By Marsha McCreadie

They are in town for a just a few more days, but since the only three films by Roy Lichtenstein, of Pop Art and the comic book style, haven’t been screened since 1971, you don’t have to think twice about catching them. Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein is at the Whitney Museum through Feb. 12. Why wait another 41 years?

Yes, they are in the “Who knew?” category. In 1969, Lichtenstein spent two weeks at Universal Studio in an “Art and Technology Program,” courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Hoping to make 15 short films, ultimately only three were completed (with the help of documentary filmmaker Joel Freedman). The Whitney has restored the original 35mm prints and is showing the films the way Lichtenstein wanted, simultaneously in a triptych structure. (LACMA presented a 16mm version in 1971.)

But it’s more than novelty. In retrospect, Lichtenstein’s attraction to film, the most popular art, seems inevitable. Plus, there is a theme: water and light (all three were made in Montauk). And a form: each mini-film is bisected by a heavy black horizon line. The upper portion, sometimes the sky, is static. But the water moves, making you feel a bit off-kilter, or rocked in a boat. The line moves, too, so perspective is marvelously challenged. One film features Lichtenstein’s famous oversized dots, paired with glistening waves, or maybe mysteriously hide something below. The middle film anchors with fish darting about a tank, but stationary clouds above. On the right is the most seascape-looking of the three, with a sharply defined, abstract bird. Yet even here light plays reflect nature.

Nostalgia buffs will be excited to see an early installation presented in the then-vanguard way intended; Lichtensteinians will thrill at the black strips and comic-book-like borders; and film aficionados gloat to think that film is above all a medium of images.

Three Landscapes: A Film Installation by Roy Lichtenstein
Through Feb. 12, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., www.whitney.org.