Christopher Maclaine, a beat poet of the 1940s and ’50s living in San Francisco, made only four films in his lifetime – The End (1953, 35 min.), The Man Who Invented Gold (1957, 14 min.), Beat (1958, 6 min.), Scotch Hop (1959, 5 min.)
The End (1953), is composed of six stories of people on the last day of their lives. The fragmented narrative, weary voiceover and jilty editing are framed by an image of a nuclear mushroom cloud – “his conceit is that his characters have reached the end of their personal ropes the day before a nuclear holocaust” (Fred Camper).
First shown in San Francisco in 1953 the film was initially met with derision by the audience. Stan Brakhage notes:
“[The] audience was about as restless, and occasionally hysterical with laughter, as I’ve ever seen as American audience get; but I knew even then that what touched-off the audience was the absolute uniqueness of the film and that it laughed just to the extent that the film extends an almost unbearable love to the eyes AND ears of the viewing world…I marveled that Christopher Maclaine had made such a gesture without once, visually or audioly [sic], covering himself in shields of intellectual protect-and-pretensions, that he had been willing and able EVEN THEN to gesture in a way he must have known would be open to the worst, most painful, laughter if even 2 dozen members of the audience chose to vent their embarrassment by making the gesture seem foolish.”
Full film can be accessed here: http://www.ubu.com/film/maclaine_end.html
More notes from Brakhage on Maclaine can be found here: http://blog.sfmoma.org/2010/11/in-search-of-christopher-maclaine-10-stan-brakhage-interviewed-1986/