DIRECTED BY: Man Ray
FEATURING: Alice Prin, Robert Desnos, Jacques Rigaut, Man Ray
PLOT: Four experimental films form Man Ray shown in rhythmic sequence, set to a partially-improvised score by Jim Jarmusch‘s band SQÜRL.
COMMENTS: Though May Ray considered himself a painter, he experimented with photography for decades. In the 1920s, as part of his explorations, he decided to try his hand at making motion pictures. Paradoxically, he cut strips of film into their individual frames, dusted them with salt and pepper, covered them with tacks and pins, exposed them to light according to his Rayograph process, then spliced the images back together. La retour à la raison/Return to Reason (1923) was his first result, two minutes of visual chaos in which random objects and detritus dance across the screen.
Ray had originally planned to screen Retour with a performance by George Antheil, but the enfant terrible of avant-garde music failed to appear. Antheil’s atonal sound remains associated with Ray’s films (Kino Lorber previously released Return to Reason with an Antheil score, as part of the collection “The Silent Avant Garde,” in 2022). This latest release by the Criterion Collection provides a moodier, atmospheric take on Ray’s imagery, through SQÜRL’s signature feedback-laden guitars, electronic tones, and resonant drums. The score’s dirge-like cadences slow things down, encouraging the viewer to notice each intricate detail in every frame while falling under their spell.
Jarmusch, familiar to readers of this site as the director of Dead Man, is also a guitarist, and has written scores for many of his films together with musician Carter Logan. The duo’s sound, at times reminiscent of late ’90s-era Sonic Youth, wraps the listener in a sonic net woven of reverb and ambient drones. Electronic blips and beeps rise out of the static, like distant signals from sonar equipment; deep resonant tones echo like the moan of foghorns. A sudden metallic tinkling, like a forgotten wind chime on the porch of an abandoned house caught by a stray breeze, heightens the uncanny atmosphere.
The disc presents the films in rhythmic, rather than chronological order. The first, L’Étoile de Mer/The Starfish (1928), inspired by Robert Desnos’ poem, has the most coherent plot of the four. A man falls in love with a beautiful woman who gifts him a starfish in a jar. Filmed as though through a pane of rain-streaked glass, or from behind an aquarium wall, the impressionistic visuals come into focus only at key moments. The intertitles feature lines of the poem, but unlike in many silent films where the title cards explain the action, here text and image juxtapose each other in surrealistic fashion; for example, the phrase “women’s teeth are such beautiful objects” precedes a shot of the female character (portrayed by the famous Kiki de Montparnasse), lifting her skirt to adjust her stocking garter.
Emak Bakia (1926) follows. With financing from stockbroker Arthur Wheeler, and featuring his wife driving her Mercedes around Biarritz, Ray created another, longer experimental film (22 min.) in the same vein as Retour (even including some footage recycled from the earlier film). A whirlwind collage of images without narrative, everything from disembodied legs dancing the Charleston to a flock of sheep crossing the road, Emak Bakia almost feels like a drunken tourist’s home movie of their vacation (which may not be far from the truth; Ray was invited to hang out with the Wheelers’ guests at their villa and claimed he only worked on the film for about two hours every day). Its most well-known image may be the concluding scene: a woman with eyes painted on her eyelids sits up and blinks, then lies back down, as though she’s waking up into sleep.
Le Retour à la Raison/Return to Reason (1923) comes next, followed by Les Mystères du Château du dé/Mysteries of the Dice Castle (1929). It is another home movie created for wealthy patrons, this time the Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles and her husband, Charles. Surprisingly camera shy, the Noailles and their friends only appear on screen with stockings covering their faces. This element of strangeness prevents the film from feeling entirely self-indulgent. The Villa Noailles, a white modernist block set amidst the ruins of a Medieval castle, seems overrun by a marauding guerrilla theater troupe. They play with oversized dice, swim in an indoor pool, and run around a gymnasium. The final scene heightens the sense of mystery with the arrival of two travelers. Dressed in hats and long coats with opaque white scarves wrapped around their heads, they enter the castle grounds as if they stepped out of a Magritte painting. They strike a sculptural pose on the rooftop, then freeze into position, as though the château has claimed them as another statue for its collection.
The disc ends on this tantalizing scene. Though he was offered funding to make a feature-length film, Ray declined. By 1929, he said his curiosity regarding cinema had been satisfied. He also believed the adoption of synchronized sound was cinema’s loss, not a gain. “Something is going to die,” he said; the medium no longer interested him. These four films remain his lasting contribution to cinema history. Because of their silence, new musical reinterpretations can continually refresh their unique imagery.
The liner notes, by André Breton biographer Mark Polizzotti, contextualize the films in relation to the Dada and Surrealist art movements. Special features include an interview with Jarmusch and Logan, and a full-length documentary (71 min.) of the musicians playing and creating the score, for those interested in how the sounds were made. Title cards are in the original French with optional English subtitles.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
- Movie dvd
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