User Reviews

Rarely has such an exciting documentary been unleashed upon the moviegoing public. This film actually shows the production of cat food, from the grinding up of horses for the meat, to the canning, to the friendly man who drives the truck to the grocery store. Never have I learned so much about cat food, nor the historical significance of cat food. Also in the film is the amazing story of an 86 year old woman who eats cat food. It's nutritious and it makes your coat shiny. Won 3 major awards for best documentary of 1969, and clips have been featured on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood (who can forget the "visit" to the cat food factory?) and Nickelodeon's non defunct "Pinwheel" **** out of five

I'm not sure which picture the earlier reviewer of this film saw, but it was NOT "Cat Food" (1969) by Canadian experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland. Wieland's film is silent, filmed in bright, sumptuous color and contains no narration whatsoever. A large, well-fed, healthy cat slowly and deftly takes apart and eats a series of fresh fish with its claws, teeth and whiskers, and there is no more story to Wieland's "Cat Food" than that. But the story, as such, is not why you watch; Wieland's interest in utilizing film to explore simple, everyday sensations and the fine details in them is what makes this "fine art," rather than documentary. As opposed to Deren-Hammid's "The Private Life of a Cat" (1950) which explored a cat's life in a comprehensive way, "Cat Food" focuses on this single action, and the effect of it is a little reminiscent of Chaim Soutine's loving paintings of his own dinner, usually a rooster denuded down to the bones and sinew. Wieland uses film as an analog for painting, though her film is not static and even includes bursts of single frames here and there to vary the cinematic interest.

While Joyce Wieland was considered in her day a talented artist and experimental filmmaker, not all of her short films were necessarily 'experimental', per se. "Cat Food" is just a little artistic study documenting a singular and not especially unusual situation. Unlike "Sailboat" (1967), which was more like a short home movie, this approximately fourteen-minute film details an obviously staged event - as evidenced by the use of a black background - and instead of comprising one static shot, it includes multiple shoots with non-stationary camerawork. Not an outstanding piece in any way, but an interesting documentation of a fairly common occurrence.

The subject of "Cat Food" is a large tabby cat, who eats pieces of a series of fish - it seems Wieland tried different fish to see which was most manageable for the cat. Granted, it isn't necessarily a coherently-structured work in any way, with plenty of cuts and shots that don't match the preceding action. Yet this chaotic editing (not unusual to independent filmmaking) is what gives the film its style - particularly enjoyable is the pixilation technique used as a sort of timelapse to show the cat's progress on the fish. The sound of an ocean in the background is vaguely heard, but the lack of audio otherwise makes it feel along the lines of a meditative study. As stated above, not necessarily an experimental film even - just an artistic closeup study of a single activity, something a cat lover might enjoy seeing.