 |
| Marcel Duchamp: Anémic cinémA (FR 1926). Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien. From: GCM 2023 Catalog. |
Grand piano: Masterclass student Andrea Goretti.
Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Sonia Delaunay, 13 Oct 2023
Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs (GCM 2023): " Taking Sonia Delaunay’s 1926 fashion film L’Élélégance as its nexus, this program combines fashion films in color with experimental films of the 1920s French avant-garde. Delaunay’s unusual approach to filming fashion and fabric designs in L’Élélégance becomes clear when compared to another fashion film from the same year, Colorful Fashions from Paris Displayed by Hope Hampton, in which the Hollywood actress wears modern dresses designed by cutting-edge Parisian couturiers. The striking color wheel in L’Élélégance not only echoes the ubiquitous circles and discs of Sonia and Robert Delaunay’s paintings, it also resonates with the omnipresent circles and rotations in Germaine Dulac’s Disque 957 and Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic Cinéma. Circles and other geometric shapes also mark Ballet mécanique (1924) by Fernand Léger, a close friend and dinner guest of the Delaunays. The program closes with some surviving scenes of Parce que je t’aime, a now-lost film for which Sonia Delaunay designed set furniture. "
DISQUE 957 (FR 1928) regia/dir: Germaine Dulac. copia/copy: 35 mm, 97 m, c.5'25" (24 fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Light Cone, Paris.
" Disque 957 (often titled Disque 927) is a film made by French filmmaker, film theorist, and critic Germaine Dulac (1882-1942). While she directed several narrative feature films, she is now mostly recognized as one of the leading filmmakers of the 1920s French avant-garde, combining Impressionist and Surrealist elements in films like La souriante Madame Beudet (1922) and La Coquille et le clergyman (1927). Disque 957 (1928) is conceived as a playful exploration of cinema’s purest building blocks: form, motion, and rhythm, which create a form of abstraction, not with nonreferential animation but with “cinégraphic images” of the natural world. Subtitled “Impressions visuelles,” Disque 957 emphasizes its status as “visual music” with an intertitle stating “En écoutant les Préludes 5 et 6 de Frédéric Chopin.” A perfect example of the cinéma pur of the French avant-garde, Disque 957 opens with shots of a rotating gramophone disc reflecting light, followed by multiple exposures showing radiating light effects, as well as close-ups of a pianist’s hands, mechanical clockworks, and shots of natural landscapes. As Tami Williams noted in her 2014 book on Dulac, “the circular motif, introduced by the light on the disque, and visually echoed in the patterns created by the rain, draws on the semi-narrative pretext found in Chopin’s Prélude 6.” ! " Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: Revisited Disque 957 which I saw in Bologna's 2006 Germaine Dulac retrospective curated by Tami Williams. Despite the intertitle "En écoutant les Préludes 5 et 6 de Frédéric Chopin", those pieces of music do not fit and are not heard in the film which was meant to be shown silent. The rotating movements of the shellac disc on the turntable aspire to the condition of abstraction, glimmering, shimmering, spinning. The fingers on the keyboard merge with sensuous images of raindrops, blurring vision. The waterline is rising.
 |
| Marcel Duchamp: Anémic cinémA (FR 1926). Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien. From: GCM 2023 Catalog. |
ANÉMIC CINÉMA (FR 1926) regia/dir: Marcel Duchamp. photog: Man Ray, Marc Allégret. uscita/rel: 30.8.1926. copia/copy: 35 mm, 155 m, 8' (18 fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien.
" Turning discs are the sole motif in Anémic cinémA by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). With his infamous ready-mades, Duchamp not only is one of the key artists of the 20th century, he also created his own kind of “uncinematic” films with Anémic cinéma, a film made in collaboration with Man Ray and signed with his alter ego Rrose Sélavy. Anémic cinéma, with its anagram title, references cinema’s omnipresent circular loops and rotary motions. The film consists of shots of rotating discs filmed frontally with a static camera. The discs can be considered an extension of his so-called roto-reliefs, optical toys in the shape of cardboard discs set in motion with the help of a gramophone player. On the discs’ surfaces spirals (or rather, asymmetrical circles) are drawn, their rotation creating a three-dimensional effect that is almost hypnotic. Some spirals contain inscriptions full of witty alliterations and puns, entirely in line with his oeuvre, which is marked by tensions between stasis and motion, uncanny combinations between organic and mechanical forms, and a conflation between verbal and visual expressions. " – Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: Revisited Anémic cinémA, in which Marcel Duchamp collaborated with Man Ray. It is a Dadaist visual poem, mixing hypnotic spiral forms with lines of Dada poetry. Rapid circulations shift to slow gyrations. A tight twist opens up slowly. An atavistic symbolism can be imagined (cf. L'Étoile de mer). There is an affinity with the graphic concept of the opening credit sequence of Vertigo (designed by Saul Bass, computer graphics executed by John Whitney).
