Web of Light
(KVIST) LP $21.00
Produced under a pseudonym, presumably, this LP cannot be considered a soundtrack to the lost and fabled rumor of world cinema of the same name, but it is as close as we are likely to get to the thing itself, or to the truth of its stories, of which there are three distinct and curiously related. The first revolves around a mysterious early phonograph, produced by an eccentric inventor named Raglani, and purporting, by accompanying letter, to be a direct audio recording of the man's dreams and most precious memories. In the second part of the film, another man named Raglani (whose connection with his earlier namesake is not made clear), this time a composer of popular renown, whose talents, have been mostly squandered on commercial work, attempts to compose a piece of music in memory of his dead wife. He is driven mad by the pain of his efforts, and in the end kills himself by burning down his house, together with all traces of the piece (the titular “Web of Light”). Finally, the third story features a filmmaker (names are not mentioned), preoccupied with the spiteful task of documenting the disintegration of his marriage--piecing together a film from fragments of home movies, his own drunken commentary, and footage of his ex-wife and her new lover, surreptitiously filmed. Suicidal and obsessed, the man finds himself beset by strange dreams--filled with buried snatches of melody we can recognize from the first story--that seem to direct the failed auteur toward a rendezvous with a woman always only nearly-seen. The effect of the dreams is to shake our anonymous hero from the stupor of his sordid documentary efforts, and send him following those clues he jots down feverishly upon waking. It's unlikely that anyone will ever see the film -- truly "a film lost in space," to date an imaginary record of something that happened, but was never made, an idea evading the constraints of any plastic medium.