of girls, words. . . . He takes the painting home and gloats over it. He notices that some of the images are "stills" from the film Last Year at Marienbad.¹

Unfortunately the theft is discovered and he is caught.

The interrogator forces him to tell the truth; the motive for the theft of the worthless poster? A strong light is shone in his eyes and he "thinks."

As he thinks, he admits that he sees a "series of mental images." However, the theft has become confused with the theft of a girl the previous summer, a chase by her ex-boyfriend, the Marienbad film, the Albert Memorial with its animal sculptures, the Marienbad girl at the zoo, etc., etc. The more he tries to locate the truth in his own mind, the more his emotional involvement with these acts confuses the certainty of any of them.

The interrogator pronounces him guilty and sentences the artist to life imprisonment. The final image is the same as the first—he is still working on his sculpture.

Theory

The film is an attempt to build up a continuum of images unrelated in the normal time sense, but all related to the context of the stolen painting—the subject of the painting is the subject of the film. The three powerful experiences, the theft of the painting, the theft of the girl and the Marienbad film, become confused into one experience in the mind of the boy.

The attempt to force an interpretation onto these events (by the interrogator) fails to resolve them, but makes them merge even more. The collage form which utilises the images of the stolen painting give the film the unity that the boy's mind lacks—we see the random continuity of the images, but they are continuous in the context of the collage poster.

The return at the end of the film to the first image suggests that the whole film is a mental construction...