New York Press: AVANT-LARD
Bruce Calvert
AVANT-LARD
Is anyone still waging the fight against junk populism and elitism?
By Armond White
Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s
Kino DVD
Are we still alive?" That's the unexpectedly avant-garde moment in
Spielberg's War of the Worlds. It's when the film steps beyond the simple
conventions of genre filmmaking (a sci-fi flick about an invasion from Mars)
and expresses our very contemporary concern with survival. Ray Ferrier (Tom
Cruise) and his two children have retreated to a basement bunker in a
suburban home to escape an unseen, explosive cataclysm come deafeningly
close. Here's where Spielberg teases our sophistication about filmmaking-and
film watching-to address the worries that people have in their heads, even
as they tell themselves they're merely seeking "entertainment."
At that moment Spielberg lets the screen go black for about five seconds.
The communal experience of film-going then becomes a shared nightmare. The
emergency lights in the theater are, momentarily, the only source of
illumination. If you jump (as I did), you fear that the movie has
stopped-the reel fallen off its plate, the fantasy interrupted by unfunny,
drop-dead oblivion. "Are we still alive?" whispered by Farrier's daughter
Rachel (Dakota Fanning) inquires about our safety, our ability to dream, our
possible awakening to dire reality. It parallels how many people felt after
9/11. Are we dreaming? Are we still alive? Bringing experience and
existential contemplation together so forcefully, Spielberg joins the ranks
of the most audacious avant-garde filmmakers: He turns the popcorn movie
experience into a consideration of the abyss.
Movies used to be the avant-garde until Hollywood commercialism caused the
art form to undergo cell division. Stories and stars then became the
emphasis of a medium that began as a technical innovation that went beyond
paintings, still photography and live theater. In KINO DVD's bountiful new
release Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s, the
collection of classic avant-garde films brings back experimentation in hand
with communication. These 24 short films make you think about the movie
experience even while enjoying it. Filmmakers from Man Ray, Hans Richter to
Dmitri Kirsanoff and Fernand Leger made original films for open-minded,
unspoiled viewers-an audience Spielberg can no longer rely on, lost to the
dearth of rep houses-who still believed in the expressive potential of
movies.
That's what is missing today. In the place of artistic optimism, and visual
hunger, most filmgoers now expect all movies to be the same: formulaic,
dialogue-ridden, pedestrian. (Include CGI and digital graphics in Batman
Begins and Stealth among the most pedestrian.) With the idea of the
avant-garde now relegated to the effete and obscure, it is impossible for
some people to recognize the ingenuity in cinema like Spielberg's. Film
culture no longer welcomes what is visionary or anything fascinated by
nature, the human face (Dakota Fanning!), or the medium itself. KINO's
silent-era avant-garde films are distinguished by the concentration on
nature, physiognomy and the medium exploding out of itself.
Culled from the vintage collection of redoubtable film distributor Raymond
Rohauer, Avant-Garde features a line-up so forgotten it's new again. These
warhorses of Film 101 reintroduce the original idea of cinema, not in terms
of nostalgia but through a playful-not commercial-approach to filmmaking.
Such cinema came from artists who sought to appeal to and enrich every
viewer's new-born esthetic instinct. The tough, surprising and unsettling
look at sex in Ray's 1928 Etoile de Mer (introduced as a "cinepoem"),
conjugates female sensuality into forms of marine life, artistic
manufacturing, ardent reverie and jokes. It boldly creates a psychological
common denominator for the medium. (That's why Orson Welles and William
Vance's 1934 Hearts of Age remains such an uncanny, eerie evocation of
slavery and lynching culture.)
All bets were off in 20s and 30s avant-garde cinema as indeed they are
during Spielberg's "Are we still alive?" moment. Certainly a fair number of
politically infatuated art radicals figure among the KINO DVD auteurs, but
most important, these films confirm how closely entwined Surrealist doctrine
is with the sheer originality of filmmaking. Not as a self-righteous
reaction against the norm but as part of the creative freedom filmmakers
could embrace. Jean Epstein's 1927 La Glace a Trois Faces was no more
radical than the time shifts D.W. Griffith risked in Intolerance. The
willingness to give popular cinema the rich audacity of experimental art has
been lost in the current drive toward junk populism and elitist
sophistication. The twain no longer expected to meet. The War of the Bores.
