At the beginning of Victor Burgin’s reading, a discussion of Andre Breton’s and Jaques Vache’s strange method of ‘movie hopping’ from one theater to another is discussed. Burgin writes of how these two men never watched an entire film, leaving whenever ‘boredom tugs at the sleeve’.

The relevance of such a method, as Fatimah Tobing Rony points out, lies in the fact it highlights certain Surrealist techniques of chance, disruption and dislocation – all techniques which are visible in Joseph Cornell’s silent footage film, Rose Hobart.

Cornell primarily establishes these techniques through the cutting and reordering of footage from the 1931 jungle flick, East of Borneo, into his obsessive 19 minute montage of actress Rose Hobart. Through the emphasis of close-ups, jump cuts and repeated shots, East of Borneo loses all narrative order and sequence, and appears, as P. Adams Sitney describes, ‘as a randomly broken, oddly scrambled and hastily repaired feature film that no longer makes sense.’

Moreover, by slowing the speed of the film, muting all dialogue, and projecting a blue glass filter, East of Borneo further transforms into a dislocated, dream-like landscape, where nothing is explained and all meanings (and indeed a linear narrative) are thwarted.



As a result, my experience of the film was none other than confusion. I felt like I was constantly watching and waiting for something to jump out at me, so I could yell at the top of my lungs, “O.K, I get what’s going on here. I get this movie.” But the sad reality was... I didn’t get it.

However the fact nothing ever makes sense in Rose Hobart, is precisely what I found so interesting. All we have are disconnected moments and unmotivated, incomplete actions and gestures that leave us completely confused, yet we watch and wait with a detached bemusement.

The soundtrack of the film adds to this. In most instances the music, or absence of, works to help illustrate the emotional content of the narrative, and thus manipulate and even heighten our emotional state as the viewer. However in Rose Hobart, the upbeat Brazilian music is merely a background noise which holds no relevance to the events on screen, it is nonsensical, and thus in no way shapes our emotions towards the on-goings of the film. The soundtrack of the film marches on in a repetitive and random way, almost appearing cluttered for the abstract, fantastic space.

It’s interesting that Cornell chose to strip away the original soundtrack of East of Borneo and replace it with a soundtrack purposefully disconnected from the visuals on screen. Why did he choose to distance his audience, rather than guide us in an aural experience of the film? Was it to highlight the constructed nature of the text, or was it all merely experimental?

While it certainly prohibited me from loosing myself in Cornell’s fantasy, it also made me feel like Hobart was trapped in a world in which she didn’t belong; mastered by Cornell through his re-editing of shots and nonsensical music.

The way the camera lingered on Hobart’s every movement and gesture only intensified this feeling. Indeed the voyeuristic nature of the camera’s movements made the experience not only unsettling to watch, but demonstrated how Hobart was merely an image, a representation of Cornell’s fantasy, locked into the frames of the film.



Perhaps this explains why the music is so detached from the visuals, to forbid any depth, or humanization of Hobart?

Given the cutting and reordering of narrative, the absurd music, and lingering camera movements, I question if Rose Hobart is in fact an ode to the actress, reflecting a kind of infatuation, or does it go further and reflect a kind of incarceration?