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Capsules

CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023)

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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 ‘s band SQÜRL.

Still from "Les Mystères du Château du dé" (1929)

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 Continue reading CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

OUR HOSPITALITY (1923)

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Our Hospitality (1923) was s first true feature film. Keaton’s previous “feature,” Three Ages (1923) was actually three short films assembled together. There was both an artistic and a commercial reason for this: Three Ages was a parody of the similarly structured D.W. Griffith feature Intolerance (1916). Additionally, Keaton had proved his audience appeal in shorts. Metro Pictures realized the inherent risk of a Keaton feature, and the structure of Three Ages created the option of breaking it down into three shorts. Fortunately for all concerned, Three Ages was a commercial and critical success.

Our Hospitality may be seen, in retrospect, as a model for Keaton’s features and a precursor to The General (1926). What separates Keaton from his peers (Chaplin, Lloyd, Langdon) is the way his character integrates into a larger narrative. That is not to say that Keaton’s films are not character driven, but the character serves the narrative, not vice versa.

Our Hospitality opens with a prologue of the ongoing feud between the Canfields and the McKays. A young Canfield and the McKay patriarch are killed in a rainy shoot out at night. To avoid the curse of the feud and further bloodshed, the McKay widow takes her infant son, Willie, and sends him north to New York. Meanwhile, the Canfields swear revenge.

Twenty years later, Willie (Keaton) is the personification of a 19th century New York Yankee, adorned in a dandified suit. His mother has since passed away when Willie learns he has inherited his father’s estate. Imagining a southern mansion waiting in the wings, Willie hops onto the next train like a salmon returning to its birthplace. Before departing, he is warned by his guardian to stay clear of the Canfields.

The trip south foreshadows the archaic world Willie is about to enter. The train itself is primitive and, naturally, encounters numerous mishaps along the way. Luckily for Willie, the ordeal is made bearable because his fellow passenger is a pretty girl (Natalie Talmadge, the first Mrs. Keaton). Unfortunately, Willie’s spawning choice here, unknown to him, is a Canfield daughter.

Still from Our Hospitality (1923)There are numerous aquatic metaphors. Willie stands apart from his fellows, like a fish out of water, with city clicker suit and queer umbrella. While fishing, he catches a minnow, throws it back, and then gets pulled into the water by a bigger fish. Willie’s mansion turns out to be a dilapidated shack and he unwittingly finds himself in the home of his sworn enemies. True to Southern hospitality, the Canfields vow not kill Willie while he is a guest in their home. When Willie learns of this, he naturally tries to remain a permanent houseguest. Almost forced out, Willie is saved from leaving by the sudden appearance of a heavy downpour. A dam blows up, nearly drowning Willie, but it also safely conceals Willie from his predators, the Canfield boys. In a reversal of the fishing line, Willie is tied, by rope, to a Canfield son. Both get hauled into the water. A descent into the rapids brings further peril, as does a waterfall. Willie dangles over the waterfall like that salmon on a line. Yet, it is the waterfall which unites Willie with his girl, allowing him to spawn.

Our Hospitality is replete with inventive sight gags (a tunnel is cut to fit the train, a horse’s rear-end is disguised as Willie in drag), but it’s really a sophisticated, yet simple retelling of the Romeo and Juliet narrative.

Next week: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

CHAPLIN AT FIRST NATIONAL, PART TWO

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The second and final installment of our survey of s work for First National looks at two shorts which spotlight the Tramp vs. piety.

Sunnyside (1919) opens with a not so subtle Chapliesque swipe at the hypocritical reverence inherent in Americana. Chaplin’s iris opens on a church steeple cross. This dissolves into a frilly plaque, which reads “Love Thy Neighbor.” The owner of the plaque is tyrannical farmer Tom Wilson. Tom wakes early to give the sleeping farmhand, Charlie, a forceful kick in the daily duties. That accomplished (after a few, predictable false starts), Tom returns to bed.

After breakfast is served, we learn that it is Sunday morning. All the true Christians are where they are supposed to be: in church. Charlie’s loaded down with work, so he can’t (and won’t) join them. However, he will peek into what it’s all about, by taking a look-see at the Good Book. While doing so, the herd of cattle he is leading wanders off and disrupts the church service, driving the parishioners out the doors. Chaplin’s nose-thumbing at the the facade of rural reverence is about as subtle as a pair of brass knuckles. So much the better.

