User Reviews

As a work of art and a moving painting, I absolutely love this film. I find it very beautiful, quirky and very nice to look at. I love the music and the design and the very watery/gel look of it all. I also don't know how these types of effects were accomplished in 1951, so unlike the other reviews on here, I was personally wowed by this film! I love this film and will be sharing it with friends at a "Lost Media Archive" event this coming week :)

I don't know what else to say about this very simple and short film without spoiling it for you, so I'm going to keep typing until IMDb accepts my length requirement for a review ;)

Whitney thought it would be cool to improvise an animated film, to match an improvised jazz performance. Result: zip.

I am a fanatical jazz fan and I love jazz without hokum. When I would go to see a tenor player, it was a thrill when Dexter Gordon or Joe Henderson would tilt his horn subtly in a soulful gesture of being transported, but those clowns who turned music into a carnival act with their gyrations (a la Jerry Lee Lewis abusing a piano), left me cold.

So when Whitney decided to goose up the music (in this case a corny performance by Will Bradley by drawing on the film emulsion or having pulsating abstract blue and green colors represent the music inspiring him, my reaction in the words of Miles is "so what"? The content of this pointless animated short is equivalent to the effect of those level meters you would see on stereos or ghetto blasters, giving a hypnotic visual effect to the music.

The abused term avant-garde includes a wide swath of lousy movies (this one too), and of course was once a rallying cry (or warning, depending on which side of the divide you were at) in jazz circles too. Albert Ayler lives!

"Celery Stalks at Midnight" can be found in the DVD collection entitled "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954: Vol. 3"--a collection of very unusual films that probably would hold little interest to the average viewer.

The title refers to a big band song that is played in this film by Will Bradley and His Orchestra. As the song plays, you see shapes dance about the light blue screen. There is nothing more to this film than this--just shapes bouncing about set to nice music. I've seen other films like this before and while they are mildly interesting, there are an awful lot like it and when you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. Not bad--just not especially memorable.