‘A to Z’: Michael Snow’s bizarre first film
When we look back on the pioneers who redefined the cinematic medium in the 20th century, the works of Canadian auteur Michael Snow are simply unmissable. Widely cited as one of the most influential experimental artists of all time, Snow worked in multiple artistic domains, but it is his films that have made the most impact. Known for his masterpieces such as Wavelength, Snow’s strikingly original approach to cinema revolutionised the art form in more ways than one.
For most directors, their first film represents something special that can never be replicated in subsequent projects. However, not everyone can make Citizen Kane on their first try. In fact, some of the greatest filmmakers in history have had extremely humble origins when it comes to debuts. Famously, Stanley Kubrick despised his debut feature Fear and Desire and spent a lot of time trying to destroy all evidence of the film’s existence.
While Snow might not have had the same kind of hostility towards his first film, A to Z, it’s definitely comparable to Fear and Desire. Made during his time at a firm called Graphic Associates in Toronto, A to Z is a strange little project which examines the secret nocturnal lives of furniture. Although Snow would go on to reach unprecedented artistic heights in the future, this is the film that marks the beginning of his incredible journey as a filmmaker.
During a conversation with Border Crossings, Snow opened up about his introduction to film. He said: “With painting and music, I was moved by certain things, and I wanted to do something equal to that. I’m not well educated as far as film history goes, and I’m not really that interested. But I was introduced to film by seeing the inside, finding out that it was made one frame after another. Once I saw what it was, I wanted to do things with it.”
Furniture was a recurring obsession for Snow, but A to Z has a whimsical innocence about it. The idea of two chairs engaging in passionate lovemaking at night is just hilarious, representing liberation from the mundane. Snow once told Offscreen: “The film I usually refer to as my first film A to Z, which is a cut-out animation film in 1956. Whereas what appears at the end here is, well, something which we used to call flimsies. You see, I started out in animation, and that is how I got involved with film. We used to make the drawings on tracing paper, we would put them on pins with one over the other on a lightbox, and you would draw them.”
The filmmaker added: “And I did this little sequence of this leg stretching in 1956, but I never shot it, I just kept it as a flimsy. So I guess that is, in a sense, my first film, or at least it was intended to be shot as film. But it was not shot as a film.” Even though Snow passed away earlier this year due to complications caused by pneumonia, he will always be immortalised through his fascinating contributions to the magical world of experimental cinema.
Watch the film below.
