(1963) 3 David Lewis Blonde Cobra is a 33-minute experimental film, starring Jack Smith, Jerry Sims, and Bob Fleischner, that was assembled in 1963 out of remnants of two Fleischner-directed shorts made in the late 1950s left unfinished when undeveloped raw stock used to make the films were partly destroyed in an apartment fire. These projects were intended as ultra low-budget horror movies of an underground stripe, but Jacobs transformed the material into a skid row meditation on childhood, motherhood, God, Catholicism, death and the divinity of Maria Montez. In creating the finished film, Jacobs was greatly aided by an incisive and spontaneous monologue delivered by Jack Smith onto tape in 1962. Although in 1963 Jacobs could not have known of Guy Debord's Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), he employed a similar strategy in "completing" Blonde Cobra, stretching out audio only sequences with long passages of black leader. Smith's monologue is so compelling that one gets used to the lack of visual information to go with it, and visual sequences jolt in with a carefully calculated abruptness that is deliberately jarring. Jacobs and Smith also picked out music patches from 78 rpm records and tacky hi-fi demonstration albums that cut into and out of the soundtrack mix at unpredictable moments - in a very real sense Blonde Cobra is "made" by its soundtrack. Blonde Cobra is officially divided into three distinct sections, with Smith portraying a number of outrageous characters. The film's action has been summarized in various places, perhaps most definitively in the lengthy exegesis on Blonde Cobra in P. Adams Sitney's book, Visionary Film. However, in one sense such critical appreciation does the film a disservice, as only a very loose narrative structure - if any, truly, is there - governs Blonde Cobra, and while it may be tempting to circumscribe an interpretation of its action, it's better for the viewer to make up their own mind about its content and not to expect to see events that occur in the monologue only. Although it may not be the "best" collaboration involving Jacobs and Smith - they made several films together - Blonde Cobra has long been recognized as an underground classic and is shown quarterly at Anthology Film Archives in New York. Jacobs once recalled that Smith felt that the finished film was "too heavy," and it is a dark vision indeed, deeper and generally more depressing than Smith's own films commonly were. However, there's no denying that it takes a masterful hand to assemble unfinished footage, made with only half-serious intent, into something as mysterious, hilarious and emotionally involving as Blonde Cobra is.

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Blonde Cobra (1963)

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1963

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33 min.

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by Nicole Gagne synopsis

In the late '50s, Jack Smith was acting in a film for director Bob Fleischner, but the project ended when the two had a falling out. A fire subsequently destroyed most of what had been filmed, but in 1960, Fleischner gave the remaining footage to director Ken Jacobs, who edited it into this short, which features a manic Smith putting on makeup, playing with dolls, smoking marijuana, and wearing dresses. By 1962, Jacobs' own falling out with Smith had cooled sufficiently to enable him to record a soundtrack, for which Jacobs mixed 78 rpm records and strummed inside a piano while Smith improvised a hilarious confessional rant of poverty and desperation: "Why shave when I can't think of a reason for living?"

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