Where is the new avant-garde? Is it the Silence of Gus Trilogy, where Gus
Van Sant uses Elephant, Gerry and Last Days to imitate Ingmar Bergman's
famous "Silence of God" trilogy (an exploration of cinematic possibility and
religious struggle), but actually bleeds life out of film and pop phenomena?
Maybe it's Michael Bay's overhead shots of human clones in The Island
traversing the lunar-looking landscape-a poetic image of liberty expressing
the film's emancipation theme. Lack of avant-garde spirit may explain why
both directors are misunderstood, why Michael Mann's visually and
conceptually fuzzy Collateral wins acclaim while the sober, visionary War of
the Worlds is excoriated.
KINO's box set celebrates the moment-the tradition-where moviemakers
appreciated film for its ability to capture life and inspire dreaming.
Avant-garde audiences were not afraid to look hard at a film's images, were
unafraid to think. It was a period-before television-when audiences and
directors alike never took image-making for granted. Proof can be found in
KINO/Rohauer's goodies: Paul Strand and Charles Scheeler's Manhatta (1921),
Eisenstein's Romance Sentimentale (1930) and Dmitri Kirsanoff's delirious
1926 Menilmontant. In less than 30 minutes, Kirsanoff creates a tragic
family epic, focusing the intertwining of violence and sexuality in the
story of two orphaned girls (Nadia Sibirskaya and Leoce Crouan), whose
heartbreaking trajectory continues when they go to Paris. Sibirskaya (best
known for Renoir's The Crime of M. Lange) matches Lillian Gish's fragile
lyricism and anticipates Naomi Watt's crushing sadness in Mulholland Drive.
Amidst Kirsanoff's rhythmic symbolism and voluptuous reveling in dissolves,
cuts, superimpositions and camera movement, Sibirskaya's silent pantomime
imprints a face, a distilled life experience. This mix of artifice and
emotional purity was the avant-garde's genius.
Upon retirement, critic Pauline Kael answered an interviewer's question
about her all-time favorite film. Citing the seldom-screened Menilmontant
may just have been her moment of cupidity. But it recalls a now rare
sensibility. Today, critics are so smart-ass about movies that pander to
hipness that they worship the form's hi-tech degradation and crippling
banality. Richter, Kirsanoff, Ray and Leger are still avant-garde. Their
dated images survive as spectral witnessing and feats of imagination. Like
War of the Worlds, they record how we live and feel. Almost a century later,
Last Days, 9 Songs, Crash, Broken Flowers, Before Sunset and The Constant
Gardener make you wonder: Is cinema still alive?
Volume 18, Issue 32
©2005 All rights reserved.
--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://home.comcast.net/~silentfilm/home.htm
mikeg...@gmail.com
mine and started watching it last night, and am enjoying it immensely.
Of course, many of these "avant-garde" shorts have no greater content
than what any of us have done with a video camera, goofing around. The
talents who were great artists on canvas (or whatever), like Man Ray,
often seem amateurish on film, filming through ashtrays or getting
their girlfriends to smile at the camera. And the whole genre of
experimental film has, to my mind, a built-in problem-- a narrative
film has a narrative to hang experiments on, but an experimental film
has to keep wowing you, moment after moment. Some do, most don't.
But shooting in black and white in the good old days gives their images
a haunting quality your and my video experiments can't hope for (at
least until 80 years have passed on us, too). I was mesmerized by Emak
Bakia, for instance, even as the way its effects were produced seemed
almost comical.
