EIG H TEEN SECONDS1

In a street, at night, on the edge of a pavement, under a lamp­post, stands a man in black, gazing into space, fiddling with his cane, holding a watch in his left hand. The hand of the watch indicates the seconds.

Close shot of the watch indicating the seconds.The seconds pass infinitely slowly on the screen.At the eighteenth second the film will be over.The time that passes on the screen is in the mind of the man.It is not normal time. The normal time is eighteen real

seconds. The events which are to take place on the screen con­sist of images in the man’s mind. The point of the scenario is that although the events described happen in eighteen seconds it takes an hour or two to project them onto the screen.

The spectator is to see the images which, at a certain point, file through the man’s mind.

This man is an actor. He is about to achieve fame and to win the heart of a woman with whom he has long been in love.

He has been stricken by a strange malady. He has become incapable of keeping up with his thoughts; he has retained complete lucidity, but he can no longer give a shape to the thoughts that come to him, he cannot express them in appro­priate actions and words.

He is at a loss for words; they no longer answer his call, and all he sees is a procession of images, masses of contradictory, disconnected images.

This prevents him from participating in the life of others and from indulging in any activity.

Shot of the man at the doctor’s. His arms folded, his fists11

r

clenched. The doctor towering over him. The doctor passes his sentence.

The young man is again standing by the lamp-post at the moment when he becomes fully aware of his condition. He cur­ses; he thinks: just as I was about to start living and win the heart of the woman I love, who has yielded after such resistance!

Shot of the woman, beautiful, enigmatic, a hard, closed face.Shot of the woman’s soul as the man imagines it.Landscape, flowers, gorgeous lighting.Gesture of the man cursing:O h! to be anything! to be that wretched hunchback news­

vendor who sells his papers at night, but to be in full possession of one’s mind, to be really master of one’s mind, to think!

Quick shot of the newsvendor in the street. Then in his room, his head in his hands, as though he were holding the globe. He really is in possession of his mind. He can hope to conquer the world and he has the right to think that he really will conquer it one day.

Because he also possesses i n t e l l i g e n c e . He does not know his limitations, he can hope to possess everything: love, fame, power. And in the meantime he works and he searches.

Shot of the newsvendor gesticulating before his window; towns moving and trembling under his feet. Then again at his table. With books. His finger pointed. Swarms of women in the air. Piles of thrones.

He only has to discover the central problem, the problem on which all the others rest, and he will be able to hope to conquer the world.

He does not even have to solve the problem, he just has to discover the central problem and what it consists of, in order to settle it.

Ah! but his hump? He might even be relieved of his hump.Shot of the newsvendor in the middle of a crystal ball. Rem­

brandt lighting. And a bright point at the centre. The ball be­comes the globe. The globe becomes opaque. The newsvendor disappears in the middle and springs out like a jack-in-the-box,

12

his hump on his back.And off he goes in search of his problem. He appears in

smoky dens, in gatherings where some ideal is being sought. Ritual assemblies. Men make violent speeches. The hunchback sitting at a table, listening. Shaking his head, disappointed. In the middle of the group, a woman. He recognises her: it is she! He shouts: hey! Arrest her! She is spying, he says. Hullabaloo. Everybody gets up. The woman runs away. He is soundly beaten and thrown out.

What have I done? I have betrayed her, I love her! he says.Shot of the woman at home. At her father’s feet: I recog­

nised him. He is mad.And he goes further continuing his search. Shot of the man

on a road with a kick. Then, by his table, looking through books,— close shot of the cover of a book: the Cabala. Sud­denly there is a knock at the door. Policemen enter. They rush at him. He is put into a straight-jacket and taken to a lunatic asylum. He really goes mad. Shot of the man struggling with bars. I shall discover the central problem, he yells, the problem from which all others hang like clusters of fruit, and then:

No more madness, no more world, no more mind, above all no more anything.

But revolution sweeps through the prisons and asylums; the doors of the asylum are opened; he is rescued. You are the mys­tic, people shout, you are our master, come! And, humbly, he says no. But he is dragged away. Be king, they tell him, accede to the throne! And, trembling, he mounts the throne.

His attendants withdraw and he is left alone.Vast silence. Magical astonishment. And suddenly he thinks

I am master of everything, I can have everything.He can have everything, yes, everything except for his mind.

He is still not master of his mind.But what is the mind? What does it consist of? If only one

could be master of one’s physical self. Be able to manage any­thing, to do everything with one’s hands, with one’s body. And in the meantime the books accumulate on the table. He falls asleep.

13

And in the middle of his reverie, comes a new dream.Yes, to be able to do everything, to be an orator, painter,

actor, yes, but is he not an actor already? He is indeed an actor. And there he is, on the stage, with his hump, at the feet of his mistress who is acting with him. And his hump is also false: it is feigned. And his mistress is his real mistress, his mistress in real life.

