Beautiful Movie (1974)

"Beautiful Movie" is a filmic cameo during which a passage of blue film leader and clear film painted red introduces a lovely image of a woman, naked from the waist up, sitting on a brass bed, combing her hair. When we first see the woman, she is well out of focus, but during the following minute or so she slowly becomes clear. As soon as the image is completely clear, however, Huot dissolves to an image of himself sitting in a similar position, combing his own hair. This image quickly goes out of focus, and the viewer sees the original passage of leader and painted film, this time in reverse, forming the other half of a filmic frame. "Beautiful Movie" is a quietly feminist work; Huot revised the traditional tendency to worship female beauty by suggesting that, yes women are lovely, but there is no physical reason why men cannot be lovely in the same way.—Scott MacDonald, “The Films of Robert Huot: 1967 to 1972”, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980.