Smith's films are often characterised by his use
of authentic East London locations.
He also incorporates
characters sometimes played by himself - the self-confessed alcoholic
film-maker at the end of Shepherds' Delight, the documenter of domestic
minutiae in Home Suite. All of these are fictional figures even if
ambiguous at times - is this the real John Smith confessing or John Smith
playing himself confessing in Shepherds Delight? In Lost Sound (1998-2001)
made in collaboration with Graeme Miller, found sound tapes are played
over images of the sites of their discovery. In The Waste Land (1999), he
sets the pub scene from Eliot's poem in an emptying pub and then cuts to a
shot of a pub toilet in which a tipsy Smith recites other verses from the
poem as he urinates. The film ends with the half-drunk Smith leaving the
toilet and a lingering shot of the nameplate which should read TOILETS
anagrammed to TSELIOT. It's a deceptively simple piece with the
autobiographical feel of an imaginary self-portrait, but a portrait
nevertheless.
In the perennial audience favourite, The Black Tower, Smith uses a
local landmark as the focus for a character's mental breakdown (once again
only known through voice-over). It is a story of rising paranoia in the
suburbs of London. Smith's powerful and authentic voice-over plays with
the audience's tendency to understand the first-person in documentary as a
real person. According to Smith viewers have sometimes assumed that he is
depicting his own breakdown. This is not to argue that Smith is his
characters, but rather that he expresses particular moods, feelings and
emotions in his films. It is maybe useful to view his work as primarily
self-expression disguised as games, rather than the reverse.
