Jean-Daniel Pollet’s 1963 film, “Mediterranee”, is a movie masquerading at being a documentary. A documentary is a non-fiction movie that strives at documenting reality. There is no real attempt in Pollet’s 42 minute movie at portraying reality as it is more of an experimental film rather than a documentary. It contains footage in the area of the Mediterranean countries of the world and intersperses these shots with pictures of an unconscious girl preparing to undergo an operation, a cruel bullfight, a fisherman going out to sea, a women getting dressed and a typical outdoor Greek party. The landscape location shots include a barbed wired beach made to express war, Egyptian pyramids and statues, a Greek temple, a Sicilian garden and the sea. Featuring gothic music by Antoine Duhamel, the film is shot like an atmospheric horror movie, with slow tracking shots that move in and out of the scenic locations being shown. To top it all off Pollet repeats these shots consistently over and over again, making this one of the longest felt 42 minutes I have ever sat through. Adding to the images there is a nonsensical narration that speaks about space, time and moving into some sort of emptiness, or at least that is what I thought he meant. To me it was all nonsense as I found the movie a tedious exercise that kept repeating itself over and over again until it finally and mercifully ended..
1001 Movies before you die 