Malcolm Le Grice’s Finnegan’s Chin, from 1981, fractures and reconfigures the conventions of narrative progression by adding and subtracting tiny increments of information. Using a slow circling camera, and the devices of repetition and accumulation, a domestic interior, and the daily morning preparations of a male inhabitant, are introduced in isolated, disrupted fragments. A close-up kitchen-set camera journey, taking in eggs frying in a pan; the inward-pointing spikes of cooker-top trivets; a box radio and a toaster is interwoven with a bedroom-set hand reaching in darkness towards an alarm clock digital display and a bedside lamp. A bathroom-set shaving routine, reflected in mirrored cabinet door, includes close-ups on razor and lather, with the process manipulated to ‘begin again’ to the recurring flute-played melody of Michael Finnegan. Accompanied by the sound of plucked strings, single visual elements appear out of hallway shadows; the frame of a doorway; a diagonal shaft of light; patches of patterned wallpaper and white chipboard; an umbrella handle; a bicycle wheel and the leaves of a pot plant, as a male voice narrates episodes of apparently firsthand, early-life experience. Accretive preparations completed, the sound of a closing door initiates footage of the static hallway; a hollowed-out eggshell on a willow pattern plate and the reflection-free bathroom mirror. The camera’s circular pathway appears to shift backwards in time, signalled by alarm clock display, evoking an interior world of performance-based imagery. Lit by a follow spot, the hat and raincoat-clad male spins a multicoloured umbrella, and, to the accompaniment of pan pipes, traces out pan-like shaving foam face markings. A female character, dressed in a yellow and green satin costume, performs a recognisably balletically-codified movement vocabulary of pirouettes and jetes. Stream-of-consciousness narration is revealed as pre-determined script, given voice by the male character, subsequently pictured asleep as the voice continues, musing on the dreaming state.