*Doors*: June 15, 2025

I saw Christian Marclay's Doors at the Brooklyn Museum on June 15, 2025. Marclay is the artist who did the 24-hour film I saw in 2012 and early 2025. I was CRAZY for The Clock, read about Doors, and was of course intrigued.

Doors is from 2022, it's a montage of clips from films and TV shows in which each clip somehow features a door. I'd guess that 95% of the clips show someone coming through a door, walking through a room, and then going through another door. This makes it easy to link to the next clip which starts with someone coming through a door. Doors has a major advantage over The Clock: it's only 54 minutes long.

Just as with The Clock, there is no start or end - - the film runs on a continuous loop. It starts whenever you start watching it and ends when you leave. When I walked in I was tickled to see Geraldine Chaplin on the screen wearing a bright red dress and matching shoes. I didn't know the movie but love her and love her outfit. A few other early highlights: Charles Bronson (he also had a memorable appearance in The Clock), a young Martha Raye wearing a polka dot romper (something I never thought I'd see), two clips from Dangeous Liaisons (one with Glenn Close, one with John Malkovich).

I started watching it with my friend Dave. He wasn't really into it and wanted to see other things in the museum so he left after about 15 minutes. He asked me, "How many of these clips are from movies you've seen?" I said, "Maybe two thirds?" Of course as soon as he left that ratio went down to ten percent. But as with The Clock, it's a thrill to see movies you love or used to love. Like a clip from An American Werewolf in London. It's the second film in this YouTube review - - it comes in at about 2:20:

One of the things I most enjoyed was Marclay's use of repetition - - we see a clip of Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love at about 2:57. He comes through a door, furious, storms down the hallway, and goes through another door. We saw that clip four or five times over the course of the 55 minutes and the audience laughed every time. That clip shows up again at 4:26.

I feel I should mention that the person who did the video review above chopped up the film to a degree. That probably lessens his culpability in using it illegally.

I loved seeing two clips from Phantom Thread, a movie I adore. One featured Daniel Day-Lewis (seen at 2:49) and the other with Vicky Krieps. One of my very favorite moments is a tiny clip of Gena Rowlands (at 3:22) - - a guy opens the door, she's standing there, and says, "Hi." Priceless.

Another big laugh is at 3:34 - - Brigitte Bardot opens a door, sees what's in the room, says, <<Ah, pardon,>> and shuts the door. I think we saw that two or three times and it made me smile each time. The biggest chunk of the movies he chose are in English, though since many of the clips don't have any dialogue, I suppose those films could be in any language. But of the foreign languages we hear, French is the winner, many French movies. I loved seeing one clip of Jean Gabin walking through a door and saying something to the young woman who let him in. He never turned to the camera so we never saw his face but how could you mistake that voice.

Dave noticed how few clips show actors of color. Makes you wonder.

At 3:46 we see another clip he showed numerous times, I counted three times - - a clip from Funny Face, a movie I've loved from way back. He showed it intact each time, with the same start and finish, the same score, the score from the movie. As in The Clock, he artfully uses music and sound design to give continuity to the whole.

One clip was from a Garbo silent movie. The first time I saw it we heard her footsteps as she crossed the room. The second time we did not. Clearly he added that sound the first time so it makes me wonder why he left it out the second time.

Other repetitions: Cesar Romero in a movie I don't know (used four times), Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (four times), James Garner and Julie Andrews is The Americanization of Emily (one clip used twice plus another clip from the same movie), John Travolta in Urban Cowboy (a movie that might be interesting to watch again, I suspect it does NOT hold up but would be a fascinating cultural artifact).

I wondered why he used so many repetitions and I think it might be because he wasn't ever able to do it in The Clock. He often used clips from the same movie in The Clock but later in the movie - - a clip from Laura at 12:35pm and another clip from Laura at 9:45pm, for example (my times are far from exact BTW). He could repeat the movie but never the same actual clip, it would throw off the timeline. I feel like he was liberated being able to repeat things, he enjoyed incorporating that into his rhythm in this piece.

One other Garbo-esque variation I'll mention: he used a clip four times of a handsome teenage boy in a brown tweed suit, the movie is probably set around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. He comes through a door, stands still for a moment, and walks over to the other door. The first three times it was exactly the same. The fourth time the clip started the way it starts in the movie, with a lovely young woman in a red velvet dress coming through the door, closing it behind her, and walking offscreen to the right. THEN the teenage boy in brown tweed comes through the door. Fascinating.

A few clips showed someone going into an elevator, which I guess has a door. In a sense. One favorite sequence showed Cara Seymour running away from the killer in American Psycho, banging on apartment doors, hoping someone could help her. This was followed by Courtney Cox running away from the killer in Scream 2, running through a sound studio, banging on doors, hoping someone could help her. In the American Psycho clip she was running towards the camera - - in the Scream 2 clip she was running away from the camera.

While we're talking about horror movies, my very favorite repeated clip - - whenever he showed someone crouching down to look through a keyhole the following clip was the view through the keyhole of the Castevet's apartment at the end of Rosemary's Baby. Then we saw Rosemary backing away from the keyhole, backing out of the closet, kicking aside the stuff that was on the floor, and shutting the door. That clip starts at 1:27 in this clip. Spoiler alert!

Very interesting - - he used this clip two or three times in Doors and I noted that he used the same wah-wah-wah trombone moment on the soundtrack each time, an instantly recognizable musical moment from the movie. But now, when I watch the clip in the context of the movie, I see that it has more ordinary music. The wah-wah-wah trombone moment happens at a much more dramatic moment, at 4:45. Again, interesting that Marclay would lift the more disctinctive music out of that spot in the movie and place it in his chosen clip, and use the same music each time he repeated it.

It was interesting to see who he included and who he did not. A very brief list of actresses:

YES: Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Gloria Grahame, Glenn Close

NO: Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep

He used clips from three different Bill Pullman movies. Maybe he has a crush on Bill Pullman. Take a numba.