A magnificent auditorium, crammed with people, and the King in his box. But he is also acting the part of the king. He is king, he hears and sees himself on the stage at the same time. And the king has no hump. He has realised that the hunchback on the stage is none other than his own effigy, a traitor who took his wife and stole his mind. So he stands up and exclaims: Arrest him! Hullabaloo. A commotion. The actors call upon him. The woman shouts: It is no longer you, you have lost your hump, I do not recognise you. He is mad! And at the same time the two characters dissolve into each other on the screen. The whole auditorium trembles with its columns and candel­abra. It trembles more and more. And against this trembling background all the images file past, also trembling, the king, the newsvendor, the hunchback actor, the lunatic, the asylum, the crowds, and the man finds himself on the pavement under the lamp-post, his watch in his left hand, his cane swinging.

Hardly eighteen seconds have elapsed; he contemplates his misery for the last time and then, with no hesitation or emo­tion, takes a revolver from his pocket and fires a bullet into his head.

14

TWO N A TIO N S ON TH E BO RD ERS OF M O N G O L IA . . . 2

Two nations on the borders of Mongolia are quarrelling for reasons incomprehensible to Europeans;

They want to start a war which would put a match to the powder-keg of the entire Far East;

the League of Nations send one dispatch after the other, but only confuse the issue;

Russian gold is at the bottom of it all, of course; the French consul flounders amongst infinitely complicated

deals in this pointless conflict;a lama tells him that the psychological reason for the conflict

rests on tone and sound rather than form;the only way of settling everything would be to send them

a surrealist poem;an attempt is made to send it by telegram; but the mutilated

inflammatory poem puts a match to the powder-keg; hostilities are about to commence; one method remains: air mail;the poem reaches its destination after numerous mishaps.

Scene between the lama and the consul in which he tells him what to say to them;

the consul is converted to surrealism.

French diplomats shrug their shoulders: amusing scenes between Poincare and Briand who rush off

to Montparnasse; intervention of love

15

R EP LY TO AN IN Q U IRY9

1. What sort of films do you like?2. What sort of films would you like to make?

1. I like the cinema.I like every sort of film.But every sort of film still has to be made.I believe that the cinema should keep to a certain type of

film: the film which utilises every sensual effect.The cinema implies a total reversal of values, a complete

disruption of optics, perspective and logic. It is more stimulat­ing than phosphorous, more enchanting than love. It is im­possible to destroy its galvanating force indefinitely by using subjects which neutralise its effects and belong to the theatre.

2. So I demand phantasmagorical films, poetic films in the in­tense, philosophical sense of the word, psychic films.

And this does not exclude psychology, or love, or the display of human feelings.

But I demand films in which feelings and thoughts undergo a process of trituration, in order to adopt that cinematographic quality which still has to be found.

The cinema demands extravagant subjects and detailed psy­chology. It requires speed, but above all repetition, insistence. Every aspect of the human soul. At the cinema we are all [ ]10— and cruel. The superiority and the power of thisart arfe due to the fact that its rhythm, its speed, its withdrawal from life, its illusory aspect require close sifting and the distilla­tion of the essential nature of all its elements. That is why we

need extraordinary subjects, culminating states of mind, a visionary atmosphere. The cinema is an amazing stimulant. It acts directly on the grey matter of the brain. When the savour of art has been sufficiently combined with the psychic ingredi­ent which it contains it will go way beyond the theatre which we will relegate to a shelf of memories. Because the theatre is a betrayal. We see more of the actors than of the work— at any rate, it is they who affect us. In the cinema the actor is merely a live symbol. He alone is the stage, the author’s idea, and the sequence of events. That is why we do not think about him. Chaplin acts Chaplin, Pickford acts Pickford. Fairbanks acts Fairbanks. They are the film. It would be inconceivable with­out them. They are in the foreground where they do not get in anybody’s way. That is why they do not exist. So nothing in­terposes itself any longer between the work and the spectator. Above all the cinema is like an innocuous and direct poison, a subcutaneous injection of morphine. That is why the object of a film cannot be inferior to its power of action— and why it must have an element of magic.

60

CINEMA AND ABSTRACTION11

Pure cinema is wrong, as are all efforts to reach the principle of any art at the expense of one’s means of objective representa­tion. The principle that things can only act on the mind through a certain state of matter, a minimum of sufficiently substantial shapes, is essentially terrestial. There may be an abstract paint­ing which can dispense with objects, but the pleasure to be ob­tained from it retains an element of hypothesis with which the mind may, admittedly, be satisfied. The first step in cinemato­graphic thought seems to me to be the utilisation of existing ob­jects and forms which can be made to mean everything, be­cause nature is profoundly, infinitely versatile.

The Shell and the Clergyman plays with created nature and trie§ to make it yield an element of the mystery of its most secret combinations. So we must not seek a logic or a sequence which things do not contain, we must interpret the intimate meaning of the images, the inner meaning which moves in­wards from without. The Shell and the Clergyman does not tell a story, it develops a sequence of states of mind deduced the one from the other, as thought is deduced from thought without this thought reproducing the reasonable sequence of facts. The clash of objects and movement produces psychic situations which wedge the mind in and force it to find some subtle means of escape. Nothing exists except in terms of shape, volume, light, air—but above all in terms of a detached and naked sentiment which slips between the paths paved with images and reaches a sort of heaven where it bursts into bloom.

The characters are only brains or hearts. The woman dis-61

plays her bestial desire, assumes the shape of her desire, the ghostly glitter of instinct which makes her the same and con­stantly different in her continual metamorphoses.

