The Scenic Route (1978) by Mark Rappaport
Sunday, January 10, 1982, 8:00 pm
Mark Rappaport’s Scenic Route
The Scenic Route is the first in a series of films curated by local filmmaker Jeffrey Skoller, which will be shown over the next few months and which (for lack of a more accurate title) is called the unconventional feature film.
For so long filmmakers who were interested in working outside the film industry have been limited to realizing their ideas in short films for largely economic reasons. More recently through a greater recognition of independent films more support has been given to filmmakers and along with it the chance to work with the feature length form. The series is a sampling of work from both sides of the Atlantic, some have been quite successful, others are more obscure but they all point to one fact: Some of the most engaging, innovative and entertaining feature films are being made outside of the industrial film complex.
The Scenic Route (1978) by Mark Rappaport – “A 76 minute seesaw between the ponderous and the sublime, the fourth feature by New York independent Mark Rappaport …produced for West German TV… conflates a sister-based triangle, urban angst, and the myth of Orpheus. With its underplayed soap opera, cartoon-like space, …and habit of allotting a single gesture per shot, the more naturalistic sequences have the look of middle-period Fassbinder transposed to Brooklyn Heights… As a filmmaker, Rappaport occupies a middle ground between George Kuchar and Yvonne Rainer, but he’s really closer to the latter. The British Film Institute… voted The Scenic Route 1978’s ‘most innovative film’…” —J. Hoberman, Village Voice