Watch House: After Five Years of Living For Free

Just perfect...

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is one of many short films included on the DVD "Shorts 11: Ecstasy" which I recently watched from Netflix. However, it's a very odd choice for inclusion, as almost all the shorts were made in 1999 to 2001...yet this film is from 1955! And, unlike the other films, features fancy music by Elmer Bernstein--a very prolific composer for films throughout the decades.The film is an odd short by any standard and was made by Charles and Ray Eames. Despite the name, Ray was Charles' wife--and this sure confused me at first. The short is a portrait of their experimental house and it consists of hundreds of slides of the home (which looks a lot like a Lloyd and Japanese design fused) that are set to wonderful music by Bernstein. In fact, to me, the best part of this non-commercial style film is the music--it's lovely and very evocative. As for the rest of this, I can respect it as a documentary and experimental work...but it is a bit dull and would not be of much interest to anyone other than architects and lovers of the modernism movement. I just liked the music...

The Eames House, a project undertaken using only standard materials available through catalogues, is highlighted in this slide tour of the architecturally masterful building after five years of being lived in after its construction in 1945-49 as a Case Study house (Number 8 to be exact) for the West Coast journal Arts and Architecture. The slides feature the many ingenious designs of Charles Eames during and after its five year test of time, as well as other facets of life that make the Eames House their own.A large portion of the back and ocean facing wall has been replaced with windows that open and close allowing large amounts of natural light to flood the house. Under the windows, a wooden walk-way leads around to a dirt path and small potted garden. The ampleness of unobstructed light throughout the day and evening allows for extensive selections of plants to be planted or potted near and around the house. Inside the house is a collection of personally designed furniture, as well as presumably factory ordered lamps, desks, cabinets, and other housing accessories. A notably open and airy downstairs leads to a nicely cloistered upstairs via a spiral staircase, still illuminated during the day by natural light. This staircase can be seen in more detail in another Eames movie, "Lucia Chase Vignette" (1978).Despite being such a highly publicized house, the Eames have made a comfortable living at their new home. After five years, the house has a warm yet new feeling sensed through the pictures taken by Charles of the surrounding environment, and the supplemental pictures of the house itself. Seashells, leaves, insects, and materials that make up the house are among the slides Charles took during the five years of living there. This film is a remarkable visual documentation of a landmark in architectural design, and will stand the test of time when newer houses are built and compared to the greatness of the Eames House. Yet again the Eameses have amazed me.