Mademoiselle Athanasiou fully succeeded in identifying her­self with an entirely instinctive part in which a curious sexual­ity takes on a fatal aspect, goes beyond the character as a human being, and becomes universal. I have nothing but admiration for Monsieur Alex Alin and Monsieur Bataille. And finally I would particularly like to thank Madame Ger­maine Dulac who acknowledged the interest of a scenario which enters the very essence of the cinema and makes no allusion to the art of life.

62

THE SHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN12

The Shell and the Clergyman, before being a film, is an at­tempt or an idea.

When writing the scenario of The Shell and the Clergyman, I considered that the cinema possessed an element of its own, a truly magic and truly cinematographic element, which no­body had ever thought of isolating. This element, which differs from every sort of representation attached to images, has the characteristics of the very vibration, the profound, unconscious source of thought.

It surreptitiously breaks away from the images and emerges from their association, their vibration and their impact, not from their logical, connected meaning. I thought it was possible to write a scenario which ignored knowledge and the logical connection of facts, and would search beyond, in the occult and in the tracks of feeling and thought for the profound motives, the active and obscure impulses of our so-called lucid acts, which always maintaining their evolutions in the domain of sources and apparitions. It is to show how far the scenario can resemble and ally itself with the mechanics of a dream without really being a dream itself, for example. It is to show how far it restores the pure work of thought. So the mind, left to itself and the images, infinitely sensitised, determined to lose nothing of the inspirations of subtle thought, is all prepared to return to its original functions, its antennae pointed towards the in­visible, to begin another resurrection from death.

This, at least, is the ambitious idea behind this scenario which, at any rate, goes beyond the structure of straightfor­ward narrative, or problems of music, rhythm or aesthetics cur-

63

rent in the cinema, to present the problem of expression in every domain and to its full extent.

64

WITCHCRAFT AND THE CINEMA18

It is said that the cinema is in its infancy and that we are only hearing its first cries. I admit that I do not understand why. The cinema has arrived at an advanced stage in human thought and benefits from it. There is no doubt that it is a means of expression that has not yet been materially perfected. There are several ways, for example, in which it could be given a stability and a nobility which it does not possess. One day we shall probably have a cinema in three dimensions and even in colour. But these are accessory devices which cannot contribute greatly to the substratum of the cinema which is a language, as much as music, painting and poetry. In the cinema I have always distinguished a quality peculiar to the secret movement and matter of images. The cinema has an unexpected and mys­terious side which we find in no other form of art. Even the most arid and banal image is transformed when it is projected on the screen. The smallest detail, the most insignificant object, assume a meaning and a life which pertain to them alone, inde­pendently of the value of the meaning of the images themselves, the idea which they interpret and the symbol which they con­stitute. By being isolated, the objects obtain a life of their own which becomes increasingly independent and detaches them from their usual meaning. A leaf, a bottle, a hand, etc., live with an almost animal life which is crying out to be used. Then there are the distortions of the camera, the unexpected use it makes of the things which it records. Just as the image dissolves, a particular detail which had escaped our attention comes to life with singular force, moves out to meet the expression re­quired. There is also a sort of physical excitement which the

rotation of the images communicates directly to the brain. The mind moves beyond the power of representation. This sort of virtual power of the images probes for hitherto unused possibili­ties in the depths of the mind. Essentially the cinema reveals a whole occult life with which it puts us directly into contact. But we must know how to divine this occult life. There are bet­ter means than a succession of super impressions for divining these secrets of the depths of consciousness. Raw cinema, taken as it is, in the abstract, exudes a little of this trance-like atmos­phere, eminently favourable for certain revelations. To use it to tell a story is to neglect one of its best resources,, to fail to ful­fill its most profound purpose. That is why I think the cinema is made primarily to express matters of the mind, the inner con­sciousness, not by a succession of images so much asi5y some­thing more imponderable which restores them to us with their direct matter, with no interpositions or representations. The cinema has arrived at a turning-point in human thought, when language loses its symbolic power and the mind tires of a suc­cession of representations. Clear thought is not enough. It allo­cates a world which has been utterly consumed. What is clear is what is immediately accessible, but what is immediately ac­cessible is the mere skin of life. We soon realise that this over­familiar life which has lost all its symbols is not the whole of life. And today is a time for sorcerers and saints, a better time than ever before. An imperceptible substance is taking shape, yearning for light. The cinema is bringing us nearer to this sub­stance. If the cinema is not made to interpret dreams or what pertains to the realm of dreams in conscious life, it does not exist. There is no difference between the cinema and the theatre. But the cinema is a direct and rapid language which has no need for a slow and ponderous logic to live and flourish. It must come closer and closer to fantasy, to a fantasy which appears ever more real, or else it does not exist. Or else it will come to the same end as painting and poetry. What is certain is that most forms of representation have had their day. For some time good painting has only served to reproduce the abstract. It is therefore not only a question of choice. There will not be one

66

cinema which represents life and another which represents the function of the mind. Because life, what we call life, becomes ever more inseparable from the mind. A certain profound do­main tends to appear on the surface. The cinema is capable of interpreting this domain more than any other art, because idiotic order and customary clarity are its enemies.

The Shell and the Clergyman is part of this subtle search for a hidden life which I have tried to make plausible, as plausible and real as the other.

