rozklad
Joined Jul 2007
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rozklad's rating
A village girl tires of her nagging mother, leaves home, starts work in a factory in town, gets banged up at her best friend's wedding, has an abortion.
Though told with some humour, the rather grim routine is presented in an uncensorial, matter-of-fact way, as if to imply that this is every young woman's rite of passage. Apparently banned in Czechoslovakia until 1988 (presumably for the very reason that it was too realistic and unflattering to the current way of life), this works best as a "slice of life" memento of the drudgery of day-to-day existence in the former régime, though the film somehow looks older than it is.
Though told with some humour, the rather grim routine is presented in an uncensorial, matter-of-fact way, as if to imply that this is every young woman's rite of passage. Apparently banned in Czechoslovakia until 1988 (presumably for the very reason that it was too realistic and unflattering to the current way of life), this works best as a "slice of life" memento of the drudgery of day-to-day existence in the former régime, though the film somehow looks older than it is.
This short film was conceived (hence the title) by René Clair as a diversion for the interval of the absurdist-Dadaist ballet "Relâche", with screenplay by Francis Picabia and music by Erik Satie, both artists at the forefront of the contemporary Parisian avant-garde. At the supposed first night performance in 1924, expectant patrons were greeted by locked doors and a notice bearing the single word "Relâche", which is the French word for "No Show". How absurd! Oh what fun!
To accompany the film, Satie composed a striking piece of orchestral music (arguably more significant than that for the ballet itself), and as expected the remastered film now has this added as its soundtrack, and a pretty good job has been made of editing the music to the action on the screen. This latter consists of a medley of surrealist sequences, culminating in a funeral procession, led by a camel, which escalates into a manic chase, intercut with footage from a big dipper. At the end, all the mourners disappear into thin air one by one; the corpse lives on. How significant all this is, as a narrative itself, as well as in the history of cinema as a whole, I am not qualified to comment, but it must have been seen as groundbreaking at the time, as well as good absurdist fun.
At the start of the film is a short sequence of two men firing a cannon from the roof of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and jumping up and down, which was shown separately at the opening of the ballet, not as part of Entr'acte. The two men are Picabia and Satie themselves. This footage is especially poignant, as Satie himself was dead within a year.
For Region 2 viewers, Entr'acte is included as a bonus with Clair's much later masterpiece "Les Grandes Manoeuvres".
To accompany the film, Satie composed a striking piece of orchestral music (arguably more significant than that for the ballet itself), and as expected the remastered film now has this added as its soundtrack, and a pretty good job has been made of editing the music to the action on the screen. This latter consists of a medley of surrealist sequences, culminating in a funeral procession, led by a camel, which escalates into a manic chase, intercut with footage from a big dipper. At the end, all the mourners disappear into thin air one by one; the corpse lives on. How significant all this is, as a narrative itself, as well as in the history of cinema as a whole, I am not qualified to comment, but it must have been seen as groundbreaking at the time, as well as good absurdist fun.
At the start of the film is a short sequence of two men firing a cannon from the roof of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and jumping up and down, which was shown separately at the opening of the ballet, not as part of Entr'acte. The two men are Picabia and Satie themselves. This footage is especially poignant, as Satie himself was dead within a year.
For Region 2 viewers, Entr'acte is included as a bonus with Clair's much later masterpiece "Les Grandes Manoeuvres".