 |
| Fernand Léger: Ballet mécanique (FR 1924). Source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Photos: Olivia Kristina Stutz. From: GCM 2023 Catalogue. |
BALLET MÉCANIQUE (FR 1924) regia/dir: Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy. scen: Fernand Léger. photog: Dudley Murphy, Man Ray. mus: George Antheil. cast: Kiki de Montparnasse, Katherine Murphy, Dudley Murphy. copia/copy: 35 mm, 311 m, 15' (18 fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
" A member of the Delaunays’ inner circle in the years 1907-1914, the painter Fernand Léger (1881-1955) developed his own colorful variant of Cubism, which is comparable with the paintings of Sonia Delaunay. His flat, geometric style appeared to be an appropriate vehicle for representing the modern world of machines and urban modernity. In 1924, together with American filmmaker Dudley Murphy, Léger made Ballet mécanique, a key work of Cubist cinema, created in a Dada spirit. Marked by rhythmic editing and combining animation sequences with hand-colored geometric shapes, with footage of domestic utensils and urban scenery, Ballet mécanique refers to the environment of the industrial metropolis, which is also evoked in Léger’s paintings. The preference for discs, circles, zeros, and convex shapes is striking, emphasized by the shot of a swaying convex mirror (reflecting the filmmakers) or the striking loop effect of a woman climbing a staircase, which turns human motion into a kind of mechanical rotation – not unlike Léger’s paintings depicting figures turned into mechanical puppets. Given this perspective, it is no coincidence that the film opens and closes with a Cubist-style paper puppet of Charlot [Charlie Chaplin], whose jerky movements seem to embody the rhythms of the cinematic apparatus. " – Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: Ballet mécanique revisited. Mechanical ballets had been cultivated in the cinema since the machine world started to be conveyed via montage by Griffith, Gance et al. Their machine gun montages also evoked the horror of the Great War. From their ultra rapid edits there was but a step to abstraction. With Dudley Murphy and the ubiquitous Man Ray, Fernand Léger created a Cubist interpretation of the mechanical ballet. Of lasting value, here seen in a colour print. Like Gance, Léger also evokes Sisyphos. Screened without the Georges Antheil score (tbc).
COLORFUL FASHIONS FROM PARIS DISPLAYED BY HOPE HAMPTON (US 1926) regia/dir: Jules Brulatour. cast: Hope Hampton. prod: McCall’s (series: McCall Color Fashion News). dist: Educational Pictures (Educational Film Exchanges, Inc.). copia/copy: DCP, 8'28" (da/from 35 mm, 719 ft, 22 fps, two-color Kodachrome, Desmet process); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.
" In February 1926, the American fashion magazine McCall’s released one of a series of short pictures called McCall’s Color Fashion News. Filmed in the two-color Kodachrome process, the short shows Hollywood actress Hope Hampton modeling more than twenty creations by Parisian couturiers whose names still resonate today, such as Madeleine Vionnet, Lucien Lelong, Jeanne Lanvin, and Paul Poiret. The intertwining of color, beauty, and vanity is set up in the opening image, in which a peacock fans its tail feathers in a glorious display of colors. What follows is a repetitive display of richly elaborated dress designs and accessories, featuring the classical tropes of fashion shows: holding skirts in semi-circles of fabulous fabric, turning a full spin to display the cut and movement of a gown, removing a top garment to show the dress or lining underneath, and striking a pose topped by a look directly at the camera. A remarkable moment comes when Hope Hampton, with a cheeky smile, lifts the front panel of a Drecoll coat to reveal what appears to be a pair of trousers worn underneath. Hugely contributing to this “festival of beauty, fashion and color” is the Kodachrome color that renders Hampton’s hair a vibrant red. Also notable in the context of this selection of shorts are the title-card designs with the designers’ names adorned with geometrical decorations in red-orange and blue-green, the composing colors of the two-color Kodachrome process. " Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: A straight documentary record of Hope Hampton's modeling session. A valuable showcase of two-color Kodachrome.
L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (FR 1926) regia/dir: Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay. photog: Henri Chevereau. copia/copy: DCP, 3'36", col.; did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, Bois d’Arcy.
