Entr'acte

Rene Clair and the Marx Brothers once decided to make a movie together: it's a shame that it never happened. Maybe that movie exists in some alternate universe, and I'll bet it's hilarious. I enjoyed "Entr'acte", but I'd gladly trade this film for a chance to see Rene Clair's Marx Brothers movie.

Another IMDb reviewer has synopsised the plot, such as it is: a man apparently dies. After his funeral, his coffin escapes from its hearse, and then the man returns to life. The title "Entr'acte" (an interval between theatrical acts, or an intermission) is never explained; maybe it refers to the interval between that man's two lives. I prefer to think that Clair meant this somewhat amateurish film as a mere intermission: an amusing bit of fun between the acts of his 'real' films; the ones with coherent story lines.

Some of the content in this film truly does seem to be unintentional. After the central character's funeral, there's a stiff wind blowing outside the chapel. The women in this movie wear elaborate long dresses, and the wind animates their clothing in a way that's distracting rather than funny, and surely not meant to be symbolic.

Much of the imagery in this movie seems to be pure Dada rather than signifying anything. The man's funeral cortege is led by a camel. If there's any underlying significance there, I doubt that it amounts to much. Earlier on, I was intrigued by one sequence featuring Parisian chess players. While the camera focuses on the chessboard, a shot of Parisian traffic is superimposed: suggesting that all humanity are pawns in some cosmic chess game.

Don't look for too much meaning in "Entr'acte". It's an amusing experiment, but might have been more effective at a shorter length.

While not nearly as well-recognized or well-remembered as the Luis Bunuel classic "Un Chien Andalous" (1929), "Entr'acte" is a fairly known work in Dadaism of the 1920's, possibly one of the earliest shorts to focus on the avant-garde rather then attempt a story. Intended as an "entr'acte" (so the title suggests) for the French ballet "Relâche", the film appears to be a mere experimentation with effects while crafting a rather odd plot in the process--and more of a plot than most of the surrealistic works contain. Quite sadly, it was Rene Clair's only attempt at such a form of filmmaking, and had he gone on to lead the movement further he may have come up with even crazier material.

The image most of us remember when we think of this movie (if we do think of this movie, which many may not) is the shot of the bearded ballet dancer, reportedly played by Clair himself. This is a rather odd sight to see in a movie, and one you wouldn't normally see--likewise the rest of the short. Experimenting with slow motion, reverse motion, upside-down and side-to-side camera angles, and a number of dizzying double-exposures, the film's narrative is a rather odd one of a man shooting at a large egg only to be murdered by another man afterwards. This sets up the strange premise and the rest of the film is largely a crazy chase as the mourners of the man pursue his coffin after the hearse gets out of control. The ending, not to be spoiled, (although already spoiled by IMDb's summary) is a weird one to boot.

As others have commented, this short is hardly dark and is more of a comedy to watch than the later surrealist efforts. Plus, the opening sequences (such as the balloon dolls) hardly have anything to do with the rest of the short and the ballet dancer is entirely unconnected to the rest of it. It feels as though they were taking the first few minutes to experiment with other visuals before progressing with the true 'narrative', if one could call it that. Not to be considered a surrealist film, however; the wonderfully dizzying use of exposures is pure Dada all the way. A very creditable early effort in its exceedingly memorable imagery, and every bit as deserving to be a landmark classic as "Un Chien Andalou".

René Clair's "Entr'acte" is one of the pioneering films of the surrealist genre in cinema, which, from what I gather, is the attempt at bending reality and twisting all that we've come to know into something deeply strange but entirely mesmerizing. Heavy on its use of perverse or unique imagery and juxtaposition of images and sequences and frequently rejecting the conventions of linear, dramatic filmmaking, such surrealist filmmakers today, such as Quentin Dupieux and Terry Gilliam, focus on a wide-range or visual styles in addition to wacky, out-there humor that is sometimes funny because it doesn't make a bit of sense (otherwise known as "anti-humor").

When it comes to "Entr'acte," however, we have an intriguing piece of film on our hands, one that serves as an early film of the "dadaism" movement in art, where European artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, and theorists began to reject commonly- utilized devices in art of the time in favor of a more radical approach to their mediums. These often included the injection of leftist policies and believes, most specifically anti-war policies that began hitting their stride as World War II neared.

Just by watching the first few minutes of "Entr'acte," one can see that it has no desire at all to try and fit in with conventional artistic standards. It serves as a conglomerate of visuals from the dadaist period, many of which not making very much sense, but each provoking a genre-bending fascination amongst the audience. The opening scene itself is something to marvel at, showing two people firing a cannon from the top of a large building, while strangely-calming and infectious music is played in the background.

The film persists on, with numerous different visuals that were likely never before seen outside of this particular work. What's remarkable is that despite the film's age, scenes involving characters running in slow motion and then being sped up into running in fast-motion after a vehicle still hold a certain kind of power to them. Overall, there's a mesmerizing quality "Entr'acte" bears that is surprising to note seeing as it perfectly defines a film that was "the first of its kind."

Directed by: René Clair.

This short film was conceived (hence the title) by René Clair as a diversion for the interval of the absurdist-Dadaist ballet "Relâche", with screenplay by Francis Picabia and music by Erik Satie, both artists at the forefront of the contemporary Parisian avant-garde. At the supposed first night performance in 1924, expectant patrons were greeted by locked doors and a notice bearing the single word "Relâche", which is the French word for "No Show". How absurd! Oh what fun!

To accompany the film, Satie composed a striking piece of orchestral music (arguably more significant than that for the ballet itself), and as expected the remastered film now has this added as its soundtrack, and a pretty good job has been made of editing the music to the action on the screen. This latter consists of a medley of surrealist sequences, culminating in a funeral procession, led by a camel, which escalates into a manic chase, intercut with footage from a big dipper. At the end, all the mourners disappear into thin air one by one; the corpse lives on. How significant all this is, as a narrative itself, as well as in the history of cinema as a whole, I am not qualified to comment, but it must have been seen as groundbreaking at the time, as well as good absurdist fun.

At the start of the film is a short sequence of two men firing a cannon from the roof of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and jumping up and down, which was shown separately at the opening of the ballet, not as part of Entr'acte. The two men are Picabia and Satie themselves. This footage is especially poignant, as Satie himself was dead within a year.

For Region 2 viewers, Entr'acte is included as a bonus with Clair's much later masterpiece "Les Grandes Manoeuvres".

This is it, for me! Absolute pure cinematic fun! This movie is not trying to tell you a story, although there is a plot about a funeral that ends up transforming into some unexpected events. I just had to laugh, and also marvel at some images that are simply beautiful, like some sort of silent visual music.

What the director does is basically a collage of absurd images and some camera tricks. These involve some artists of the time. I must say I am quite surprised by its freshness even today. Now I know where musical video clips come from! The first time I saw it, I was going to see some old silent movies, and this one was shown first, and I had no idea what it was all about. In a way, I still don't, and that's even better! Stop making sense for a while and start the fun!