Some don't measure up to the hype-- the artsy fartsy Lot in Sodom, for
instance, is no smarter and less entertaining than the Hollywood
Biblical epics it was made in contrast to (Watson and Webber's Fall of
the House of Usher, which is on the first Treasures of American Film
Archives, is much better); but there are certainly several which make
the set well worth owning-- Menilmontant, Ivens' Rain, and Life and
Death of 9413 (which really shows how to achieve a distinctive look for
about two bucks) alone would justify the set to me, and I look forward
to discoveries I haven't yet seen along the way, like Uberfall or the
second Dmitri Kirsanoff film on the set.
Incidentally, you may recall a mention that David Shepard was planning
a six (six!) disc set of American avant-garde films for later this
year. Looking around I found this article which describes the
retrospective that he will be discifyin'. I still don't know what the
six discs' worth are, since the article mainly mentions a lot of the
same films as is in this set (which is two discs), but anyway, it's an
interesting piece.
http://www.lafilmforum.org/past/spring02/features/Feature.html
Bruce Calvert
Theakston...
1. The Mechanized Eye: Experiments in Technique and Form
The dynamic qualities of motion pictures are explored by cameramen and
filmmakers through novel experiments in technique and form. Early
cinematographers James White, "Billy" Bitzer, and Frederick Armitage display
experimental shooting styles that wowed audiences. Other independent
companies further image manipulation through creative staging, editing, and
printing, such as a stunning three screen film that predates Gance's
Napoleon. Experiments by photographer Walker Evans, painter Emlen Etting,
musician Jerome Hill, and the film collectives NYKINO and ARTKINO record the
world in a continual process of flux. A most extreme approach is realized by
Henwar Rodakiewicz with Portrait of a Young Man (1925-31), a monumental
study of natural and abstract motions.
18 FILMS:
*5 "Paris Exposition Films" : Eiffel Tower from Trocadero Palace (1900);
Palace of Electricity(1900); Champs de Mars (1900); Panorama of Eiffel Tower
(1900); and Scene from Elevator Ascending Eiffel Tower (1900) - James White,
Edison Manufacturing Co.
*Captain Nissen Going through Whirpool Rapids, Niagra Falls (1901) -
creators unknown
*Down the Hudson (1903) - Frederick Armitage & A.E. Weed
*The Ghost Train (1903) - creators unknown
*Westinghouse Works, Panorama View Street Car Motor Room (1904) - G.W.
"Billy" Bitzer
*"In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea" (c.1924-25) - creators unknown
*Melody on Parade (c.1936) - creators unknown
*La Cartomancienne (The Fortune Teller) (1932) - Jerome Hill
*Pie in the Sky (1934-35) - Nykino: Elia Kazan, Ralph Steiner & Irving
Lerner
*Travel Notes (1932) - Walker Evans
*Oil: A Symphony in Motion (1930-33) - Artkino: M.G. MacPherson & Jean
Michelson
*Poem 8 (1932-33) - Emlen Etting
*Storm (1941-43) - Paul Burnford
*Portrait of a Young Man (1925-31) - Henwar Rodakiewicz
2. The devil's plaything: American Surrealism
Edwin S. Porter and other early filmmakers used bizarre sets, fantastic
costumes, and magic lantern tricks to illuminate their fantasy films.
American parody supplied Douglas Fairbanks with enough unusual material to
produce the truly surreal When the Clouds Roll By (1919). The
ex-pressionistic Cabinet of Dr. Calagari (1919) influenced American
sensibilities throughout the 1920s as seen in Beggar of Horseback (1925),
The Life and Death of 9413-A Hollywood Extra (1927) and The Telltale Heart
(1928). The emphasis shifted when amateurs J.S. Watson, Jr., Joseph Cornell,
and Orson Welles crafted a unique variety of American surrealism on film
unfettered by European concerns.
