(1967, Wger, 14 min) Dir Nickolaus Müller.
Narrativeless German bodybuilding doc. Emboldened by a screening of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, reclusive law student Müller scratched up whatever money he could and shot this, his debut short, ultimately setting himself onthe road from reclusive law student to the flamboyant experimental filmmaker that shot across film history like a shooting star. But that was all in the future – what promise does this scant fourteen minutes show? Well, the first thing that jumps out at the viewer is the acknowledged debt to the Anger film in form though without Scorpio Rising‘s challenging iconography. In saying that the fact that the film is stripped down to just muscular men pumping iron works in the film’s favour as it becomes less about culture and subculture and more about the human body, both in the how of it’s sculpting and in reverence to it. Also evident is his skill in both filming and editing, how he has captured small but telling moments that he has integrated slyly into the finished product – I’m thinking here of the old man watching from a window as he passes, a snatched glimpse preserved in the film where it sits as a mystery of desire emblematic of the director’s own position. For completists only for sure but still rich in pleasures of it’s own.
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