Ballet mécanique

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.

Since the beginning of the invention of cinema, Europe was a good place for the most innovative filmmakers to do their work, crazed youngsters who weren't satisfied with conventional film narratives, so they needed to try new and avant-garde film experiments full of images too bizarre and incomprehensible for a conservative German count. Many times these films were influenced or had connections with other Arts, as is the case with "Ballet Mécanique" (1924), a milestone in avant-garde silent film which is influenced by cubism and directed by a painter, Herr Fernand Léger.

The film is an unconventional and unique film experience, a kind of an essay about movement, in which whirling, dazzling galleries of machines images ( pistons, gears ) and deconstructing humans ( female cubist portraits, syncopated images of different persons ) are intertwined , composing together a bizarre, surreal symphony of motion, an extravagant and experimental kaleidoscope. Such avant-garde madness wasn't exclusive to Europe because Herr Léger had the help of two Amerikan madmen, the technical assistance of Herr Dudley Murphy, director and producer and the founder of the New York Dada movement and Herr Man Ray photographer, painter and avant-garde filmmaker, who did the cinematography.

Obviously this German count is accustomed to watch classical and conventional ballets as for example Herr Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" full of elegant movements as "pas de deux", "plié", "sautés"… so the first time that this Herr Graf watched Herr Léger's "Ballet Mécanique" with its organized and meaningless symphonic chaos, the soirée at the Schloss theatre was left in a state of absolute shock. Fortunately many years have passed since then and this Herr Von had the chance to know and watch more bizarre avant-garde silent films, varied and unclassifiable oeuvres that belonged to strange and different cultural movements of the last century so the second time that "Ballet Mécanique" was shown in the Schloss theatre and with such background information digested, this German count still couldn't understand the damn thing… the same thing happened the third, the forth, the fifth time…

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must dance a•"pas de deux" with the Schloss' boiler.

This is just one of many strange films from the DVD collection "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941" and it's from Disc 3.

In the notes shown on the screen before the film begins, you learn that the original musical score was so complicated and strange that it was not played at the film's original debut. For the film, they were able to recreate the cacophony caused by eight percussionists, two pianists, bells, a siren, airplane propellers and sixteen player pianos! This film is a creation and is made up of a weird collage of machinery, objects and shapes. Being Dadaist, is seeks to defy contemporary ideas of art, provoke the viewer and be anarchic. I liked the cubist intro myself and loved whenever it reappeared (it looked like Chaplin as drawn by a cubist) and thought it rather cute--which would have horrified the folks who made this! I don't think 'cute' is what they were going for with this film! The rest of the film consisted of pulsating objects, upside-down film clips of people, kaleidoscopic effects, random objects that were in primary and secondary colors and, once again, the cubist Chaplin! It all defies adequate description and is not something most folks would like to see very often--but I can respect all the work they put into it.

This film is a very interesting short. To fully understand it you have to put your self in a mindset of someone in the 1920's when machines were starting to do jobs that humans typically did, were we being replaced by our own creations. It's scary and beautiful and shows machines as humanistic and humans as mechanical and visa versa. However, what I found most interesting was the score which was composed when the film was made in the 20's but couldn't be preformed or recorded until today as it requires 16 synchronized player pianos. This score was well worth the wait, it is one of the most interesting beautiful and shocking pieces of music I have ever heard. If the idea of music written for xylophones, sirens, a piano, 4 percussionists, an airplane propeller, buzzers, and the aforementioned player pianos intrigues you then you should hear the score however possible.

Note: the score of which I'm referring isn't on all versions of this film, as it was not recorded as intended until 1999 so make sure you see this film with the music you were supposed to see it with or you will be sorely missing out.

French abstract painter Fernand Leger was swept up in the first month of The Great War when France was being overrun by the Germans in August 1914. Spending two years on the front, he almost died in Verdun during a mustard gas attack. Leger had a lasting image of the mechanics of the war during his convalescence in the hospital, describing "I was stunned by the sight of the breech of a 75 millimeter in the sunlight, in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in ... made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility." After the war Leger became fixated by mechanical images, with his paintings dominated by tubular and machine-like forms. Once his fame spread as a canvass artist, he became intrigued with how cinema could give his art an extra dimension. When asked to design a movie set for a laboratory sequence in director Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 'L'Inhumaine,' Leger immediately embarked on an experimental short film with photographer/artist Man Ray. His effort produced September 1924's "Ballet Mecanique (Mechanical Ballet)." Filmmaker Dudley Murphy, more familiar with the technology of movie producing, assisted Leger on his project, now considered a masterpiece in experimental film.

Embracing Cubist and Dada aesthetics, Leger took over 300 shots to compress his 15-minute film into a collage of images, live action and others abstractions of lights and lines. The beauty of "Ballet Mecanique" is that individuals are able to arrive at their own personal interpretations of the film's meanings. The juxtapositions of the mechanical cylinders with an old woman carrying a large bag repeatedly up stairs in a loop-edited sequence reflects for some viewers that mechanical inventions are replacing age-old human manual labor for efficiency. The reoccurring Cubist images of Charlie Chaplin are scattered throughout the program.

A special musical score by composer George Antheil premiered two years after the film was released in a June 1926 Paris theater. The cacophonous music stirred up the passions of some viewers at its opening, causing fights between admirers and detractors of Leger's movie in the street after the show.