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.
