Symphonie diagonale

It is curious, how much our minds are wired to try to make sense out of the images we see: are the moving, dancing, art deco figures in this film combs? Caricatures of wings? A logo? And the oddly hypnotic, abstract images which appear at one minute? what of them? Are the images and figures presented mean to compliment each other, or stand independently? Or meant to simulate movement?

Viking Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale is interesting, nonstop art deco images, good to just sit and watch the repetitive patterns shapes, like a blinking neon sign, and zone out to, and well drawn also.

The print I saw had either been well restored, or just held up immaculately, because the film had contrast between its deep blacks and pure whites, as opposed to medium range greys that a lot of old silent films have.

Those grotesque lines and numerous haphazard shapes really captivate you and you beseech your noggin to construe a meaning for patterns. You toil assiduously and eventually get lost in the never-ending meandering lines. Akin to Escher's painting of flight of incomprehensible and unfathomable stairs, the right angled figures and horizontal and vertical histograms in Viking's enigmatic video leave us in a profound flummox.

'Symphonie Diagonale' is a quintessential example of abstraction in Modern art. Picasso, Cezanne did tangentially talk about abstraction but more or less remained stuck to the thought of depicting the main idea lucidly. But, Viking Eggeling on the other hand takes abstraction to an unprecedented and fascinating realm. The gist of this piece of work by Viking is to break free the modern paintings from the shackles of property of being static, i.e. to make the idea of depicting transition or fleeting movement in a painting (*series of photos) conceivable. The frames come one after another, thus creating a motion picture which facilitates delineation of author's chain of thoughts possible. It seems like the shapes appearing in a cyclical order symbolize the recurring nature of several things around us, the symmetrical stairs of our home, keys on a piano, day and night, seasons and so forth. To pinpoint and interpret the exact theme Viking had in his mind is a conundrum, maybe he thought more in terms of the video eliciting different response in viewer's mind and how can self-correlation of viewer gives a structure and rarefied boundaries to this work. The rhythm, with which the images appear, is not exactly in a fixed pattern or not exactly in a totally random pattern but it lends it a sense of meaning. The figures in shapes of cigarette smoke, an ear, a harp, entice the viewers to give some weight-age to them and conceptualize the whole video. As this piece of movie was silent originally thus the music's significance stands on very thin ice. Maybe, patterns and music are attempting to coherently complement each other. Music though is hypnotic and amusing; it hardly solves any purpose rather it just baffles the viewer. The repetitive patterns, strange appearance of the figures makes the video extremely loaded with information and very strenuous. You can't look at it for long duration and maybe this constraint makes it so beautiful and adds to a unique aesthetic sense to it. Though it's very hard to fully understand the underlying idea of the video, still the idea of strange forms coming again and again makes it impressive. In the end, I feel that Viking wanted us to appreciate the change and accentuate the fact that change is what keeps us interested in everyday life.

With this movie, Eggeling found a new way of artistic expression that was followed later by Hans Richter, Oskar Fishinger, Walter Ruttmann and Norman McLaren.

Eggeling was trying to explore new paths, new manners, and he really did it. This new media, cinema, brought something that painters such as Eggeling himself could never reach with their paintings: time. Including a new dimension in their artwork was something very challenging for them. It was like mobile paintings. And this is exactly what Eggeling built up in this Symphonie Diagonale.

Eggeling uses *only* images (some geometrical animation) to make music! Yes!, that's it! I know it sound rare but he did it! Just try to imagine how, without any sound, just by showing us moving drawings, Eggeling makes us feel rhythm, musical patterns and figures. I would say that, even if the viewer is not a musical expert, he/she will surely discover, at least, the basics of music (rhythm, for instance).

Eggeling's masterpiece is a trip into music, a magical illusion and a sensible picture of music through a different language. Something nobody should miss.

Found this rare experimental animated short by one Viking Eggeling on the Internet Archive site. It's basically a series of lines-either straight or curved-that form then retreat. Appear then disappear. Repeat again and again before disappearing for something new to form. And there seems to be some kind to rhythm to the whole thing as if some kind of music that no one can hear, since this short is completely silent, is orchestrating the entire thing. Maybe Chuck Jones saw this and was inspired to make his Oscar-winning The Dot and the Line. Maybe other abstract animators like Len Lye were inspired with their own versions of what is depicted here. Symphonie diagonale is certainly one of the earliest of the fascinating abstract animated designs ever put on film. Highly worth a look for anyone interested in this sort of thing. Update: 10/16/08-I saw another, possibly longer version, on the Europa Film Treasures site. This version has a score added by Aidje Tafial with a woman's voice electronically coming in occasionally and some bells. With these enhancements, I'm now upping the rating to 9.

Diagonale Symphonie, what to expect? some strange movie, and indeed, it turned out to be a very strange light effects movie, where you keep wondering what you are looking at. is it a piano? is it a glass? is it a chicken? is it a wig? it's really hard to say, because the little differences with each picture of light you get to see, really change the global frame you get to see. is it the sun? is it a knife? actually, it's not quite that funny, because as a viewer, I want to know what I'm looking at. maybe the title means something... yes, it could be instruments. that would explain a lot. instruments, shown by light, maybe it means standing in the spotlights, to be famous, perhaps this movie is about being famous.