More Dada = Less Plot

Well our fourth class has come and gone, and we now find ourselves right back into the depths of animation! It's really surprising to me to see how influential animation is considered in film. I guess I never really thought about it before, but animation seems to be pretty deeply rooted. It's nice to see how other means of using the medium were being developed alongside the traditional way we see it used in movies. And just like film did, animation had made many very significant developments in just a few years. The first animations we watched in class were made in the first few years of the 1900's, and were very basic. Now in just 20 or so years, we are seeing animations that are still considered impressive by today's standards!

We started off with "Rhythmus 21" (1921), which I have to admit I was not a fan of. The film consisted of several squares which just got larger and smaller, and moved around on the screen. Had it been a minute and a half shorter, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, but at the time I didn't see much in it. However, that doesn't mean I don't recognize it's artistic integrity. At the time, it was probably one of the first animations to give the audience a feeling of depth. The changing sizes of the shapes made them seem to get closer or further away, and the way they moved to the music showed that film had its own rhythm. And what a coincidence...that's what the film is called.

Next we watched "Symphony Diagonale" (1924) which I really enjoyed. The entire style in which it was drawn was interesting to me, and I even almost felt inspired after that, which is a rarity in itself! I think someone in class compared it to a neon sign, and I can't agree more! The entire film gave me the feeling of an old city or something, and I think that any movie that can make that connection in the audience's mind is successful.

From there, we moved onto "Composition in Blue" (1935) which genuinely looked like stop motion. I was very surprised to find out that the effect was achieved by shading. I can't even imagine trying to pull something like that off through drawing out each individual frame of an animation. The entire film was very impressive and continued to get more and more advanced as it went on. Unfortunately towards the end, I was overcome with the feeling I was about to have a seizure, so I couldn't fully appreciate the color-flashing shapes appearing and disappearing all over the screen. Shame.

Then we watched some of Harry Smith's early abstract works. Each of these were interesting, and a nice change of pace from Dada. Unfortunately, the artistic integrity of his works were completely robbed from me because I had to watch it in black and white rather than color! Geez! How lame!

...but seriously folks. Even in black and white, the animation was impressive. It was one of the longest ones we've seen thus far, and I can't even imagine how incredible it would have been in color.

Finally, we ended off the class with what just may be the greatest film I have ever seen in my life. "Ghosts Before Breakfast" (1928). This film used several different tricks and gimmicks that you just have to appreciate! There were quite a few points during the screening where I found myself smiling. It was nothing short of a masterpiece. Take that Citizen Kane!

Cubism and Dada

So in class last week, we moved on from the basic avant garde films, and jumped right into some of the really hardcore independent movements in film--namely Cubism and Dada. While all good films require an attentive mind and an artistic outlook towards it, the films that came out of the Cubist and Dada movements require you to buckle down and question whether or not you're watching the true meaning of existence portrayed on film, or just a bunch of spirals. And let me tell you, it's a thin thin line!

We started out watching a film called "Ballet Mecanique" (1923). This film is the perfect example of anything Cubist, as it completely tears apart how you would normally look at things, and shows you what the world would be like if you had kaleidoscopes for eyes. And I don't know about anyone else, but that's a question I've had since I was a child. But along side the incredible film techniques used to get that kaleidoscope effect, this film is laced with all sorts of powerful images. The use of repetition is very important to the understanding of the film, and there are quite a few figures that are shown to the audience in order to drill that concept into their minds. To name a few examples: the girl smiling, a few of the machine pistons moving, the sentence exclaiming "We stole a 5 hundred million dollar necklace, and of course the poor woman who just could not get up those stairs. When all of these unique ways of portraying a message were combined, it proved to create a very powerful film. "Ballet Mechanique" was very good and I feel like it can be interpreted in many different ways, which makes it even more artistically relevant. One of the most prominent themes was definitely the comparison of the movements of machines to that of humans, but there were countless others that could be drawn from it. Not to mention, it's filmed in a style that I could never imagine trying to do on old 35mm film! How they figured out of to get some of their shots and effects is absolutely beyond me.

We then moved on past the Cubist movement and into a new movement known as Dada. This movement is something that we as film students would probably be criticized for today if we tried to do something similar, and because of that, I will always be bitter towards it! It takes on the most simple form that film possibly can and uses it to show the filmmaker's apathy for the rules of film, not to mention who's watching. The first Dada film we watched was "Retour a la Raison" (1923) and it translates to "The Return to Reason," which is a very Dada-esque statement in itself. The film is very dark, and the use of this dark lighting makes the shadows objects in themselves rather than just a "reflection" of an object. The techniques used in this film are much more basic than those used in Ballet Mechanique, but there are still underlying messages which can be drawn from it. Another Dada film we analyzed is "Anemic Cinema" (1924). This film supposedly was a representation of a french game in which sentences were created out of random words. It started out with a large spiral which dived endlessly into the center of the screen. The camera then cut to a sentence (that made no sense) spiraling in a similar fashion. This continued for a good while, which eventually led up to the climax of the film--the end. I don't have much else to say about this one. If the film truly did spawn off of such a simple game, I feel like there is only so much a movie about said game can say!

We wrapped up last week by watching "Entr'Acte" (1924) by Rene Clair. By the time this film rolled around, I was already half dead and hypnotized by the spirals of Anemic Cinema...wait a minute...that sonofabitch hypnotized me! That must have been Duchamp's plan all along! To hypnotize the entire world into realizing that caring about things is totally overrated! How very Dada...anyway! Entr'Acte was a film about something. I'm not at this point 100% sure if there was a definitive plot, but I was used to that by this point, so I tried not to look at it from a linear standpoint. Instead I looked at the images and camera shots, and there were plenty of those which made this film interesting. I can also see how this film might have been a very groundbreaking film back when it was made, because it introduced many techniques that probably hadn't been seen before. For example, the false ending where the man who had been killed jumps through the word "fin" at the end. He is then promptly kicked back through it and the real ending occurs. While we've seen plenty of this on YouTube and in bad horror movies setting themselves up for a sequel, this may have been one of the very first movies to trick the audience like that by breaking the fourth wall.