Carriage Trade was filmed over the course of six years as Sonbert brought a Bolex16 mm camera with him on international trips.[1][2] According to his program notes, the filming locations were Afghanistan, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Iran, Italy, Morocco, Nepal, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[3]
Early titles for the film were The Tuxedo Theatre, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Tonight and Every Night.[4]
The film marked a major shift in Sonbert's filmmaking. Unlike his earlier short films, which are loosely narrative works that used longer takes, Carriage Trade is a montage work built out of shorter shots.[5]
A 20-minute early cut of the footage from Carriage Trade, then known as The Tuxedo Theatre, was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York on February 11, 1969.[5] Sonbert screened a longer 80-minute cut in London and New York.[4] He edited that down to a final 61-minute version which has become the most widely distributed version.[6] It premiered in 1971 as part of the Museum of Modern Art's Cineprobe series.[7] The Whitney Museum screened it in 1973 as part of its New American Filmmakers series.[1]
For The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler wrote that it "makes for a slightly dizzying but colorful and far‐ranging trip, [but] it also illustrates the talents of an acutely perceptive and artistic film maker."[1]
^Gartenberg, Jon (2015). "A Delicate Balance: Warren Sonbert's Creative Legacy". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 56 (1): 18. doi:10.1353/frm.2015.a579198.
