The Great Blondino 1967, Directed by William T. Wiley and Robert Nelson 16mm Film, 42 Minutes Exhibited here on the occasion of the exhibition, What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Independent and underground, New American Cinema heralded a new art form and was distributed through filmmaker cooperatives, screened at film societies and alternative cinemas, and debated in the alternative press. The Great Blondino confirmed Nelson and Wiley's leading positions in avant-garde film making, especially in San Francisco. As Critic J Hoberman notes, this film falls within a picaresque mode identified with San Francisco filmmaking, giving a nostalgic feeling in its portrayal of San Francisco as a "paradise of fools".

The inspiration for the film is Wiley's painting of Henri Blondin, which portrays the great celebrity tightrope walker pushing a wheel barrow on a high wire stretched above Niagra Falls. In fact, the painting is seen in the film as a reference to the film's hero, the Great Blondino, whose wonderings across the cityscape of San Francisco are part subject of the film. Wiley identified with Blondin as a performer and outsider. The absurdity of his feat appealed to Wiley, as did his madcap spirit.

The first of many alter egos created by artist William Wiley, the Great Blondino is played by the artist's brother, Chuck Wiley. He is dressed like a court jester in a costume designed by Dorothy Wiley, and pushes a wheelbarrow, (built, like all props, by the artist) conveying the innocence of an earlier age.

From the essay Fictions of the Pose by John G. Handhardt.

The film is dense with elliptical sight gags, animated objects and erotic flights of fantasy. Blondino dreams of frolicking naked women, and television ads erupt into his unconscious to strategically embellish the narrative with a rich montage of attractions that knit diverse visual materials into puns and double entendres of dazzlingly playful virtuosity.

From the essay Fictions of the Pose by John G. Handhardt.

Wiley's interest in popular culture, the nostalgia for 19th and early 20th century figures, architecture, and symbols are a source of references in the film as well as in his paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures.

The cop, played by beat poet Lew Welch, portrays the sinister force of the government hunting down, in a McCarthyite pursuit of innocence, the "dangerous" alien presence of Blondino. Welch's character contributes to a mounting hysteria of voices responding to this lone character walking the streets of the city.

From the essay Fictions of the Pose by John G. Handhardt.

Blondino encounters a "trollop", (as identified in the film credits), and follows her to her apartment. The character is played by Sandra Juste.

When Blondino tries to embrace her, she vanishes and is replaced by an artist's easel, reminiscent of Un Chien Andalou (1929), by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel.

The wheelbarrow that Blondino pushes through the streets and on the tightrope and the giant chair that he sits on in the zoo to watch the rhinoceros are two elements that embody the Wileyesque engagement with the handmade, preindustrial, and utilitarian object. Like the now famous Slant Step that Wiley rescued from a thrift store with artist Bruce Nauman, conferring meaning, so these objects become the supports that give Blondino meaning in his journey across our consciousness.

In his attention to gesture, to the composition of the scene, and to the details of the objects and their relationship to the Great Blondino, Wiley conveys his scrupulous belief in the freedom of the individual and the artist's privileged and exemplary position, as well as his opportunity, however threatened, to give free rein to expression.

From the essay Fictions of the Pose by John G. Handhardt.

Notes for this film are extracted from the essay Fictions of the Pose by John G. Hanhardt, Consulting Senior Curator for Film and Media Arts at the American Art Museum. The essay was written on the occasion of the exhibition What's it all Mean: William T. Wiley Retrospect and is included in the accompanying catalogue by Joann Moser, with contributions by John Yau and John G. Hanhardt and copublished with University of California Press.