The French Impressionist Movement in the Avant-garde - Assignment Example

The French Impressionist Movement in the Avant-garde In what ways did the early French “impressionist” movement contribute to the idea of an avant-garde (experimental films)? It has always been a challenge for theorists to define “avant-garde”. Michael O’Pray (2003) has stated that in order to accept the concept of avant-garde as a film, the audience and public must be familiar with the idea and purpose of the avant-garde. In art history the term ‘avant-garde’ was originally used to describe French painting of the early decades of nineteenth century. It represented an aesthetically and politically motivated attack on traditional art and its values. Borrowed from socialist politics in the same period, ‘avant-garde’ is a military term denoting an advanced group forging an assault on the enemy ahead of the main army. With film in mind, we may ask who represents the main army and who the enemy? The main army could be the ‘true’ idea of cinema and film itself and the enemy, the dominant traditional cinema, or the main army could be mainstream cinema, and the avant-garde its advanced group forging for new techniques, forms of expression and subject-matter (Abel, 1984). The French film industry produced fewer films than Germany and the United States of America in the 1920s. A ban on foreign imports was lifted in France in 1915. Since big production companies were unable to produce many high-budget films, many small, non-vertically integrated companies emerged and dominated the film industry in the 1920s. The situation of the French film industry and reasons for the beginning of French Impressionist Cinema are stated by Rémi Fournier Lanzoni (2002) in French Cinema: From its beginning to the present, as linked to a struggling and falling economic infrastructure that may be present in a society or region. The presence of experimenatal film along with typical commericial productions in these economic downfalls and slums may be put as one of the reasons why experimental cinema has been the centre of attention. Consequently, many film producers who had already lost their financial edge on international markets, were open to the experimentation of an alternative type of cinema. Because many French film companies were small business, mostly specializing in the distribution and exhibition of Hollywood product, they tended to avoid investing in problematic national productions, which, aside from facing high taxes, never guaranteed profit (Lanzoni, 2002). French avant-garde film-makers called themselves “Impressionists” because they aimed to create short-lived images or impressions in the spectators. Ian Aitken (2001) states, ‘ Although the term impressionist had been applied to individual French films immediately following the First World War, it was not, therefore, until 1925 – 26 that the term began to be used to define a specific movement of film-making’ in European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction. Some Impressionists opened their own production companies and worked independently while others oscillated between making avant-garde films and more conventional films (Le Grice, 1977). Like the German and American films of that time, French films had a psychological focus. The idea was that cinema should be more like music, i.e. pictures should be allowed to develop with time like music. Typical characteristics of avant-garde narratives were emphasis on psychological motivation, few characters, emphasis on the characters’ memories, fantasies, dreams and desires and flashbacks. Impressionist films used a wide variety of camera devices such as optical devices, manipulation of focus, shooting into mirrors and through gauzes. “La Roue” by Abel Gance was released in 1923 and pioneered editing devices. Impressionist films manipulated plot, time and subjectivity by using flashbacks and fantasy sequences. All of these techniques were used to render mental states of the characters (Aitken, 2001). The Dada Movement (1915 – 1923) was an anti-war movement in Europe and New York. It was a revolt against the traditional beliefs of the bourgeois society, which the Dadaists believed led to war. The European movement was initiated in Zurich by sculptor Hans Arp, film-maker Hans Richter and poet Tristan Tzara in 1915. The New York movement was led by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia. Picabia introduced the Dada movement to Paris in 1919, which later evolved into Surrealism in 1924. This movement is believed to have influenced later movements such as the Avant-garde movement and Downtown Music movement. Hans Richter (1888 – 1976) was a Dadaist painter whose animated works consist of the interplay of geometric forms. Rhythmus 21 was a result of a series of experiments in which he painted abstract forms on a long, narrow screen in order to portray development with time. Later on, he decided to make pictures move and as the name of Rhythmus 21 suggests, he attempted to create a sort of music even though it is a silent film (Aitken, 2001). The first abstract film the world ever saw was Lichtspeil: Opus I by Walter Ruttmann in 1921. His life was disrupted like that of many others in World War I. He served as a lieutenant in the German army. By the end of the war he became dissatisfied with the static nature of painting. As a result, he merged painting and music, two different art forms, into one and released his first abstract film in which abstract shapes moved into and across the screen in synchrony with the music score. It had a lasting impression on Oskar Fischinger and many others. Ruttmann presented Opus II in 1921, Opus III in 1923 and Opus IV in 1924. Unfortunately, the films are usually shown in black and white but Ruttmann originally worked with coloured geometric shapes, dancing around in synchrony with music composed by Max Butting (Opus I) in solid black area (Lanzoni, 2002). Man Ray, an American-born artist moved to Paris in the early 1920s and was one of the founders of the Dada movement. He contributed to static photography by pioneering a technique called the ‘rayograph’ or ‘photogramme’. Rayographs are images produced without the use of a camera, by placing an object between a light source and photographic paper/film. He made the three minute long film “the Return to Reason” (Le Retour à la raison), in which he incorporated the traditional rayograph technique with moving objects. He created evocative images by sprinkling salt and pepper on one piece of photographic film and pins on another, illuminating them for a few seconds and developing the film. He also included some night shots of lights at a fairground and other hallucinatory images illuminated in striped light (Lanzoni, 2002). Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger by William Mortiz (2004) is the first biography of an experimental film-maker, Oskar Fischinger who took animation in a new, challenging direction. The quality of his abstract animation films such as Allegretto (1936) matches that of recent video art, especially music videos. In Allegretto, primary coloured diamond and oval shapes dance to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. His short visual music films inspired a whole generation of animators(Mortiz, 2004).The final batch of Impressionist films appeared from 1925 – 1929 and included Dimitri Kirsanov’s ‘Ménilmontant’ (1926) and Jean Epstein’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (Chute de la Maison Usher, 1928). Kirsanov uses alternating rapid montage scenes, slower lyrical moments, in-camera effects such as dissolves, fades, and irises, fast motion, blurred or out of focus shots and superimpositions. Two girls flee from the countryside to Paris when their parents are brutally murdered. They find an apartment to live in and a job at some flower shop. Then they become involved in a three-way relationship with an enigmatic young man. The younger sister goes off with him first, while the other waits for them back at their apartment. The older sister is then seduced by her sister’s lover; this revelation causes the younger sister to consider suicide. The story is advanced by nine months and the younger sister is shown with a baby in her arms. She is a poor, single mother living in Paris. She is then shown sitting on a park bench, staring at an old man, sitting next to her, eating bread and salami (Roud, 1980). The man is shown placing a piece on the bench between them. This kind gesture brings tears to her eyes. She is then shown walking down a street when she notices a well dressed woman standing outside a hotel. She recognizes her sister; one is a destitute, single mother and the other is a prostitute. The hotel sign is flashed repeatedly, showing the cause of the sisters’ estrangement. The big city and all that comes with it, sleaziness and prostitution has come between these sisters. In the end, the younger sister’s lover is shown outside a hotel, where he is murdered. In the last scene, the sisters are shown in the comfort of their apartment, the older sister asleep with the baby and the younger sister praying. The film’s narrative is very sketchy and inter-titles are absent which allow only the image-track to advance the narrative (Roud, 1980). The fall of the House of Usher is a short, horror story by Edgar Allen Poe which was published in 1893. Two films based on this story were released in 1928, one was a French adaptation and the other was an American adaptation. Even though horror was not a popular genre in France in the 1920s, La Chute de la maison Usher was an immediate success. Epstein combined the principles of expressionism, romanticism and surrealism effectively. She skillfully used superimposed images, slow-motion photography and light and shadows to enable the audience to experience the horror within the story. Epstein changed the original story of the fall of the house of usher to suit the public taste of that era (Rees, 1999). He fused many of Poe’s stories rather than focusing on one short story. In the original story by Poe, the male and female leads are brother and sister but Epstein alters that and portrays them as husband and wife in the film to avoid the suggestion of incest. He also uses a title card to explain how the men of the house of Usher were all obsessed with painting their wives. An anonymous friend is called to the house but everyone in the village refuses to convey him to the house. Even when he arrives, Roderick is standing at the top of the stairs, he does not come downstairs, only extends his hand to him. The anonymous visitor also happens to be the narrator. The male protagonist, Roderick Usher is fearful of his wife’s death and is also terrified that she might be buried alive. All the attention is given to the two men and the female protagonist only poses for her painting. The peculiar thing about the painting is that sometimes there is a real canvas and at other times, Madeline is standing within the frame. This is reminiscent of “The Oval Portrait” (1845), in which the artist’s painting of his wife becomes increasingly life-like as his wife slowly approaches death (Rees, 1999). Pure cinema (Cinéma Pur) was another avant-garde movement which focused on the pure elements of film, that is, free from any influence of literature, the stage and visual arts. The emphasis was on form, visual composition, and rhythm. Germaine Dulac was an important figure in this movement and also in the development of cine clubs throughout France, however her experiments were put to an end by sound. She contributed quite a few experimental films including “The Seashell and the Clergyman” {La Coquille et le Clergyman} (1927), which is about a clergyman struggling with his eroticism for a woman and starts having strange visions of death and lust. Germaine Dulac has often been compared to Maya Deren (Sitney, 2002). Maya Deren (1917 – 1961) was an American avant-grade film-maker, best known for a psychodrama “Meshes of the Afternoon” (1943). She uses free, repetitive narrative structure and Freudian symbolism to scrutinize female subjectivity in cinema. In the film, it is hard to tell whether the protagonist is awake or dreaming. It consists of a series of repetitive, surrealist images such as a key being dropped and bouncing like a ball, a knife moving from a loaf of bread, the key turning into the knife, the protagonist carrying a flower which she holds upside down, and seeing death, which wears a black hood and has a mirror for a face. The most disturbing, yet amazing thing is that all the surrealist images in the film, except for the encounter with the Grim-reaper-like-creature, are ordinary happenings in the life of a woman (Sitney, 2002). Unfortunately, small production companies were unreliable sources of funding and with the coming of sound, film production became too expensive for independents, and Impressionist directors took up new interests in other kinds of filmmaking. But French Impressionism will always remain an integral part of the avant-garde film movement. References Abel, R., 1984. French Cinema: The First Wave 1915 – 1929. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press Aitken, Ian, 2001. European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier, 2002. French Cinema: From its Beginning to the Present. New York: Continuum International Publication Group. Le Grice, Malcolm, 1977. Abstract Film and Beyond. Cambridge: MIT Press Mortiz, William, 2004. Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. O’Pray, Michael, 2003. Avant-Garde Film: Themes, Forms and Passions. London/New York: Wallflower Press. Rees, A.L, 1999. A History of Experimental Film and Video. London: British Film Institute. Roud, Richard, 1980. Cinema: A Critical Dictionary: The Major Film-makers. New York: Viking Press. Sitney, P. Adams, 2002. Visionary Film. New York: Oxford University Press. Willemen, Paul, 1980. On Reading Paul Epstein on Photogénie, Afterimage 10. Autumn Read More