Next, Chaplin inserts a surreal dream. Some commentators assess it as an ill-fitting sequence; the same was said of Chaplin’s heaven vignette in The Kid (1921). I disagree here as much as I do to those objections re: The Kid. The Sunnyside dream is pure Chaplin and well suits the character as an escape from the phony piety to which he is subjected daily. After falling off a bridge, the Tramp dreams he is frolicking with flowered nymphs on a bucolic hillside. This is his idea of heaven, and more than justifies W.C. Field’s astute observation that Chaplin was “a goddamned ballet dancer.”

Still from Sunnyside (1919)Unfortunately, the dream sequence is far too brief. Chaplin, in a much smaller way, was to American Protestantism what Luis Buñuel was to European Catholicism. However, Bunuel did it better. The true ill-fitting element in Sunnyside is the romantic subplot between the Tramp and leading lady . Edna has another suitor: the Fat Kid, who is clearly slow on the uptake. The Tramp takes advantage of that weakness, cruelly ridiculing his rival.

Although it is an bad fit, and an extremely uncomfortable one at that, it does take us back, albeit briefly, to the Tramp of Keystone, who often revealed an inherent selfish, mean streak. So, in that sense, the revelation of a less than saintly Tramp is a bit refreshing, while admittedly wrecking the composition of the film.

The ending has a rushed feel, partly due to Chaplin’s constant battling with First National.

The Pilgrim (1923) was Chaplin’s last film for First National. It was also his final short. This is Chaplin’s anti-clericalism at it’s best. Audiences identified, making it a bona fide hit, much to the chagrin of the Evangelical Ministers Association and the Klu Klux Klan who teamed up (imagine that) to denounce The Pilgrim as a blasphemous mockery to organized religion.

Chaplin does not play the Tramp here. His character is the Pilgrim, an escaped convict disguised in clerical attire. At the train station, he purchases a ticket to Devil’s Gulch, Texas. Meanwhile, the residents of that town are awaiting a Rev. Pim to fill in their newly open position of pastor. Unknown to them, and most convenient for the Pilgrim, the real Rev. Pim is running a week behind. Charlie, of course, steps off the train just in time for a case of mistaken identity.

Still from The Pilgrim (1923)The small congregation, lead by the Deacon () are on hand to welcome their pseudo-pastor. Unfortunately for Charlie, he has stepped into the clerical shoes just in time for Sunday-go-to-meeting.

The Sunday promenade with Deacon Swain is highlighted by our Pilgrim swiping the elder’s Southern Comfort. However, the Pilgrim doesn’t even get in a swig before an inconvenient banana peel wastes that much-needed elixir.

Naturally, the service reveals this Rev. Pim  as untried and uncomfortable, but he’s not so awkward when it comes to making sure the collection plate is abundantly filled. Perhaps he is a true cleric at heart after all.

The homily is classic Chaplin. The Pilgrim picks the David and Goliath story to tell, but his Bible interpretation is refreshingly free of embedded theology. In buoyant pantomime, the good reverend depicts little shepherd boy David provoking the Philistine warrior Goliath. However, rather than a kill shot, David’s wimpy little sling merely manages to provoke a minor headache in the giant. Provoked, rather than defeated, Goliath promptly draws his sword and decapitates the irksome gnat. A child in the congregation, who has not yet been conditioned by his religion, gives his new pastor a standing ovation, while the grown-ups stand in abject horror. They have come to the comfort and safety of church, only to have their traditional narrative exposed as myth. The most child-like persons in the church, the Pilgrim and his young fan, are the only two who appreciate it.

The service over, the Pilgrim is told he will be boarding with Edna and her elderly mother. An argument for pro-choice, a discovered wanted poster, and the appearance of an ex- prison cell mate will prove to be flies in the Pilgrim’s ointment.  Fortunately, he has a conscience and a guardian who will notice.

The Pilgrim is short on Chaplin’s trademark sentiment and admirably long on licentious parody.