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Oblongs & Squares. The Ontario pavilion subdivides its screen into as many as 15 geometric oblongs and squares, like a Mondrian painting, then shatters it into shards of indeterminate shapes that sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete with each other. As a portrait of a province, the film is less than full length; the footage of sailboats, jets and forests all but disappears beneath the glittering surface of the show's broken-screen technique.
Most film makers have used Expo's theme—"Man and His World"—to sanctify a marriage of convenience between formidable technique and flaccid story. But at the Labyrinth pavilion the theme is handled by Canada's prize winning National Film Board with solemnity and skill. In the vaulted chambers of a windowless, five-story building, the viewer follows a restatement of the Greek myth of Theseus, who entered a labyrinth on the island of Crete to slay the monstrous Minotaur. In the pavilion the labyrinth is evoked by a series of eerie corridors and chambers, including one auditorium where audiences peer down from galleries on a swimming pool-sized screen. At the same time, an oblong screen, 38 ft. high, confronts them at eye level. Sometimes Labyrinth uses the two screens to show off: a girl on the far screen throws a bit of bread away; it lands with a splash on the shimmering pond of the bottom screen. Most often it is employed to generate vertigo, as when a trapeze artist dangles above a crowd, or when two men have a highball-to-highball confrontation with a swiveling stripper.
Sonic Boon. Another chamber shows five screens arranged in the shape of a cross. In the most effective sequence, an African hunter peers out at the jungle, spear in hand, searching the waters for a crocodile. Around him the night seethes ominously. When at last he kills his quarry, the screens abruptly fill with white-eyed death masks that seem, for once, as terrifying to the viewer as they must be to the native. Labyrinth's narration is sometimes painfully portentous: "The hardest place to look is inside yourself, but that is where you will find the beast. . ." But for the most part it is a sonic boon, admirably understating Labyrinth's stunning visual display.
Some pavilions strive solely for immediate effect. In the style of the ancient sorcerers, the Kaleidoscope pavilion does it all with mirrors. To the accompaniment of mind-bending, discothquè-loud cacophony, reflections of colors burst and bleed like paint blended in a mixer; flowers open in the sun, firecrackers explode, seagulls turn red against a green sky. A violent visual punhouse, Kaleidoscope is the medium, the message and the massage. It is probably as near as most viewers will get to a psychedelic trip; for most, it will be close enough for discomfort.
Planting the viewer firmly in the center of a vast circular auditorium, the Telephone Association pavilion shows him a 360° screen, then surrounds him with the sea, puts him in the middle of a hockey game, the Mounties on parade, Montreal's skyline, and a hundred other spectacular Canadian sights. The exhibit's faults are derived from its virtues. Except for the African chameleon, there are few living creatures who can see in back of their heads; in theory, a film in the round is a dazzling Disney process, but at any given moment, 180° of it are wasted.