Symphonie diagonale

Those grotesque lines and numerous haphazard shapes really captivate you and you beseech your noggin to construe a meaning for patterns. You toil assiduously and eventually get lost in the never-ending meandering lines. Akin to Escher's painting of flight of incomprehensible and unfathomable stairs, the right angled figures and horizontal and vertical histograms in Viking's enigmatic video leave us in a profound flummox.

'Symphonie Diagonale' is a quintessential example of abstraction in Modern art. Picasso, Cezanne did tangentially talk about abstraction but more or less remained stuck to the thought of depicting the main idea lucidly. But, Viking Eggeling on the other hand takes abstraction to an unprecedented and fascinating realm. The gist of this piece of work by Viking is to break free the modern paintings from the shackles of property of being static, i.e. to make the idea of depicting transition or fleeting movement in a painting (*series of photos) conceivable. The frames come one after another, thus creating a motion picture which facilitates delineation of author's chain of thoughts possible. It seems like the shapes appearing in a cyclical order symbolize the recurring nature of several things around us, the symmetrical stairs of our home, keys on a piano, day and night, seasons and so forth. To pinpoint and interpret the exact theme Viking had in his mind is a conundrum, maybe he thought more in terms of the video eliciting different response in viewer's mind and how can self-correlation of viewer gives a structure and rarefied boundaries to this work. The rhythm, with which the images appear, is not exactly in a fixed pattern or not exactly in a totally random pattern but it lends it a sense of meaning. The figures in shapes of cigarette smoke, an ear, a harp, entice the viewers to give some weight-age to them and conceptualize the whole video. As this piece of movie was silent originally thus the music's significance stands on very thin ice. Maybe, patterns and music are attempting to coherently complement each other. Music though is hypnotic and amusing; it hardly solves any purpose rather it just baffles the viewer. The repetitive patterns, strange appearance of the figures makes the video extremely loaded with information and very strenuous. You can't look at it for long duration and maybe this constraint makes it so beautiful and adds to a unique aesthetic sense to it. Though it's very hard to fully understand the underlying idea of the video, still the idea of strange forms coming again and again makes it impressive. In the end, I feel that Viking wanted us to appreciate the change and accentuate the fact that change is what keeps us interested in everyday life.

1924 certainly was the year for avant-garde cinema what with the release of such classics of the genre as Entr'acte, Ballet mecanique, and this offering from the Swede Viking Eggeling. Presumably intended as a visual representation of a musical symphony, the films consists solely of various geometric shapes taking form only to then be erased and replaced by a successor. It grows tedious very quickly, and makes seven minutes seem like an eternity.

While this film practically defies description and is practically impossible to review, I decided to take this on simply because the opening made me laugh. There is a blurb that appears on the screen and indicates that this film by Viking Eggeling is simply a work of genius!! The summary above is taken from this self-congratulatory praise!! Never have a seen a film so quick to pat itself on the back!!

The entire silent film consists of art deco-style black & white shapes appearing and moving about--all with diagonals or with diagonals superimposed on it. Set to music this might have been mesmerizing, but as a silent it lacks a lot. I won't give it a score but would beg to differ that it is the best abstract yet conceived (at least by 1924)--something better must surely exist--something worth seeing to the average Joe.

With this movie, Eggeling found a new way of artistic expression that was followed later by Hans Richter, Oskar Fishinger, Walter Ruttmann and Norman McLaren.

Eggeling was trying to explore new paths, new manners, and he really did it. This new media, cinema, brought something that painters such as Eggeling himself could never reach with their paintings: time. Including a new dimension in their artwork was something very challenging for them. It was like mobile paintings. And this is exactly what Eggeling built up in this Symphonie Diagonale.

Eggeling uses *only* images (some geometrical animation) to make music! Yes!, that's it! I know it sound rare but he did it! Just try to imagine how, without any sound, just by showing us moving drawings, Eggeling makes us feel rhythm, musical patterns and figures. I would say that, even if the viewer is not a musical expert, he/she will surely discover, at least, the basics of music (rhythm, for instance).

Eggeling's masterpiece is a trip into music, a magical illusion and a sensible picture of music through a different language. Something nobody should miss.

This is yet another film devoted to endless repetition of evolving shapes (like the recently-viewed OPUS 1 {1921} by Walther Ruttmann, RHYTMUS 21 {1921} by Hans Richter and ANEMIC CINEMA {1926} by Man Ray); bafflingly, it has found a place (albeit a deservedly lowly one) on a poll I have been checking out ranking the all-time top 3000 movies! There is little to say about such 'trivial' efforts, except that one is thankful for their brevity – while assuming that they were conceived in order to push the boundaries of film when the medium was still essentially in its infancy. As was the case with a few of the titles included on Kino's 2-Disc "Avant-Garde" collection, this is available online in several prints boasting a variety of lengths – often supported by newly-composed (and wildly inappropriate) electronic scores; needless to say, I opted to watch a copy of it that featured traditional accompaniment…