Coming Apart (1969)

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Rip Torn (Men in Black) gives one of the great screen performances as a psychiatrist secretly filming his own mental breakdown in Milton Moses Ginsberg’s classic exploration of dark eroticism and self-referential cinematic form. Anticipating the cell phone diaries of today, the entire film is shot through a mirror from a single hidden camera in a one-room apartment. Over the course of several personal encounters, Joe becomes a voyeur of his own reflection, documenting his own emotional disintegration. Although entirely scripted, this fierce, frank, and explicit film seems improvised. The acting is so explosive it seems uncontrolled and the sex scenes have been described as real and pornographic. In dramatic opposition to Hollywood’s narrative filmmaking aesthetic, Ginsberg calls attention to the presence of the camera, abandoning cinema’s “omniscent eye” for a deliberately conscious “camera eye.” Truly ahead of its time, Coming Apart remains a visionary and transformative piece of American cinema.