Mary Ellen Bute
- 1934Rhythm in Light
- 1939Spook Sport
- 1952Abstronic
- 1967Passages from Finnegans Wake
A Texan who studied stage lighting, then put abstract films set to music in front of Radio City Music Hall audiences.
Bute studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and stage lighting at Yale's drama school. She came to film through the composer Joseph Schillinger, and spent time in the studios of Leon Theremin and Thomas Wilfred.
Working in New York from 1934, she made more than a dozen abstract musical shorts, with Melville Webber on the first and the cinematographer Ted Nemeth, whom she married in 1940, on those that followed. Her films played in ordinary cinemas, as the short before a prestige feature, and several ran at Radio City Music Hall.
She hired Norman McLaren, then living in New York, to draw directly on film for Spook Sport, and by Abstronic she was building images with an oscilloscope. Passages from Finnegans Wake, a live-action feature from James Joyce, took nearly three years. She died in New York in 1983.
Films
Where to start with Mary Ellen Bute, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Still from Rhythm in Light to come. Rhythm in Light
Made with Melville Webber, who built models of paper and cardboard to film, and Ted Nemeth. Set to Anitra's Dance from Grieg's Peer Gynt.
Still from Spook Sport to come. Spook Sport
Ghosts and bats, drawn directly on the film strip by Norman McLaren, dance to Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre.
Abstronic
Oscilloscope patterns over drawn backgrounds, made with Ted Nemeth and set to music by Aaron Copland and Don Gillis.
Still from Passages from Finnegans Wake to come. Passages from Finnegans Wake
A live-action feature from James Joyce, made over nearly three years and rarely screened since. It's a long way from her abstract shorts.