Coming Apart (film)
| Coming Apart | |
|---|---|
| File:Coming Apart poster.jpg | |
| Directed by | Milton Moses Ginsberg |
| Written by | Milton Moses Ginsberg |
| Starring | Rip Torn Sally Kirkland Viveca Lindfors |
Release date |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60,000[2] |
Coming Apart is a 1969 found footage feature film written and directed by Milton Moses Ginsberg, and starring Rip Torn and Sally Kirkland. Torn plays a mentally disturbed psychiatrist who secretly films his sexual encounters with women. Ginsberg filmed the entire movie with one static camera setup, in a manner simulating a non-constructed "fake documentary" style, influenced by Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary.[3] The film was rated X for its sexually explicit scenes.[4]
Plot
New York psychiatrist Joe Glazer, who is going through a divorce, rents an apartment under the assumed name of Glassman and installs a hidden movie camera in a mirrored box to record his life and occasionally talk to. Most of the people who visit his apartment are women, including Joann, a former patient; Monica, an ex-mistress; and Karen, the wife of one of his best friends. Joe has sexual encounters with some of them. The camera records Joe's words and actions as well as his ongoing mental breakdown.
Cast
- Rip Torn as Joe Glazer
- Sally Kirkland as Joann
- Viveca Lindfors as Monica
- Megan McCormick as Joy
- Lois Markle as Elaine
- Lynn Swann as Anita
- Phoebe Dorin as Karen
- Nancy MacKay as Amy
- Julie Garfield as Eugene McCarthy campaign worker
- Kevin O'Connor as Armand
Reception
The film has since attained a cult following among critics and filmmakers.[5]
Soundtrack
Originally released with an X rating in 1969, a large part of the film’s intensity came from its use of several tracks taken from Jefferson Airplane’s live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head. The 35mm revival screenings in 1999 included the original soundtrack, but when the film was released on home video by Kino the following year, licensing the original Jefferson Airplane tracks proved impossible, so the entire soundtrack was replaced by Francis Xavier & the director himself. A significant problem in this alteration was that because the songs were played on set using a stereo system, the replacement tracks had to be layered over the originals to obscure them, but in order to retain the film’s original dialogue, the replacement tracks had to be muted in those sections. Careful listeners will be able to hear the original Jefferson Airplane tracks bleeding through under several of the dialogue exchanges. [6]
See also
References
- ↑ "Coming Apart - Details". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedsmith - ↑ Horwath, Alexander. (2004) "A Walking Contradiction (Partly True and Partly Fiction)" The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press ISBN 90-5356-493-4
- ↑ "Film Reviews: Coming Apart". Variety. October 8, 1969. 28.
- ↑ Kawin, Bruce. “Coming Apart: The Mind as Camera.” Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and first-person film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978
- ↑ https://reprobatepress.com/2023/02/22/music-re-scoring-in-the-home-video-era/ [bare URL]
External links
- Coming Apart at IMDb