To understand this film we must simply look deeply into our­selves. Give in to a form of plastic, objective and attentive ex­amination of the inner self which has hitherto been the exclu­sive domain of the ‘ Illuminati’ .

67

DISTINCTIO N BETW EEN FUNDAM ENTAL AND FO RM AL

AVANT-GARDE14

Those interested in true cinema, who are awaiting the work that will break with the routine of commercial cinema and launch cinematography in a new direction, are aware of the existence of the first film to have been based on a really new, really profound idea:

The Shell and the Clergyman

Various parochial or personal interests have hitherto pre­vented the public from seeing this film. The directors of two or three cinemas in Paris known as ‘ Studios’, which seem to have been created to launch new, powerful and truly original works,15 have given way to highly obscure, or maybe over-pre- cise, threats and, after some timid attempts and vaguely shady deals, have refused to show it.16

But for the first time, the coalition of all interests and evil forces must have yielded, and the public will be able to see, from . . . to . . ., in the Salle Adhyar, a really significant work, the originality of which does not reside in numerous technical devices or external and superficial sequences of shape, but in a profound renewal of the plastic matter of images, a veritable liberation, by no means hazardous, but intricate and precise, of all the dark forces of the mind.

68

PLANFO R SETTIN G UP A COMPANY

FO R THE PRODUCTION OF SHORT FILM S WHICH W ILL PAY OFF

Q U IC K LY AND SU R ELY 17

One of the main obstacles in making a film, whether it be good or bad, is the cost. Furthermore, the necessity of having a film pay off as quickly as possible when it has often cost several millions obliges the producer to make films for wide distribu­tion, which can be shown everywhere and appeal to all audi­ences. This stifles all initiative, however original, and explains why we so rarely see a film which is an interesting or durable work and which we would be prepared to see a second time.

One of the main mistakes of producers, and especially French producers, is to think that a film must have been made at a high price to be able to sell it at a high price.

Without trying to make great films cheaply, for which France now lacks the directors, the scenario-writers, and the appropri­ate services and organisations, we can suggest a new formula for making short films of:

500 to 1000 metres, costing:

50,000 to 150,000 francs, which can be shown as the first of a programme and, because of their cost, will soon pay off.

One of the original elements of this formula, and of any film based on it, is that it allows a special type of film, known as avant-garde, to be made. These films have so far been con­sidered unsaleable and incapable of paying their way, and cannot obtain the meagre funds necessary for making them.

Experience has proved that when these films are good, and69

successful in their field, they can also be financially profitable and can, at any rate, pay off rapidly. In any case they have a public which gets larger day by day. The public responsible for the financial success of un Chien Andalou can certainly be found for a similar film.

There are several specialised cinemas in Paris. There are some in other French towns. There are also some abroad. An association of avant-garde cinemas is being formed. When it has been formed every film, avant-garde or revolutionary, will be sure of an audience and will be able to pay its expenses.

The only problem is to work out these expenses and the means of meeting them.

In the present state of affairs I consider that an avant-garde film not costing more than 100,000 francs is a deal, and I have already worked out a scheme for financing these films.

Of course, this company would not only deal with avante- garde films, it would specialise in short films, whatever their trends.

These films would only have two or three sets and employ a small number of actors. Most of the scenes would be shot out of doors. And, in view of the few elements involved, the films would cost little and be made rapidly:

Two or three weeks work, for most of them, hence a further decrease of costs.

This formula could be applied primarily to comic films, and would give rise to interesting experiments in this field. The French cinema, which lacks every sort of film, lacks comic films above all. There is a type of humour which has never really been utilised here and which could provide French scenario- writers with numerous opportunities. The public would defi­nitely enjoy this type of film and would like to have a French equivalent of the American comedies of Mac Senett, for in­stance. There is a specifically French kind of humour which exists in literature and the theatre but which is completely miss­ing in the cinema.

Any experiment now made in this field could have a great commercial success.

70

DIRECTORS, ACTORSI think I can say that there would be no shortage either of scenario-writers or directors. It would simply be necessary to avoid eliminating them systematically, as all French companies do. One of the objects of our company would be to give young scenario-writers and directors a chance to produce their work.

And its new angle would be to employ young men who need to prove themselves. They do exist, and several of them are known to us personally.

It would be highly advantageous to employ them for many reasons.

1 . Primarily because of their financial demands, which would be very moderate and would reduce the cost of each film ac­cordingly.

2. Because few, even of the well-known directors and scena­rio-writers who demand high prices, are worthy of their repu­tation and their price. . . . In each case they are members of the old school of the expensive, spectacular film, which is almost always a tremendous financial failure. They are all old- fashioned scenario-writers who neglect the quality of their work and rely on a well-known title for their film, the actors’ reputa­tion, sumptuous sets and a large cast.

They are obsessed by the idea of the American film made with dollar bills.

With considerably reduced means they only manage to give us a parody of these films, and their works, which lack any per­sonal genius, are all second-hand, and usually failures.

And yet these directors and scenario-writers are the only people to whom the producers lend their ears and they have therefore monopolised the trade for fifteen years to the ex­clusion and detriment of all new talent.

