Sur un air de Charleston

A man in blackface lands in a spaceship and meets a girl who lives in some sort of shack with a monkey. He hooks her up with a telephone, and she teaches him how to Charleston. Then they fly off in the spaceship, leaving the monkey behind. Cringe-inducing blackface aside, this short film makes no sense. I think that's the plot, but I'm not sure by a long shot. You can't tell that this is Renoir at work, despite his characteristic humanism. Good use of slow-motion, though. Can be found on the NY Film Annex's series of Experimental Film videos, No. 18, I believe.

I just found this as an extra on a DVD of 'Grand Illusion.' A surreal, silent, sci-fi short from 1927, it is the tale of a 21st-century African airman who journeys to post-apocalyptic Paris and discovers the sacred dance of the ancients, the Charleston. Hilarious, delightful, sexy, and utterly, utterly, soul-refreshingly bonkers, the maddest thing I have seen in ages.

Now I am told my comment is not long enough, which is absurd. There is nothing more to add, except watch out for the Angel-heads. Also, lazy advertising men who are tempted to rip off the angel-heads for some moronic commercial should be informed that someone already did so years ago. I believe that is my ten lines now.

"Sur Un Air De Charleston" is a good example of the evil influences that came from beyond the Atlantic sea… strange customs, garments, gastronomy or dances; modernises that almost put an end the conservatives European habits.

A reputable French director (a frenchified dichotomy… ) instead of listening day and night to "La Marseilleise", changed such martial and delicate music rhythm to Jazz, that out-of-tune Amerikan music that was fashionable during the mad 20's in Europe (with the exception of the aristocratic circles that preferred dancing in circles in to dizzy waltzes). So, due to Renoir's liking of Jazz and with some left over stock footage of his excellent and previous film "Nana" (1926), he decided to have a good time making this surreal, bizarre but funny musical silent film (a frenchified incongruity).

In 2028, a mysterious African explorer puts his aircraft on Terra incognita. He meets a charming young native that is accompanied by a chimpanzee, who is going to introduce him to a dance of the wild natives (not the chimpanzee)…, that is to say, the Charleston.

That's the bizarre story of the film, a perfect excuse to put and show the French (Dame Catherine Hessling, natürlich! ) dancing the Charleston wildly… forward, backward in fast and stop motion. Meanwhile the astonished African explorer (Herr Johnny Huggings, a black actor characterized as a negro!) learns to dance quickly and hastily.

Obviously "Sur Un Air De Charleston" is a harmless, a private divertimento, a bizarre but charming short film made to show Renoir's wife's dancing talent. It is an oeuvre that includes the atmosphere that Herr Renoir was so fond of in some of his early films besides … all that Jazz.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must dance St. Vitus's dance.

This is, by far, Jean Renoir's oddest film: a surreal, sci-fi/musical short which was originally accompanied by a specially-composed score but whose print on the DVD itself, bafflingly, features no underscoring whatsoever. Incongruously enough, the film apparently grew out of Renoir's desire to utilize footage left over from NANA (1926)!

Again, we find Renoir's wife at the time – Catherine Hessling – in a major role; here, she is a sexy dancer from the future who teaches a sophisticated negro explorer(!) the Charleston dance (at which he eventually proves himself remarkably adept). It is very hard to believe now that Hessling's dancing caused quite a stir at the time but there you go. Unfortunately, the film doesn't add up to much and there's practically nothing of the traditional Renoir on display. Besides, its premise isn't enough to sustain even the film's two-reel length, with the protracted dance sequence itself, filmed at a variety of speeds, emerging as a hollow exercise in style.

For what it's worth, other characters appearing in the film include a (fake-looking) monkey who is Hessling's sole companion on the seemingly deserted place the coloured astronaut lands on and, for no apparent reason, a group of grinning angels (among them Renoir himself)! The film's best gag is one that would soon become a staple of animation: at one point, Hessling draws a telephone on a wall and this immediately materializes into the real thing.

Licking his wounds after the catastrophic failure of his 1926 version of 'Nana', starring his then-wife (1920-30) Catherine Hessling, Jean Renoir cheered himself up by making the nearest he ever came to science fiction with this exuberant romp set in the year 2028 displaying the impressively athletic dancing ability and lack of inhibition of the baby-faced Ms Hessling.

Arriving in the shattered remnants of Paris in a spherical spaceship that resembles 'Rover' from 'The Prisoner', a smartly dressed visitor from the African continent - where civilisation now resides since Europe blew itself to smithereens - is confronted by a scantily clad savage (her skimpy outfit enhanced by wrist-length gloves) played by Ms Hessling; and joins her in an energetic dancing duel facilitated by some pretty far-out trick photography. (Renoir anticipates Kubrick by forty years by going into negative to depict his flight.) The 'minstrel' makeup worn by Johnny Hudgins in the lead can't be blamed on Renoir since it was adopted by Hudgins himself in his stage act of the time.

If this had ever been intended for public exhibition it would have been a supreme example of pre-code filmmaking. Great fun.