Pas de deux

In 1969 I went to a middle-class matinée showing of "Easy Rider". At the break, we all got up to leave, happily surfeited with the phony, sad (and politically correct for the times) ending. Any southern redneck would shoot a hippy on sight. Okay. We bought that and started shifting around in preparation to leaving.

Then as I remember it, a single word appeared on a dead black screen. "Duo". A back-lit ballerina pirhoutted across that screen and danced away from her own still image. She did it again. We were mesmerized.

Ten seconds of stunned silence followed the last frame. The applause that followed had a quality I can only describe as "awed".

Breathtakingly beautiful, that's all.

Yes, this is one of the great Canadian shorts, etc. etc.

I'm more interested in why someone could find this film boring, insisting that one had to have an interest in the dance and/or music in order to find something to like about it.

I'm not a "dance person" myself and in fact admittedly rarely have anything to do with dance performance, dance films, etc. This film is not about the dancing, though.

It's about human movement in particular, with the form of this dance being used as a means to a much more imaginative end. By utilizing dance as a mode of discovering the beauty of human grace and movement, McLaren can explore these movements in fascinating ways, using optical printing to trail print or multiple-expose their movements, using still imagery as well.

The result is an effect of three-dimensionalizing the movements (not the dancers, who are obviously already 3-D) - giving substance and shape to otherwise intangible, time-sensitive events. This film is just as incredible and breathtaking as the chrono-photographs of Etienne Jules-Marey, and in fact Pas de Deux is very much a brother of Marey's work. McLaren even lit his dancers similarly to Marey's subjects, to get an almost line-drawing effect from his subjects.

To dwell on the dance itself and whether or not you "like it" is completely missing the point of McLaren's filmmaking and artistry here. He had an incredible sense of the potential for movement and beauty, often to be found in unique and unlikely places.

See this film at all costs and try to look beyond the dance content/music content (if that bothers you), and you will hopefully find that Norman McLaren created a masterpiece in his exploration of time and motion, mined entirely from the particularly graceful movements of ballet dancers.

Stunning, enthralling, captivating, breathtaking.

A visual masterpiece composed from two dancers, clever back-lighting, a pan-pipe and some stop motion/multi-exposure effects. Proof that in the hands of an artist the sum surpasses the parts, must be seen to be believed! The progression from the simplest expression of human motion into a cascade of frames and forms draws the viewer from first to last image. The beauty of the initial simplicity turns into a delicious betrayal of epectations as subtle new effects are thrown into the mix. The music, passionate and stark, is a perfect match and even the synchronizing between aural and visual ebbs and flows is impeccable. Should be seen by anyone who enjoys film as art.

This one is hard to describe, Two ballet dancers perform a piece while various visual effect are added to augment the performance. Some of the effects are stunning, while others are very jarring and don't quite work. Intriguing idea that works most of the time. If you've seen "A Chairy Tale" or "Neighbours" and enjoyed them, you'll like this. But it is unusual and somewhat off-kilter at times. Recommended for those who like the unusual or special photographic effects. Bear in mind that it is over 30 years old.

I don't much like ballet. In fact, of all the popular dances out there, ballet strikes me as the most uninteresting and tedious. At least, that was until I watched Norman McLaren's 'Pas de deux (1968).' Suddenly, every movement seemed gentle and graceful, hypnotic and inspiring. McLaren uses optical effects to bring out the majesty of human motion, to create a dizzying duet of silhouettes, dancing a routine that slows down and transcends time and space. Utilising an optical printer to reprint images from one frame of film to the next, McLaren elegantly manipulates the typical flow of time and motion. This was an achievement with which the animator was well-acquainted. In his most famous short, 'Neighbours (1952),' Mclaren parodied the typical mechanics of movement, in which pixilation (stop-motion of live-actors) was employed to create a disorientatingly-unreal morality play – though I found that particular short to be too unsubtle and obvious to be of any real note as a war-allegory.

'Pas de deux,' on the other hand, is completely graceful is every respect. Human bodies diverge, are occasionally suspended in time, but often dance alongside their mirror-images. Finally, with perfect precision, the corresponding images fuse into one single entity, and the ballet continues. Time is a fleeting concept; once a particular moment has passed us by, it is lost in eternity and can never be retrieved. McLaren recognises movement as the chief indicator of passing moments, and so, as he toys with the movement of human bodies, he also toys with human notions of time, capturing and replaying otherwise lost moments for us to experience once again. By the film's end, the two ballet dancers are all but indistinguishable, perceived only as a blur of transitory silhouettes, moving as a subtle mist that only vaguely resembles the human form. Like translucent ghosts, the dancers perform their routine, every movement, rather than existing only for a fleeting movement, remaining on screen long enough for us to saviour its grace and dignity.