It is they who remove all real means of existence from speci­fically French films. These films, in accordance with the talent of the French, would not be spectacular and would require a small cast, the expression of moving and human feelings, few sets, penetrating psychology and little money.

Without necessarily aiming so high just at the moment, I7i

think that a company established along the lines I have just suggested would clear the field and permit the realisation of true French cinema.

THE BUTCHERS REVOLT

I have now assembled most of the material means for a first experiment.

It is a scenario by me entitled The Butcher's Revolt for which a specialised cinema has the sole rights and guarantees to finance it to the amount of 30,000 francs.

The estimated costs show that this film would require100.000 francs to be produced.

In the making of it, I am sure of the- co-operation of the Societe des Studios de Billancourt (Sequana Film) which has also produced, amongst other films, Jacques Feyder’s Les Nouveaux Messieurs and Marcel L ’Herbier’s Nuits de Prince.

This company is prepared to pay production costs to the amount of 60,000 francs of which 30,000 are guaranteed by the specialised cinema mentioned above on the strength of its being shown in this cinema and its sale in Holland where it will be distributed in agreement with a specialised Dutch com­pany: Films Liga.

So finally, to make the film pay off, we are left with: the sale in France, outside Paris, the sale abroad.

The Studios de Billancourt immediately supply the equiva­lent of 60,000 francs in studios and money.

So to make the film, about 40,000 francs still have to be found.

These 40,000 francs contribute to the final costs together with the 60,000 francs of the Studios de Billancourt, of which30.000 are already guaranteed by a specialised cinema.

I must add that, however coarse the form and the mood of this scenario, it can be filmed in such a way (particularly if the images are clarified) as to draw a far larger audience than is usual for this sort of film.

It will be up to the company that produces it to make ar-72

rangements for publicity, performance and sale in France and all other countries, including Japan and America. At the moment there are an increasing number of possibilities in Japan (and we know that the mind of the Japanese, even of the masses, is far closer to the unconscious than our own).

We must know how to make the most of it.This film is basically silent, but occasionally uses words or

sounds in order to obtain certain effects.These effects, which are of a new order, could also be used

in other films, and if this company ever comes into existence the originality of these effects would add to its prestige.

73

TH E PO LISH JEW A T THE O LYM PIA18

Harry Baur’s success in The Polish Jew , and above all the quality of the success which even reached the noble orders (!) of a feeble-witted and sheep-like audience—is a good indica­tion of the exhaustion of our epoch which, from the artistic point of view, as from all other points of view of any impor­tance, has said its last words a long time ago.

I maintain that Harry Baur’s performance in The Polish Jew is a masterpiece of imbecility.

You must have seen Harry Baur, his stomach out, his hands dangling at the end of his arms, his shoulders back, his head turned to one side, and in that head turned to one side an eye with a hilarious, fixed stare, to realise to what heights of comedy the clumsy use of stereotyped, conventional expressions can lead. In the middle of this unlikely imbroglio of contracted and unnatural expressions I was unable to make out the sort of madness with which Harry Baur was afflicted, or whether he was not really a criminal. But I know that if I were the police officer in charge of the investigation, I would find his attitude so obviously guilty that I would not hesitate to arrest him.

You must see him rolling his eyes, opening his mouth like a figure crucified, trembling as he pours out the wine, the close shots of his hands trembling, not imperceptibly, but like an earthquake, at every turn, everywhere. You must see how a gesture, a harmless word said next to him sends his head into muscular contortions, appalling tics ravage his face with such violence and exaggeration that Harry Baur’s expressions of ter­ror take on the transitory and inept value of a harmless tooth­ache!

74

You must see Harry Baur shrink and suffer to have an idea of essential buffoonery, the buffoonery which has missed its mark. You must see that face suddenly shooting off, as though by chance, into monstrous muscular contortions as though it were only a question of a simple play of muscles galloping like horses in the midst of a moral expression of suffering, remorse, obsession and fear. Throughout the film Harry Baur serves us up a certain number of expressions which are priceless in their torrential— and misplaced—tragedy.

There is such a discrepancy between the atmosphere of purely moral terror which should be the drama and the rude means by which this terror expresses itself that it seems that the whole film was made simply to enable Harry Baur to display his imposture, his puffery and his insincerity.

When life reaches a certain degree of tragic expression it makes a sound, the sound of a frenzy which is totally savage rather than complacently and systematically turned towards the exterior. The true dramatic performance is not a kaleido­scope of crudely defined expressions, dismantled muscle by muscle and cry by cry. In The Polish Jew , Harry Baur aroused a sort of integral hilarity in me, without the slightest tempta­tion to remorse.

75

, £-

People have tried to establish a basic distinction, a sort of divi­sion of essences, between two or three types of film.

On one side there is the dramatic cinema where chance, that is to say the unforeseen, that is to say poetry, is suppressed. Not a detail that does not result from an absolutely conscious choice of the mind, that is not established with a view to a localised and sure result. The poetry, if there is any poetry, is of an intellectual order; it only uses the particular resonance of tangible objects subsequently, at the moment when they come into contact with the cinema.

On the other hand—and this is the last resort for those who believe in the cinema at all costs—there is the documentary. Here a preponderant part is left to the camera and the spon­taneous and direct development of aspects of reality. The poetry of objects taken in their most innocent aspect, from that side which adheres to the outside world, comes into its own.

