Warren Sonbert’s precocious talent in filmmaking was evident from a young age. By fifteen, he was a regular at the Bleecker Street Cinema, immersing himself in a world of foreign classics, French New Wave, documentaries, and independent films. This early exposure became the bedrock of his cinematic education, shaping his unique vision. His deep engagement with cinema led him to the NY Film Bulletin, a journal published in the theater’s basement. Remarkably, at just seventeen in 1964, Sonbert became Editor-in-Chief for a special issue dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard, even conducting an insightful interview with the iconic filmmaker. This early work demonstrated Sonbert’s profound understanding of film form, as he analyzed Godard’s use of visual motifs in BANDE À PART, foreshadowing his own stylistic explorations.
It was Sonbert’s film, WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?, however, that truly began to solidify his reputation as a groundbreaking filmmaker. Writing in the Los Angeles Free Press in 1968, Gene Youngblood highlighted the film’s significance in relation to Godard’s CONTEMPT. This comparison immediately placed Sonbert in conversation with one of the giants of cinema, recognizing his emerging voice. The buzz around WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? was further amplified by Jonas Mekas and James Stoller in the Village Voice, who proclaimed Sonbert a genius and lauded his creation of a new narrative form, even suggesting it surpassed Godard’s innovations. These New York critics were captivated by this young, 20-year-old filmmaker who seemed to tap into a distinct 1960s sentiment.
Mekas’s description of WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? emphasized its “multidimensional moods” and its complex, intuitively crafted structure. He saw it as “post-Godardian cinema,” suggesting Sonbert had absorbed Godard’s influence and moved beyond it with freer techniques that prioritized feeling over intellect. Mekas even noted the influence of Brakhage’s aesthetics, indicating a move towards a more visceral and emotional cinematic language. Youngblood, intrigued by the reference to Brigitte Bardot in CONTEMPT within WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?, identified CONTEMPT and Antonioni’s L’ECLISSE as key works of “New Nostalgia” and “post-existentialist romanticism” of the early 1960s. He speculated that Sonbert might be the artist to build upon where Godard and Antonioni left off, potentially shifting cinema from emotions towards ideas.
Sonbert’s cinematic journey involved constant dialogue with filmmakers he admired. Just as WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? subtly referenced CONTEMPT, his film AMPHETAMINE included homages to Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. This intertextual approach reveals Sonbert’s deep cinephilia and his engagement with film history. Specifically in WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?, the scene featuring a bathroom attendant brushing a young man’s jacket is a direct nod to F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece, THE LAST LAUGH. These references are not mere imitation; they are Sonbert’s way of situating his work within a rich cinematic tradition while simultaneously forging his own innovative path. WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? stands as a testament to Sonbert’s early genius, a film that captured the attention of leading critics and signaled the arrival of a significant new voice in avant-garde cinema.
