Ballet mécanique

This comment is on the version with the recreated Antheil score.

There are films that you can experience directly as they penetrate deep. There are films (and other things) you engage with because they help with that, but the experience is still direct and lasting. They are lesser works, and many of then trivial. But over time the aggregation matters. Its a practice. Its a yoga.

And then there are films that may have been one of these in some context, but that context has drained away, eroded somehow. These are schoolroom exercises now. You cannot actually learn the grammar from them because they are immature, regardless of how cutting edge they were. You cannot experience the thrill the original viewers had, the shock, the stretch, the challenge.

But you have to watch them because they were important, and because you'll need to talk to people who learn rather than experience.

It's cubist, and a particular kind of German-influenced reduction based on now discounted notions. It assumes that Cartesian abstraction can be pure, visceral. The score is from a different tradition, one that reduces to ordinarily "pure" phenomenon like machine sounds. These are both bankrupt artistic ideas, silly now. But they are contradictory, and the clash between the two religions is the experience you will find here.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I would not recommend this film to anyone not interested in the cubist painter Leger, or in the dada and surrealist films of the 1920s. Fascinating for its primitive use of montage and eye-line match, the film is just an experiment with different rhythms and images. Your experience may differ grandly depending on the soundtrack that accompanies it. Most videotapes produced of the film have dinky little organ melodies that really take away from the ballet-like beauty of movement that Leger was going for. In the end, the film's value lies in its historical and fine art historical importance.

1924. While everyone else is screwing with "feature" films with subtitles and storylines, along comes Ballet Mecanique. A fifteen minute experimental masterpiece, that walks the fine line of boredom/pointlessness and excitement/entertainment. This particular film was showing in the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, and was a visual treat playing in the same section as the Picaso.

Leger and Murphy used magic and early optical illusions, such as looping segments and split screens. The repetitive movements of the steel machines, match those of the live action people doing work, or even the comical puppet like figure that dances across the screen to create a mechanical ballet. Be it mechanical movements of humans, or mechanical movements of machines. Something tells me I should make a parallel between the man-machine imagery and the 70's electronic German godfathers, Kraftwerk. It's the Europeans I tell ya...they bring us all the best art as entertainment. Every image, from the smiling girl, to the numbered cards all serve a purpose in the grande scheme of Ballet Mecanique.

I really encourage anybody in the Toronto area, or anyone visiting Toronto, to go to the Art Gallery of Ontario to check out Ballet Mecanique. It's on a continual loop. I could have stayed watching it all day. Very spellbinding.

This one is available online bearing various running-times (the longest being 18 minutes); for the record, the print on Kino's DVD edition within their 2-Disc collection AVANT-GARDE: EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA OF THE 1920s AND '30s is a mere 11 minutes, with the one I eventually settled on for this review clocking at 16!

It is among the more famous efforts in that set and one which boasts the approval (as per the opening scrolling text) of none other than Sergei M. Eisenstein as among the rare(?!) masterpieces of French cinema, while "Charlot" (i.e. Charles Chaplin as he was known in France) is given an early "presents" credit! In retrospect, the Russian master of film montage must have surely appreciated its rapid-fire cutting and industrial aptitude (in keeping with his Communist beliefs). That said, the most lasting image here depicts a chubby woman being repeatedly made to go up and down the stairs.

This excellent surrealist short is a highly imaginative montage of images of people interspersed with machinery. It doesn't have any narrative whatsoever; instead it concentrates on presenting images in a variety of interesting ways. It's more about one central idea – the connection between man and his machines – being expanded on and expressed through an avant-garde art film; in this case via the styles of Surrealism and Dada. The steady pace mimics the mechanised tempo of the machinery depicted in the film. The images themselves are highly imaginative, incorporating a variety of camera trickery and optical illusions, coupled with repeated shots, way before Andy Warhol had similar ideas. It's overall, a very beautiful and compelling presentation. For anybody at all interested in 1920's art films, this is a must. It's well worth 15 minutes of your time.