For once I would like to talk about the cinema itself, study it within its organic function and see how it behaves when it comes into contact with reality.

The lens that goes to the heart of objects, creates its own world and the cinema may put itself in the position of the human eye, think for it, sift the world for it, and, by this concerted and mechanical task of elimination, let nothing but the best subsist. The best, that is to say what is worth retaining, those shreds of things which float on the surface of the memory while the lens seems to filter their residue automatically. The lens classifies life, digests it, it offers ready food to the sensibility, to the soul,

THE PRECOCIOUS OLD AGEOF THE CINEMA19

and leaves us before a dry and finished world. Besides, it is not sure whether it only releases the most significant, the best ele­ments of what is worth recording. Because its view of the world is fragmentary, however valid the melody which it manages to create between the objects, this melody has two edges.

On one side it obeys the arbitrary, the inner laws of the gaze of the camera,—on the other side it is the result of a particular human will, a precise will which has its arbitrary side.

So in as far as the cinema is left alone with objects, it imposes an order on them which the eye accepts as valid and which responds to certain external habits of the memory and the mind. And the question that now presents itself is to know if this order would continue to remain valid if the cinema were to delve deeper into the experience and offer us not only certain rhythms of everyday life as they are recognised by the eye and the ear, but the obscure, slow-motion encounters with that which is hidden beneath things, or the crushed, trampled, slack, or tense images of that which crawls in the depths of the mind.

But the cinema, which needs no language or convention to put us in touch with these things, does not replace life; what it unites are the pieces of objects, unfinished puzzles of things. And, whatever we may think, this is very important because we must realise that the cinema presents us with an incomplete world, shown only on one side;— and it is just as well that the world should be set in its unfinished state because if, by some miracle, the objects thus photographed, thus stratified on the screen, could move, we dare not think of the void, of the hole in appearances which they would create. I mean that the image in a film is definite and irrevocable, and even if it allows a selection, a choice before the presentation of the images, it prevents the effect of the images from changing or surmounting itself. It is incontestable. And no one can say that a human gesture is ever perfect, that there is not some way in which its action, its waves, its communication can be improved. The world of the cinema is dead, illusory and split up. Not only does it not surround things, not only does it fail to enter into the heart of life and only retains the skin of forms, a restricted

77

r " vview, but it prevents all resifting and repetition, which is one of the essential conditions of magic, of the rending of sensibility. Life cannot be reproduced. Live waves, inscribed in a number of vibrations frozen for ever, become dead waves. The world of the cinema is a closed world with no relationship with exis­tence. Its poetry is not on the other side, it is on this side of the images. When it crashes into the mind, its dissociating force breaks. Poetry did exist around the lens, but before being sifted, being inscribed on the film.

Besides, with the talking picture the elucidations of the spoken word have put a stop to the unconscious and spontan­eous poetry of images; the illustration and the completion of the meaning of an image by the word show the limitations of the cinema. The co-called mechanical magic of a constant visual buzz could not parry the stop-hit of the spoken word which has made this mechanical magic seem the result of a purely physio­logical shock of the senses. People soon tired of the hazardous beauties of the cinema. Having their nerves more or less suc­cessfully tickled by abrupt and unexpected cavalcades of images, a succession of mechanical apparitions which escaped from the very laws and structures of thought, could appeal to some aesthetes who admired obscurity and the unexpressed, and searched for these emotions systematically, but without ever be­ing sure that they would appear. This hazardous and unex­pected element was part of the delicate and sombre spell which the cinema cast on the mind. All this, together with a few more precise qualities which we all hoped to find.

We knew that the most characteristic and striking quality of the cinema was always, or nearly always, the effect of hazard, that is to say of a sort of mystery, whose fatality we could not explain.

There was a sort of organic emotion in this fatality where the objective and secure creak of the projector mingled with, opposed itself to, the comical apparition of images, as precise as they were unexpected. I do not mean the displacement of rhythms imposed on the appearance of the objects of reality; but, as life passes in its own rhythm, I think that the humour of

78

the cinema springs partly from this security of a background rhythm embroidered with all the fantasies of a more or less ir­regular and vehement motion (in comic films). Otherwise, apart from this sort of rationalisation of life with its waves and prattle partially emptied of their plenitude, density and extent, of their internal frequency, by the arbitrariness of the camera, the cinema remains a fragmentary and, as I said, a stratified and frozen reproduction of reality. All fantasies based on a slow or accelerated motion apply only to a closed world of vibra­tions which does not have the talent of enriching and nourish­ing itself on its own; the idiotic world of images, enveigled in myriads of retinas, will never perfect the image which we may have of it.

So the poetry that cannot break away from all that is only a tentative sort of poetry, the poetry of what might have been, and we cannot expect the cinema to restore to us the myths of the man and the life of today.

79

THE LIABILITIES OF DUBBING20

The talking picture has witnessed the birth of strange activities. Dubbing is [one]21 of these hybrid activities which good taste abhors, which satisfies neither the eye nor the ear, but which the Americans impose on their films and the majority of French spectators accept.

