Les Mystères du Château du Dé

Man Ray. He's a Dadaist. "De" in French means dice. Dice are a symbol of Dadaism. That's about the only "reason" behind this film, which of course is funny because Dadaism is about antireason to a degree. But really that's all there is in terms of explanation. In terms of imagery, that's what this movie is for.

It's vastly different from Ray's other works in that it is the exact opposite of the spinning light. Instead, it's very straight and measured shadow. The rapid movement one can get used to in Ray's work is replaced with very static and slow imagery and camera movement. Even the in theory lively movement of the... people... gets pretty slow.

Experimental, interesting, and without reason. If that's what you like, this is what you'll like.

--PolarisDiB

Before viewing the excellent Herzog/Kinski team-up Woyzeck (1979-also reviewed) I decided to catch a French film from 1929. Checking the titles I had from the year,I got set to uncover the mysteries of the chateau.

View on the film:

Made as the "Silent" era of cinema was fading out,co-cinematographer/(with Jacques-Andre Boiffard )writer/director/ lead star Man Ray closely works with Boiffard in making the bulky, heavy cameras of the era move with a fluidity pointing towards the French New Wave,from Ray & Boiffard driving round with a camera gazing out towards the real streets of Paris, to whip-pans round the empty home.

Originally released as part of a double bill that played with Un Chien Andalou (1929-also reviewed) (what a screening that must have been!) Ray dips the playful camera moves with striking Dada surrealism, spinning in close-ups of faceless figures taking a role of the dice to solve the mysteries of the Chateau de De.

If you see this playing at an art gallery somewhere, perhaps at a Man Ray exhibition, you will probably be seriously underwhelmed. There are some good images in it, and it is interesting to say the least. Knowing only a little French, however, and lacking subtitles for the print the art gallery was showing, made sure we got less out of it than we could have. It begins with evocative images of people with stockings covering their heads and hands, looking like mannequins, rolling a big dice, and arguing over whether they should "go," to an abstract destination which we're told by our programs is the Vicompte de Noialles's villa. Interesting intentionally shaky camera work on car trip there, then interesting images slow panning in garden of villa. Then strange stuff starts to happen. The mannequins appear again, except now there are more of them, and they start tossing a ball to one another. They play other games too - climbing on some gymnastics equipment, which appears, rolling more dice, lying on the floor, and eventually swimming (where a few decent jokes appear:

Title card: "The juggler"

Scene of woman with head and arms underwater trying to juggle balls underwater.

The thing which defined this short for me was how the title cards would pop up and declare these philosophical statements which seemed (with my little French) to have little to do with the action which then followed, of dancing, swimming, playing in the villa. I think the joke was that they weren't saying anything directly to do with what was happening, but what they did do was provide a meaning for the strange goings on in the film, a sort of reference point. They invited you to read into the rather abstract happenings these grande philosophical statements which kept popping up. Most interesting thing about it probably.

This is one of the more watchable efforts from the Kino "Avant-Garde" set (no mean feat, really, given the excess of triviality on display!), if essentially due to its intrinsic weirdness. It is bookended by shots of mannequins holding a pair of dice: whether these 'pull the strings' with respect to the remaining 'plot', where characters' actions seem to be determined by whether they decide to play the game or not, remains – given the film's title – its biggest mystery to this viewer!

Apparently, one of the two protagonists who go to a country villa and have a run of the place for 2 days (since it is uninhabited), is the director himself…but it is hard to tell due to the fact that all the characters wear tights over their heads, completely obscuring their facial features! Eventually, two new figures enter the proceedings – they dance a little (negative exposition takes over briefly at this point) and stumble upon the dice…effectively bringing things full-circle and, thus, back to where we came in!

What happens if one gives a dadaist a camera, a modernist château, the cooperation of the patrons and château-owners, and friends? A pastiche of shaky travel images, poetic intertitles, absurd images of people with no faces (stockings or masks), inexplicable action, recurring episodes of dice-rolling, swimming in the handsome pool, exercise, and interiors. Footage cobbled together. Some good puns (piscinema) and such, but mostly tedious, full of dark, inexpert photography, obscure poetic tags, and gratuitous absurdity—much like a the work of a pretentious art-school person with his or her first camera and some film stock to shoot. Still, it's probably one of the first of such things, and thus has a place in film history.