Carriage Trade
Directed byWarren Sonbert
Release date
  • 1971 (1971)
Running time
61 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent

Carriage Trade is a 1971 American experimental film directed by Warren Sonbert.

Production

Carriage Trade was filmed over the course of six years as Sonbert brought a Bolex 16 mm camera with him on international trips.[1][2] According to his program notes, the filming locations were Afghanistan, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Iran, Italy, Morocco, Nepal, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[3]

Early titles for the film were The Tuxedo Theatre, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Tonight and Every Night.[4]

Style

The film marked a major shift in Sonbert's filmmaking. Unlike his earlier short films, which are loosely narrative works that used longer takes, Carriage Trade is a montage work built out of shorter shots.[5]

Release

A 20-minute early cut of the footage from Carriage Trade, then known as The Tuxedo Theatre, was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York on February 11, 1969.[5] Sonbert screened a longer 80-minute cut in London and New York.[4] He edited that down to a final 61-minute version which has become the most widely distributed version.[6] It premiered in 1971 as part of the Museum of Modern Art's Cineprobe series.[7]

Carriage Trade is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.[8]

Critical reception

For The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler wrote that it "makes for a slightly dizzying but colorful and far‐ranging trip, [but] it also illustrates the talents of an acutely perceptive and artistic film maker."[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Weiler, A. H. (October 12, 1973). "Silent 'Carriage Trade' Is World of Images". The New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  2. ↑ Gartenberg, Jon (2015). "A Delicate Balance: Warren Sonbert's Creative Legacy". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 56 (1): 18. doi:10.1353/frm.2015.a579198.
  3. ↑ Ehrenstein, David (October 21, 2012). "The Tuxedo Theater: On filmmaker Warren Sonbert". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  4. 1 2 Mekas, Jonas (November 19, 1970). "Movie Journal". The Village Voice. p. 43.
  5. 1 2 Gartenberg, Jon (2015). "Film". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 56 (1): 156. doi:10.1353/frm.2015.a579215.
  6. ↑ Gartenberg, Jon (2002). "The Fragile Emulsion". The Moving Image. 2 (2): 142–153.
  7. ↑ "The Experimental Narratives of Warren Sonbert" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  8. ↑ "Essential Cinema". Anthology Film Archives. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
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