Chronologically, dubbing succeeds plain synchronisation. The talking picture, which thinks it has perfected the synchron­isation of sound and image, but frequently sees them spring away from each other just as they are going to be presented and states that it has failed, resorts to ordinary dubbing far more often than one thinks. It applies sounds to the images after the event and asks actors to repeat scenes, which require absolute simultaneousness, off the sets, before the microphone. Ordinary synchronisation, has been used and abused. In talk­ing pictures in every language, even in languages with a stress which forces the actor to indulge in amazing facial gymnastics, an effort has been made to apply diction, uniform French diction, monodic diction, and this gradually gave the impres­sion of a colossal organ giving out a mere buzz.

It was a time when ephemeral French firms, old charlatan film peddlars still filming in some cattle fair, bought up thou­sands of yards of film and had them synchronised by [some]22 suburban star who never even left the suburbs.

When the German or American star exclaimed as she corked a bottle, an oath would burst out of the amplifier; when she pursed her lips and let out a slight whistle, we would hear a hollow bass roar, a murmur, or anything. If one of these films was shown on the Boulevards, the audience booed, and they

80

were right. There were plenty of riots at the beginning of the talking picture.

But the cinema learned from its mistakes, became astute. Hardly anybody had ever thought of making good French films in France: there was no tradition. But America had the tradi­tion and the technique. American talking pictures could not be refused on the pretext that they were in a language which the French could not understand. On the other hand the audience could no longer be presented with approximate synchronisa­tions in which the text of one language is simply passed into another. It was then that the Americans had a cunning idea, a new idea: they invented dubbing. Dubbing by equivalence of sound, equivalence of diction. It was simple! We had all thought of it. But it had to be done and the Americans did it.

From then on the facial muscles of the actors were carefully regulated at the shooting sessions. The facial movement in the language of the synchroniser had to correspond to the mouth movements in the original language. And this was the begin­ning of comedy. Comedy, not of the screen but of life: the rush of every sort of actor who wanted to dub because

],23 and the importance, misfortunes and absurdity of dubbing.

To start with there is the tragi-comedy of Metro-Goldwyn, Universal or Fox which take on actors at a miserable salary of 125 to 150 dollars a week and sack them after three months. Who are these actors? Are they failures? Not at all. Are they just unlucky? Maybe! Are they adventurers? Some of them. Well-known actresses who are ill favoured by the times or the plays, whose violent temperament no longer suits our theatre which is aimed at the voyeur from the provinces or the unima­ginative retired sadist, and who travel to America on a second class ticket with a wardrobe of dresses they were never to wear. They put their French voices into Marlene Dietrich’s heavy mouth, Joan Crawford’s pulpy mouth, Greta Garbo’s equine mouth. For a woman used to acting with her body, for an act­ress who thinks and feels with her whole body as well as with her head or her voice, for whom physique, charm and sex-

appeal are everything, it is a considerable sacrifice. But there is something more terrible, to my mind positively diabolical: the effect of dubbing on the real actors. The directors of American film companies, and particularly Mr. Alan Beer of Metro-Gold- wyn-Mayer in Paris, whom I interviewed on this matter, are far from admitting this. But this is a point of view of the per­sonality, one might almost say of the soul, which the highly de­veloped civilisation of the ‘Americas’ prefers to deny. Or rather, it denies it when it is not in its own interest: when it is dealing with more or less artificial personality, the darling of the crowds, all other considerations are burnt on this person­ality’s altar. The Americans think it perfectly justifiable that this new Moloch should absorb everything.

82

I N T E R V I E WS

ANTONIN ARTAUD 24

I set off in search of Antonin Artaud to interview him for Cinemonde. It was not easy, Antonin Artaud was nowhere to be found. Wherever I asked I was told that he had not been seen for a long time. And yet I was certain that, after acting in Tarakanova, Antonin Artaud was back in Paris. I had given up all hope of finding him when, one day, in a bar near the Place Clichy, I heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned round: it was Antonin Artaud. I was delighted.

''You! It can’t be true! 1 I exclaimed in surprise. ‘Now Fve got you, my dear fellow, I won't let you go until you let me interview you. ’

Antonin Artaud smiled.‘A h ! these journalists are as insistent as ever. Besides, do you

really think that what I say will interest your readers?’‘But of course, otherwise I wouldn't have chased after you.’ Finally, Antonin Artaud let himself be interviewed.‘ My record of service,’ he began.' First of all I played the

lead in Fait Divers, an avant-garde film shown at the Ursulines which contained a slow motion sequence of someone being strangled—this seemed a novelty at the time. Then I had small parts in various films, Surcouf, Le Ju if Errant, Graziella. And finally Abel Gance’s Napoleon in which I played Marat. It was the first part in which I felt myself as I really am, in which I not only had to try to be a genuine, but also to express my idea of a character who seemed to incarnate a force of nature, who was both disinterested in and indifferent to all that was not the force of his passions.

‘After Marat I played Brother Krassien25 in Carl T. Drey-85

er’s St. Joan. This time I was a saint, no longer effervescent, passionate and anguished, but calm, tranquil.