" Late in 1926, Sonia Delaunay and her husband Robert collaborated with camera operator Henri Chevereau to produce a fashion reel filmed in the Keller-Dorian color process – the first application of this experimental process in the artificial light conditions of a studio shoot. The reel was projected during a lecture Sonia was invited to give in January 1927 at the Sorbonne in Paris, on the evolution of modern painting and its influence on contemporary fashion. As a painter who had expanded her practice to costume and fashion design, she was very well placed to draw such a comparison. Applying the color theories she and her husband had developed, each scene in this color reel demonstrates a specific point on the combinations of colors and patterns, applied to dress designs. A striking vignette shows a woman wearing an orange-and-black dress who rotates a large grayscale circle – not unlike the human-scale clock operated in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). This fascinating footage demonstrates the changing perception of color contrast when two hues are placed side by side in varying tones. Another instance incorporates the Delaunays’ ideas on Simultaneous colors into the design of a double-layered dress filmed against a split-colored background: removing panels of the initially orange dress set against a gray background, the model gradually reveals the gray dress underneath, eventually posing against the orange half of the background. The final scene features Sonia Delaunay herself, wrapped up to her neck in a multitude of brightly colored and boldly patterned hangings. The Keller-Dorian color process was developed by Albert Keller-Dorian and Rodolphe Berthon; it was patented in 1908. It is an additive, three-color process using lenticular film, imprinting the three color-separated images onto a single strip of embossed film material. "
" The film’s title is indeed L’Élélégance; it is not a typographical error. See also the introductory paragraph to this programme. " Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: A valuable record of the Keller-Dorian colour process. A refined and original colour palette.
NOT SHOWN:
[DELAUNAY KELLER-DORIAN COLOR TEST] (FR, c.1928) regia/dir: Sonia Delaunay. prod: La Société du Film en Couleurs Keller-Dorian. copia/copy: DCP, 24", col. fonte/source: Lobster Films, Paris.
" The context of this very short scene is unclear; probably it is part of a Keller-Dorian color test made around 1928. Sharing the warm hues and the flat setup of planes of the fashion reel shots, it shows a figure wrapped head to toe in contrasting textiles with solid colors. Seated in front of a makeshift backdrop of hanging fabrics, the person leans on a circular prop painted in the same colors. The figure most probably is Roland Berthon, son of Keller-Dorian’s developer Rodolphe Berthon, who was a painter and a friend of the Delaunays. " Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: THIS GLIMPSE WAS NOT SHOWN.
PARCE QUE JE T’AIME (FR 1929) [frammento/fragment] regia/dir: Hewitt Claypoole Grantham-Hayes. asst dir: Robert Bibal. scen: dalla pièce di/based on the play by Charles Lafaurie. photog: A.O. [Adolf Otto] Weitzenberg, Samy Brill. scg/des: Lucien Aguettand; Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay (furniture). mus: François de Breteuil. cast: Diana Hart (Liliane Darty), Nicolas Rimsky (Claude Marchal), René Ferté (Serge Morange), Elsa Tamary (Jacqueline Marchal), François Viguier (Raillard de Massonneau), Emile Saint-Ober (Williamson), Madeleine Saint-Gal (donna americana/the American woman), Kees Van Dongen, Foujita. prod: Integral Films. uscita/rel: 15.11.1929. copia/copy: DCP, incomp., 4'; did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Lobster Films, Paris.
" In 1929, Sonia Delaunay designed set furniture and textiles for Parce que je t’aime by Hewitt Claypoole Grantham-Hayes, who is also known for Lady Harrington (1926), L’Emprise (1929), and Nos maîtres les domestiques (1930). Unfortunately, Parce que je t’aime seems to be lost; the sole surviving fragment appears to be this montage showing “quelques scènes du film”. This four-minute “teaser,” with its shots of swanky nightclubs and restaurants, Deco hotel lobbies, and stylish apartments with upholstery in geometric patterns, resonates entirely with the universe of modernity evoked by Delaunay’s fabric and fashion designs in Le Vertige and Le P’tit Parigot. After a conventional introduction of the actors, the footage continues with a rapidly rotating shot of characters moving in front of a glittering backlight, resulting in a refracted whirlpool reminiscent of some Delaunay paintings, like Prismes électriques (Electric Prisms, 1913). Flat studio sets are made more sophisticated with layered compositions of shadowplay and shiny beading. One of the last sequences shows a multipurpose environment with French signposts saying “restaurant” and “piscine” (swimming pool), as well as “renseignements” (information), echoing the upper-class soirées in Le Vertige and Le P’tit Parigot. Modernist geometric architecture with flights of stairs are used as a catwalk for a parade of numerous evening gowns with accessories. " Hilde D’haeyere, Steven Jacobs
AA: Sonia Delaunay moments in short pieces of surviving footage.
AA: Three avantgarde landmarks by Germaine Dulac, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger, with Man Ray and Kiki de Montparnasse among the collaborators, brought together because of the Sonia Delaunay connection covered also by her own L'Élélégance colour experiments and straight records of fashion sessions. Cinema in the heartbeat of modern art: futurism, cubism, abstraction, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment