Spectres of the Spectrum

Rating:
Summary: Astoundingly intricate editing tour-de-force!
Review: This is a collage of archival media, mostly from 1950s TV shows and discarded clippings from Z-budget science fiction movies, interlaced with original film footage shot to match the grainy, desaturated color of the old media. An ongoing voice-over ties all the old clips together into a sort of trippy paranoid fable. This film is a true delight for the eyes. It reminded me a lot of "The Atomic Cafe," but where "Cafe" simply juxtaposed archival clips to create ironic humor out of historic fact, "Spectres" completely recontextualises its collage of images into a fictional story. The second half feels more like a documentary on the history of broadcast communications, and on first viewing I felt it slowed down a bit and lost track of the "plot" which had been set up in the first half. But with subsequent viewings everything becomes more clear. This is one of those movies you can watch over and over again and it just keeps getting better.