17 Films:
*Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) - Edwin S. Porter
*Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906) - Edwin S. Porter
*The Thieving Hand (1907) - Vitagraph Studio of America
*Impossible Convicts (1905) - G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
*When the Clouds Roll By (1919) - Douglas Fairbanks & Victor Fleming -
excerpt
*Beggar on Horseback (1925) - James Cruze - excerpt
*The Fall of the House of Usher (1926-27) - J.S. Watson, Jr. & Melville
Webber
*The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1927) - Robert Florey &
Slavko Vorkapich
*Love of Zero (1928) - Robert Florey & William Cameron Menzies
*The Telltale Heart (1928) - Charles Klein
*Tomatos Another Day (1930/1933) - J.S. Watson, Jr. & Alec Wilder
*The Hearts of Age (1934) - William Vance & Orson Welles
*Unreal News Reels (c.1926) - Weiss Artclass Comedies - excerpts
*The Children's Jury (c.1938) - attributed Joseph Cornell
*Thimble Theater (c.1938) - Joseph Cornell
*Carousel: Animal Opera (c.1938) - Joseph Cornell
*Jack's Dream (c.1938) - Joseph Cornell
LIGHT RHYTHMS: Music and Abstraction
The rhythmic elements of cinema are explored by artists and filmmakers
fascinated by the abstract qualities of light. The American authors of
avant-garde classics Le Retour á la raison (1923), Le Ballet mécanique
(1923-24), Anémic cinéma (1926), and Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve (1934), are
finally acknowledged for their seminal artistic achievements made in Europe.
Pioneer abstract films by Ralph Steiner, Mary Ellen Bute, Douglass
Crockwell, Dwinnell Grant, and George Morris are compared and contrasted
with Hollywood montages created by Ernst Lubitsch, Slavko Vorkapich, and
Busby Berkeley. For the first time on video, composer George Antheil's
original 1924 score accompanies Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy's film
Ballet mécanique, a truly avant-garde cacophony of image and sound.
29 FILMS:
*Le Retour à la raison (1923) - Man Ray
*Le Ballet mécanique (1923-24) - Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy
*Anémic cinéma (1924-26) - Rrose Sélavy / Marcel Duchamp
*Looney Lens: Anamorphic People (1927) - Al Brick
*Out of the Melting Pot (1927) - W.J. Ganz Studio
*H20 (1929) - Ralph Steiner
*Surf and Seaweed (1929-30) - Ralph Steiner
*7 "Vorkapich Montage Sequences": "The Furies" (1934); "Skyline Dance"
(1928); "Money Machine" (1929); "Prohibition" (1929); The Firefly "Vorkapich
edit" (1937); The Firefly "MGM release version" (1937), and Maytime (1937)
by Slavko Vorkapich
*So This Is Paris (1926) - Ernst Lubitsch - excerpt
*Light Rhythms (1930) - Francis Bruguière & Oswell Blakeston
*Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve (Night on Bald Mountain) (1934) -Alexeieff &
Parker
*Rhythm in Light (1934) - Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Melville Webber
*Synchromy No. 2 (1936) - Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
*Parabola (1937) - Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
*Footlight Parade "By a Waterfall" (1933) - Busby Berkeley - excerpt
*Glen Falls Sequence (1937-46) - Douglass Crockwell
*Simple Destiny Abstractions (1937-40) - Douglass Crockwell
*Abstract Movies (1937-47) - George L.K. Morris
*Scherzo (1939) - Norman McLaren
*Themis (1940) and Contrathemis (1941) - Dwinell Grant
*1941 (1941) - Francis Lee
*Moods of the Sea (1940-42) - Slavko Vorkapich & John Hoffman
4. INVERTED NARRATIVES: New Directions in Story-Telling
Early directors D.W. Griffith and Lois Weber develop the radical language of
cinema narrative through audience-friendly melodramas made for nickelodeon
theaters. Experimental fantasies are depicted in such independent
productions as Moonland (c.1926), Lullaby (1929), and The Bridge (1929-30).
Depression era films by socially-conscious filmmakers reshape drama as
demonstrated in Josef Berne's brooding Black Dawn (1933) and Strand and
Hurwitz's biting Native Land (1937-41): each pictures a raw reality. Parody
and satire find their mark in Theodore Huff's Little Geezer (1932) and
Barlow, Hay and Le Roy's Even as You and I (1937). David Bradley's Sredni
Vashtar by Saki (1940-43) boasts an inadvertent post-modern attitude.
