Snapshots

1973

1h 25min

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.