Movies: Pedestrian Art

The art film, long and easily identifiable by the Colombian coffee (not popcorn) served in the theater’s lounge (not lobby) has acquired a new trademark—The Walk.

The time is usually dusk, sometimes night, occasionally early morning. The scene is a street, somewhere on the outskirts of a large city, almost always deserted. A bird might light on a telephone wire or a tree shudder briefly by the wayside, but all else is still. The camera pans in on a woman (Jeanne Moreau? Monica Vitti? Anouk Aimee? Emmanuelle Riva?). She is doing The Walk. Her hands flutter at her skirt, her hips tip from side to side, slowly, sensually. She walks past the tree, or telephone pole, or both, or a thousand of each. Occasionally, she stops, touches a fence post, a tree trunk, a street lamp, a spiny plant—should they all be construed as phallic symbols?

Behind her, sometimes as far as one reel back, a man (Marcello Mastroianni? Alain Delon? Eiji Okada?) appears. He is doing The Walk. His hands are sometimes in his pockets; sometimes one hand is in one pocket (curiously, two hands are never in one pocket, nor is one hand ever in two pockets). He may or may not be following the woman—it is almost impossible to tell because he, like she, seems in no hurry. The director (Michelangelo Antonioni? Alain Resnais? Federico Fellini? Francois Truffaut?) is definitely in no hurry. The movie (La Notte? L’Av—ventura? La Dolce Vita? Hiroshima, Mon Amour?) is 50 minutes long already, and still the woman is walking, the man is walking, and the only real involvement anywhere is occurring among people, who are not walking but sitting, scattered throughout the theater, nodding and telling each other how real, how honest, how truly artful.

The Walk has very little to do with plot or motivation. She’s distraught, she walks; he’s calm, he walks; she’s placid, suicidal, elated or enraged, she walks. The Walk has nothing to do with getting anywhere—no picnic, party or supermarket is ever set out for, much less reached (in fact, when achieving a destination is of any importance, everyone slips into the nearest sports car or on any available elevator, never attempts to make it on foot).

The Walk serves no technical purpose other than, as its innovators tell it, to re-create the aimless wandering that is so much a part of Life. Asked why his characters walk so much, Director Antonioni is indignant: “Why did Joyce end Ulysses with a monologue? Why does Bergman always talk about God?”