12 Films:
*The House with Closed Shutters (1910) - D.W. Griffith & G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
*Suspense (1913) - Lois Weber & Philips Smalley
*Moonland (c.1926) - Neil McQuire & William A. O'Connor
*Lullaby (1929) - Boris Deutsch
*The Bridge (1929-30) - Charles Vidor
*Little Geezer (1932) - Theodore Huff
*Black Dawn (1933) - Josef Berne & Seymour Stern
*Native Land (1937-41) - Frontier Films: Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand - excerpt
*Black Legion (1936-7) - Nykino: Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
*Even As You and I (1937) - Roger Barlow, Harry Hay & Le Roy Robbins
*Object Lesson (1941) - Christoher Young
*"Sredni Vashtar" by Saki (1940-43) - David Bradley
5. PICTURING A METROPOLIS: New York City Unveiled
Since the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have been infatuated with dynamic
images of New York City. Avant-garde experiments pop up in the most unlikely
of places including turn-of-the-twentieth-century actualities, commercial
and radical newsreels, and Busby Berkeley's spectacular "Lullaby of
Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935. City symphonies are represented by such
landmark American films as Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta
(1921), Robert Flaherty's Twentyfour-Dollar Island (c.1926), Robert Florey's
Skyscraper Symphony(1929), and Jay Leyda's A Bronx Morning (1931). Overall
25 short films lovingly depict scenes of New Yorkers among the skyscrapers,
streets, and night life of Manhattan during a half century of progress.
26 FILMS:
*The Blizzard (1899) - creators unknown
*Lower Broadway (1902) - Robert K. Bonine
*Beginning of a Skyscraper (1902) - Robert K. Bonine
*Panorama from Times Building, New York (1905) - Wallace McCutcheon
*Skyscrapers of NYC from North River (1903) - J.B. Smith
*Panorama from Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge (1903) - G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
*Building Up and Demolishing the Star Theatre (1902) - Frederick Armitage
*Coney Island at Night (1905) - Edwin S. Porter
*Interior New York Subway 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905) - G.W. "Billy"
Bitzer
*Seeing New York by Yacht (1902) - Frederick Armitage & A.E. Weed
*2 Looney Lens: Split Skyscrapers (1924) and Tenth Avenue, NYC (1924) - Al
Brick
*4 Scenes from Ford Educational Weekly (1916-24) - creators unknown
*Manhatta (1921) - Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand
*Twentyfour-Dollar Island (c.1926) - Robert Flaherty
*Skyscraper Symphony (1929) - Robert Florey
*Manhattan Medley (1931) - Bonney Powell
*A Bronx Morning (1931) - Jay Leyda
*Footnote to Fact (1933) - Lewis Jacobs
*Seeing the World (1937) - Rudy Burckhardt
*Pursuit of Hapiness (1940) - Rudy Burckhardt
*Gold Diggers of 1935 "Lullaby of Broadway" (1935) - Busby Berkeley -
excerpt
*Autumn Fire (1930-33) - Herman Weinberg
6. THE AMATEUR AS AUTEUR: Discovering Paradise in Pictures
These home-made films incorporate avant-garde strategies and techniques to
achieve a true sense of cinematic intimacy. Glimpses of life caught unawares
are found in the home movies of Elizabeth Woodman Wright, Archie Stewart,
Frank Stauffacher, and John C. Hecker. Poetic lyricism finds a voice in city
symphonies: Lynn Riggs and James Hughes' A Day in Santa Fe (1931) and Rudy
Burckhardt's Haiti (1938). Professionally minded films, like Theodore Case's
sound tests (c.1925) and Lewis Jacobs' Tree Trunk to Head (1938), operate
from a similar home-spun perspective of sincerity. Joseph Cornell offers an
enigmatic but lovely homage to childhood with Children's Trilogy (c.1938).
