by Allan Fish
(France 1924 11m) DVD1
A French straw hat
d/ed Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy w Fernand Léger ph Dudley Murphy, Man Ray m Georges Antheil (Paul Mercer DVD)
Kiki of Montparnasse,
Very few short films were as influential as cubist painter Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique. Indeed very few short films could dream of being so influential. There were other avant garde films of note made at around the same time, from René Clair’s Entr‘acte to Man Ray’s Le Retour à la Raison, yet Ballet is more fundamental than either of them. One can see the traces of so much that was to come in its mere eleven minutes.
It’s primarily lauded as the birth of cinematic surrealism, though a case could be made for Georges Méliès’ trick films really providing that, but this is undoubtedly where the style perfected by Buñuel and Dali, as well as numerous others at the end of the decade, was first born. It has no plot, as one might have gathered, existing merely as what the title suggests, a mechanical ballet, a symphonic juxtaposition of images – mainly of mechanical devices and workings – frantically, and seemingly randomly spliced together. Yet these individual shots and effects hark inexorably and unerringly forward to so many films. (more…)
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