Une chasse à courre

I recently viewed a student film. It was literally a lesson for an on screen film student on the "correct" way to stitch shots together: if a shot ends in a left to right motion, the next shot should begin that way. Whoa, I thought, is that what they are teaching?

Kurosawa developed a rhythm in edits that has become pretty standard. He perfected it in "Seven Samuri." I call it the rule of doublets in triples. You establish a rhythm of triples and within that you can have adjacent doubles. 1-1-2, 1-2-2, but never 1-2-1. You establish this early and exploit the dickens out of in the busy scenes with pauses, incomplete triples and fugues.

It is one of the things that the young independent Turks: Lucas, Spielberg and companies recognized and adopted. Star Wars in all its six films never became three dimensional, but when dimensions were added by others in later films, the triples still doubled but with three variables.

Kubrick eschewed this device, but it is what makes Boyle's "sunshine" a masterpiece. Where "2001" was about three consciousnesses fighting for control of the narrative (man, machine, god), "Sunshine" adopted this, making one of the consciousnesses that of the viewer. Then the battle could also be denoted by the doublets in the edits, which controlled the narrative and when.

Ah, well. Here we have a 12 minute experimental film that is relevant to all that. It was made before Kurosawa established the standard. This Russian chafed at the legacy of Eisenstein, who Kirsanoff believed to be a minor talent. Eisenstein suggested that the composition of the shots in space and time could profoundly affect the effect. Filmmakers knew this mattered but had not matured into this standard device that we now use automatically. Kirsanoff thought he understood this dynamic. (There is an annoying French term for this construction.)

What we have here is a bunch of shots of some costumed yahoos, their dogs and horses engaged in an exercise of killing and tearing apart an animal. The camera itself is and the events are wholly unremarkable; it is the editing that is the experiment. Careful composition is used to convey a disturbing rhythm. Note that it is something like a broken rule where every third triplet is discordant. Small and large segments of film are used. The stock is flipped where required so that the left-right discontinuities can be preserved. A score provides the rhythmic narration.

The score is based on brass staccato associated with the hunt and a visual bridge is established with frequent shots of the huntmaster's horns.

That music tells us the rhythm of the edits.

It is a pretty remarkable idea, the hunt for the right edit, the edit conveying the uselessness of the hunt.

The whole thing is framed according to Ted's law. We start with images of a tapestry with images of a hunt. The tapestry is profoundly dull. A voice over tells us that it is so vibrant — because of its weave — that the images almost come to life. The film of the hunt is within this framing device, with us returning to the tapestry at the end.

The abstraction of the experiment in the rhythm of edits and motion is midway between that of the tapestry and that we immerse in with real life.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"La Mort du Cerf" (also called "Une Chasse à Courre") can be found in the DVD collection entitled "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema: 1922-1954: Vol. 3"--a collection of very unusual films that probably would hold little interest to the average viewer.

This is a short French film about the hunt and begins with some close up shots of hunting from various tapestries--showing the link between the days of old and today. Then, the film switches to was appears to be home movies of some folks about to go on what appears to be a fox hunt. It is depicted as fun and noble--and is set to some very classy music and visions of smart people out to have a good time. And, it turns out they are not hunting foxes but deer. Eventually, they corner a stage, shoot him and drag its body about as the hounds jump about in a bit of a frenzy.

The biggest problem with this film is that this sort of hunting today is seen by many as cruel and not especially sporting. In addition, many really don't want to see a deer killed when they watch a film. I am sure this played a lot better back in 1951--today it just seems a bit odd. However, for a cheap film made by non-professionals, it's pretty well done.