**
"Basically it was edited in Excel."
What makes Of Oz particularly special in my opinion is Bucy's editing; as soon a word is said or sung, the scene continues until the next word.
Thus, words like and, is, of, and the — which are obviously plentiful, but are followed by a new repetition of the word in fractions of a second — resulting in a dazzling Stockhausen-like blur of pure sound. (The words are all sorted in the film's chronological order).
On the other hand, if a word is said or sung — and there is no more dialogue for awhile — the pace reverts to "normal" mode; for instance, after Dorothy takes shelter in the farmhouse and says, Oh to Toto, we get to watch Dorothy open the door to Munchkinland and observe a beautiful lateral traveling shot.
Thank you, Ted, for introducing this wonderful weirdness to me.
[Someone applied the same concept for Star Wars, less successful, imo.]
Zorns Lemma is a significant piece of experimental cinema. It is in three parts:
- Joyce Wieland reads a Bay State Primer, a puritan work for children to learn the alphabet. ("In Adam's fall, we sinned all") …
- A twenty-four letter alphabet (I and U are omitted) is used; Frampton photographed all different types of signage to represent the letters — they flash on the screen for exactly one second, and then loop back … gradually, the word stills are replaced by an active film shot, such as washing hands, or peeling a tangerine, until their are only moving images. It is a hypnotic experience …
- A couple is walking across a snowy meadow. Six women are reading one word at a time from Theory of Light.