20 Films:
*7 Case Sound Tests (c. 1924-25) - Theodore Case & Earl Sponable
*Windy Ledge Farm (c. 1929-34) - Elizabeth Woodman Wright
*A Day in Santa Fe (1931) - Lynn Riggs & James Hughes
*4 Stewart Family Home Movies (c. 1935-39) - Archie Stewart
*Children's Party (c1938) - Joseph Cornell
*Cotillion (c1938) - Joseph Cornell
*The Midnight Party (c1938) - Joseph Cornell
*Haiti (1938) - Rudy Burckhardt
*Tree Trunk to Head (1938) - Lewis Jacobs
*Bicycle Polo at San Mateo (1940-42) - Frank Stauffacher
*1126 Dewey Avenue, Apt. 207 (1939) - John C. Hecker
7. VIVA LA DANCE: The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance
Dance and film have shared the aspiration to creatively sculpt motion and
time. Some of the first films ever made featured Annabelle's skirt dance,
hand-painted in glowing colors. Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis'
innovations found their way into Diana the Huntress (1916) and The Soul of
the Cypress (1920). Highly cinematic renditions of dance evolved in Stella
Simon's Hände (1928), Hector Hoppin's Joie de vivre (1934), and Busby
Berkeley's "Don't Say Goodnight" from Wonder Bar (1934). In counterpoint,
ciné-dance experiments by Ralph Steiner, Mary Ellen Bute, Oskar Fischinger,
Douglass Crockwell, Slavko Vorkapich, and Norman McLaren dispensed with
actual dancers in favor of color, shape, line, and form choreographed into
abstract light-play.
33 Films:
*7 Annabelle Dances and Dances (1894-1897) - W.K.L. Dickson, William Heise &
James White
*Davy Jones Locker, Neptune's Daughters, A Nymph of the Waves (1900)-
Frederick Armitage
*Diana the Huntress (1916) - Charles Allen & Francis Trevelyan Miller -
excerpt
*The Soul of the Cypress (1920) - Dudley Murphy
*Looney Lens: Pas de deux (1924) - Al Brick
*Hände: The Life and Loves of the Gentler Sex (1928) - Stella Simon & Miklos
Bandy
vMechanical Principles (1930) - Ralph Steiner
*Tilly Losch in Her Dance of the Hands (c.1930-33) - Norman Bel Geddes
*Eisenstein's Mexican Footage (1931) - Sergei Eisenstein - 2 sequences
camera roll excerpts
vOramunde (1933) - Emlen Etting
*Hands (1934) - Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
*Joie de vivre (1934) - Anthony Gross & Hector Hoppin
*Wonder Bar (excerpt) "Don't Say Goodnight" (1934) - Busby Berkeley
*Dada (1936), Escape (1938) - Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
*An Optical Poem (1938) - Oskar Fischinger
*Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome (c. 1940s) - Slavko Vorpapich
*NBC Valentine Greeting (1939-40) - Norman McLaren
*Stars and Stripes (1940) - Norman McLaren
*Tarantella (1940), Spook Sport (1940) - Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth &
Norman McLaren
*Danse Macabre (1922) - Dudley Murphy
*Peer Gynt (1941) - David Bradley, starring Charlton Heston - excerpt
*Introspection (1941/46) - Sara Kathryn Arledge
--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://home.comast.net/~silentfilm/home.htm
Your Pal Brian
> *Twentyfour-Dollar Island (c.1926) - Robert Flaherty
Mamacita! I've wanted to see this for years.
Saving my pennies...
Brian
James Roots
Your Pal Brian (brian...@iFreedom.com) writes:
> Bruce Calvert wrote:
>
>> *Twentyfour-Dollar Island (c.1926) - Robert Flaherty
>
> Mamacita! I've wanted to see this for years.
What a coincidence! I ate at Mama Cita's in Dawson City
last week.
Jim
(desperate to look relevant around here)