NUMBER 1 (1939)
Article 4286 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-9-2013
Directed by Harry Smith
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Abstract animation

No plot.

After noticing that this one had 46 votes on IMDB, I checked for user comments and didn’t find any. I’m not really surprised; when it comes to abstract animation, even if you can decide whether you like it or not, it’s rather difficult to capture in words your experience. I found this on YouTube, though it seems edited together with two other movies by the same director, NUMBER 2 and NUMBER 3, and since there’s no real break in the musical background (which makes me suspect that the music wasn’t added until all three were edited together), I would be hard pressed to say exactly where each one begins and ends. I’m assuming this one is about the first two and a half minutes, and though no plot is apparent, I do think part of it is an abstract meditation on sex, conception, and growth in the womb, based largely on a sort of Rorschach-style interpretation of the abstract symbols. I won’t cover the other two here, but I do think there is a difference between the patterns of the symbols that do seem to indicate three different segments. Interesting, but, as stated above, difficult to describe.