Snapshots (1973)

This experimental film, a self-described mix of reality and fiction shot in Greenwich Village and a Vermont commune, captures past and present moments from the life of Mel Howard, the film’s co-writer & co-narrator. Scenes chronicling Howard’s doomed romance with Scandinavian girl friend Turid Aarsted are interwoven with scenes detailing Howard’s relationship with his parents and with a former girl friend, as well as his failed attempts at moviemaking. One sequence depicts Aarsted leaving the thirty-seven-year-old Howard for the film’s cameraman, Paul Goldsmith, and includes a sex scene between the new lovers. In off-screen commentary, producer Kenneth E. Schwartz expresses concern about the film’s content. He reveals that he raised $50,000 for the project, complains to the viewer that the film was not supposed to be a “diary of freaky people.” Eventually he and Howard come to terms about the film’s direction and allow the film’s story to unfold unobstructed.

Released Jan. 29, 1973 85 min None+

Genres: Drama, Fantasy

Keywords: mdblist.one-actor, imdb.writer, imdb.thirty-something, imdb.producer, imdb.movie-reality-crossover, imdb.filmmaker, imdb.film-industry + 29 more, imdb.experimental-film, imdb.career, imdb.avant-garde, imdb.fictional-biography, imdb.producer-co-writer, imdb.sex, imdb.coworker-coworker-relationship, imdb.filmmaking-as-subject, imdb.vermont, imdb.friendship, imdb.greenwich-village-new-york-city, imdb.37-year-old-man, imdb.37-year-old, imdb.boyfriend-girlfriend-relationship, imdb.friend, imdb.narrated-by-chracter, imdb.father-son-relationship, imdb.voice-over-narration, imdb.actor-plays-himself, imdb.actress-plays-herself, imdb.commune, imdb.producer-debut, imdb.film-within-a-film, imdb.counterculture, imdb.male-protgonist, imdb.director-co-writer, imdb.mother-son-relationship, imdb.sex-scene, imdb.swedish-woman