Very Nice, Very Nice
1961 · 6m · Canada
Directed by Arthur Lipsett
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, dark
Arthur Lipsett assembles dozens of familiar photographs and fragments of overheard speech, punctuated by the refrain 'Very nice, very nice', to expose the anxieties hidden beneath everyday composure.
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Lipsett's found-footage collage should be a gimmick, but instead it becomes a genuinely unsettling machine—each banal photograph and repeated phrase spirals into something that makes you paranoid about your own composure, which is exactly the kind of subversive move everyone else would miss.
Very Nice, Very Nice stands as a watershed moment in the essay film tradition, where Lipsett's rigorous assembly of vernacular material and deadpan refrain creates a formal critique of mid-century conformity that still feels architecturally precise and generatively influential.
The genius isn't the concept—it's Lipsett's decision to let that single phrase repeat until it hollows itself out completely, turning a cute found-sound motif into something genuinely claustrophobic, all on what was likely a shoestring budget and a pile of thrift-store photographs.