‘ I don’t want to bother about what happened to the film, to my part in the film, in the so-called commercial version. I have unforgettable recollections of my work with Dreyer. I was deal­ing with a man who succeeded in making me believe in the justice, beauty and human interest of his idea. And whatever my ideas on the cinema, poetry and life may have been, I rea­lised for once that I was no longer dealing with aesthetics, with a preconceived idea, but with a work, with a man determined to elucidate one of the most agonising problems that exist: Dreyer was determined to show St. Joan as the victim of one of the most painful distortions: the distortion of a divine prin­ciple which has passed into the brains of men, whether they call themselves the Government, the Church, or anything you like.

‘The means, the pure technique of this film were also thrill­ing, because even if I considered Dreyer demanding, I did not regard him as a director, but as a man in the most tangible, human and complete sense of the word. Dreyer was determined to insinuate the spirit of a scene into the actor and then leave him room to realise it, to give his own personal touch, provided he remained faithful to the spirit required. In the final scene of the moral martyrdom of St. Joan, before the execution, be­fore the communion, when Brother Krassien asked her if she still thought she was sent by heaven, Dreyer was sure that, even if the exaltation communicated to Krassien by Joan, by the situation and the scene, was not indispensable, it was dic­tated by the very emotion of the facts, and he, Dreyer, would certainly not hinder it.

‘ I would have much more to say about Carl Dreyer’s film. But I am simply pleased that the release of his complete ver­sion should have changed the general opinion of such a re­markable film.

‘ Since St. Joan I have played the intellectual in Verdun, Visions d’Histoire by Leon Poirier; Mahaud in Marcel L ’Herbier’s VArgent; and a Bohemian in love in Tarakanova,

86

which I have just done under the direction of Raymond Bern­ard.

‘Although I have not recently been able to play the decisive parts which I played in Napoleon and St. Joan I am now in contact with various directors and I am sure that one day I will be able to act a complete part.

‘ The cinema is a ghastly profession. Too many obstacles pre­vent expression or realisation. Too many commercial and financial contingencies get in the way of the directors I know. Too many people, too many things, too many blind necessities are defended. That is why I would certainly leave the cinema if I saw myself repressed in a part, invalidated, or cut off from myself, from what I think and feel.

‘ On no account compare me to Conradt Veidt, as many people do. He tends to specialise in paroxysm, in excess, which I try to avoid more and more.

‘A last point about the acting profession. Every day I hear directors, who lack a true dramatic feeling, praise, at the ex­pense of the professional, the part-time actor who, in a film like Finis Terrae, is made to act scenes from life better than a professional.

* This idea is simply based on a misunderstanding.‘ On the screen the part-time actor does what he does in real

life, something which he can be made to act with a little patience. But the cinema actor, I mean the good one, the real one who feels and thinks directly, spontaneously, without act­ing, in an artificial sphere, a sphere of art or poetry, does what nobody else can do, what he himself cannot do in a normal state.

‘ That is the whole problem. I would be most grateful to you if you could devote more of your article to my ideas than to my parts. The first are more likely to interest your readers than the second. ’

‘But why, Artaud? Not necessarilyAnd thereupon I left him. It was late, but that did not mat­

ter. I had my interview.G. F.

ANTONIN ARTAUD T ELLS US ABOUT GERM AN CINEM A28

He made his debut in the theatre and was then drawn by the cinema. Now, when it reopens, he is going to direct that theatre patronised by the Nouvelle Revue Frangais which everyone is talking about. So it was interesting to know whether Monsieur Antonin Artaud was going to abandon the cinema so soon. Evidently, he is not. In reply he showed me about thirty photographs from his last film, Coup de fer a l’aube, which he has just made in Berlin for Ufa. It is based on a detective play which had a great success in Berlin. And Mon­sieur Antonin Artaud is going to play an extremely important part: that of a sham murderer who makes his hands tremble so much that the police do not suspect him. In the German ver­sion the part is played by the great actor Theodor Loos.

As he told me about the film, Monsieur Antonin Artaud ex­pressed his admiration for the German cinema, the sort of cinema school formed round Ufa, which is based on Hegelian dialectics.

‘ The Germans,’ he assured me, ‘make commercial films in the best sense of the word, that is to say that their films are of a high technical and artistic quality, are very human, and ex­tremely saleable.

‘But how could German films fail? Do you realise that be­fore writing a scenario, a writer—because the writers work for the cinema there— does systematic research on those feelings which move an audience, on what they consist of, and on the psychological springs which have to be unleashed.

‘ On the whole the German film actors come from the theatre and bring all their dramatic talent to the cinema. At the

moment there is a sort of school, or rather a group of tragic actors in Germany, which has no equivalent in France: Albert Bassermann, Fritz Kortner, Theodor Loos, Fritz Rasp, Peter Lorre. All these actors are trained, and this is obvious from the way they act, from that subtlety which our actors lack. Besides, our actors are incapable of making a lyrical speech, of talking in a subtle way. So we have no great actors in France.’

‘So you think cinema actors should come from the stage?'‘Yes, if you want to make a very good film. And French

camera-men should take short courses in Berlin. And then, instead of simply using current successful methods, they might start looking for something more individual. In Germany there is a whole group of camera-men who have unparalleled light­ing devices. They are trying to discover the logical effect of light and to create a sort of luminous psychological environment connected with the atmosphere of the stage. I noticed that they are now trying to unify the production. You have no idea how much they care about significant pictorial and psycholog­ical details.’

Henri Philippon

89