Pat O’Neill’s Last Of The Persimmons (1972) combines original 16mm footage with found footage and sets it to the T.Rex song “Is It Love?”. In just over four minutes O’Neill presents a cavalcade of images connected by the similarity of shapes, specifically linking helium balloons to persimmons. These rhyming images form the backbone of the film.
What O’Neill suggests with his psychedelic montage is that the pop culture concept of “love” is at the heart of consumerism. As T.Rex plays on the soundtrack as a pair of hands peel and then devour (off screen) a fresh persimmons. It’s a playful confection of ideas whose tongue in cheek attitude is suggested by the prologue which is set at a carnival.
The first set of images O’Neill presents are a record of helium balloons being inflated at a fair or carnival. Here the sound is diegetic and the images black and white. This movement draws on the documentary tradition to establish a form of acceptable “reality” for the viewer. This “reality” is quickly subverted by scenes in color and the T.Rex score; announcing a tonal and conceptual shift in the film.
The next set of images come in the form of a series of overlays and other optical effects done in post that create an abstract montage. Here is where the theme of romantic consumerism is first suggested as cartoon elephants munch on food while a series of objects zoom by. O’Neill commits to a kind of sensory overload before stepping back and focusing on the peeling and devouring of the titular fruit.
Last Of The Persimmons is something of a playful meditation on culture’s relationship to food as both a biological necessity and a commodity to be sold and gathered. The film, by way of T.Rex, asks over and over if the act of eating is a form of “love”. For O’Neill the answer is yes, but at what cost to the individual?
