Dirs. Hans Richter (with Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Man Ray, Marchel
Duchamp and Alexander Calder)
USA
Film 28th, for Sunday 28th October, for Halloween
31 For 31
My introduction to early 20th
century art movements probably started with the erotic. I will openly admit, as
a young lad, that I would look for images of the opposite sex naked to the
point of looking through art books in the secondary school library. What happened
instead was my first encounter with the Surrealist movement, which punctured
dreams and used them for the basis of their art; the erotic was significant in
the paintings and images I saw, but just as important were the profound images,
the scathing and subversive ones, the beautiful dreams and the depictions of
nightmares throughout them, going beyond a misguided lad’s mere curiosity to
someone who discovered art and how powerful it could be. Melting clocks,
stilt-legged elephants, faces propped on sticks in the groundless space in
sleep, many images in these compositions, from The Persistence of Memory to The
Eye of Silence, will remain with me for the rest of my life. Then I went on
to learn about other movements from this period or before including the Dada
movement. From there, my appreciation for the arts has grown more and more,
bleeding into my love of cinema as I delved into experimental films. The
members of these art movements themselves experimented with cinema too. Un Chien Andalou (1929) is the most
famous, becoming one of the most well known experimental films in existence as,
a melding of the disturbing with the unreal, it disrupts conventions of cinema
even now eighty or more years after its release. The following film I’m
reviewing is a fascinating attempt back in 1948 that could have brought the
avant garde to the mainstream if it had done well in another reality.
Almost an anthology film, the
establishing plot that starts Dreams
That Money Can Buy is of a man (Jack
Bittner) who is able to give people dreams and decides to sell his services
to pick his life back up. Intercut between this are segments by artists Hans Richter, a famous artist and
experimental director himself, was connected to that vary in tone, theme and
type of materials used within them. It is better to go immediately into the
segments themselves then dabble...
Opening and Inbetween Segments (Directed by Hans Richter): Intermediately linked between multiple genres,
the whole film is nonetheless appropriate for a month which emphasises the
supernatural and the unreal. While it can be argued to be a slight parody of
cinema, Dreams... is far interesting
as a reflection on dreams as an abstraction and liberation of our emotions. All
of this is done in a cod-Film Noir template and the whole film was designed to
appeal to the whole public, making the results even more unconventional. The dubbing
of dialogue and internal thoughts over the scenes of the actors gives the film
a dream-like logic before it actually gets to the dreams.
Desire (Directed by Max Ernst): Using as many practical effects as
possible without over filling the scenes with them, Dreams... is very much a work placed within the fantastical even if
it is too close to avant garde cinema to be fantasy. Ernst’s segment is a stereotypical example of this that is still
very effective, a baroque and sexual dream in which a woman recounts an
encounter with nightingales within a lavish bedroom and home, the dead pulling
themselves out from under the bed and twisting into themselves. If one takes
into consideration the era it was made in, this segment is still effective,
mixing with the macabre and the lavish effectively in the limited, fog covered
rooms presided by Enrst himself in a
small role. It also establishes that, while some of the segments have clear
messages, some of them are designed to convey meanings just through the mood
and presented images themselves that cause one to feel they are watching an
actual dream. The monologue of the woman that makes up the segment is highly
stylised and unconventional, breaking down what words and phrases should mean
if you listen closely, continuing a concept prized by the Surrealists of
stream-of-consciousness, presented through the distorted speech and sentences
she utters that are layered over the images post-synch. It is one of two segments
that could be put into the supernatural category and works for what it is.
The Girl With The Prefabricated Heart (Created by Fernand Leger): Not
all the segments involve actors however. Sculpture and object craft was an
established part of these moments, going as far as Marcel Duchamp (one of the other collaborators for Dreams...) developing found object art
where ordinary materials were art by themselves, notoriously shown when Duchamp took a urinal, signed it, and
placed it in an art gallery. Leger’s
segment is a perversely whimsical, but sweet musical following the emotions of
a female mannequin, made of man-made material but facing the troubles of a
suitor she does not love and who will take away her independence. With a song
that sounds like it is from a Disney film, it is quite magical and shows a very
take on animation as Leger turns
almost human mannequins into moving beings through stop-motion and basic mechanics.
It is ingenuity at its best, the sugary sweet tone never mawkish and turning
cold material into warm characters, something only dreams (and a good artist)
can create for an audience.
Ruth, Roses and Revolvers (Directed by Man Ray): The paradox of
such radical arts being made for a mainstream audience is one that reflects the
situation of these 20th century art movements were going through at
this period. They were supposed to be radical and against conformity, but one
of the most well known artists Salvador
Dalí became part of mainstream culture and talk shows later in his life. It
does however make the film more peculiar in its slightly rough melding of the
two sides, the anthologue-esque structure liable to being erratic in tone as
actual anthologies can suffer from. Man
Ray’s segment can almost be a reflection of this danger with their art as
well as any type of cinema, a film-within-a-film watched by the segment’s
characters where the audience have to copy the actions of the pale faced man
onscreen. It does incorporate other aspects within it, but emphasis on art and
its pliability is the clearest aspect. That this interactivity/manipulation of
the audience is predominant in children’s programming adds a twisted page to Man Ray’s idea.
Discs (By Marcel Duchamp) – Images of rotating circles, and of a
nude woman going down stairs fragmented and covered (and uncovered) with dots,
one of the most abstract of the shorts and closer to some of the original
experiments in cinema from decades earlier involving shapes and the
manipulation of them. It is hypnotic, its plying of fragmented images and
almost three dimensional shapes effective at its short length, breaking down
how one perceives images through the eyes and their form. This is not
necessarily a pretentious concept as well; as infants and toddlers we are
fascinated by shapes, and how they move and how they are put together, and on a
basic level something like Discs
takes this to the perspective of an adult who goes back to this fascination but
uses it to break down the blasé passing of ordinary life where everything around
you is rudimentary and taken for granted. Unlike some experimental films, I can
see these sorts of films like Discs
being far more effective and understandable for anyone because the crossing of
animation and visual collage can be understood on a surface level by anyone and
doesn’t need a potentially vague message or meaning behind it. Even if someone
was to attempt a naval gazing interpretation of such images, the images as
images explain themselves fully by their own accord.
Ballet and Circus (Both created by Alexander Calder): Highlights of the whole project, Calder follows the idea of creating
everything that is onscreen with creations made from wire and simple mechanics.
The first of his segments Ballet is
devoted to mobiles, the images of them turning and spinning in the air at their
own whim as much of the effect as the creations themselves. It isn’t wrong to suggest
how we are fascinated by wind chimes, moving in their own accord depending on
which way the wind blows, is visible in this and its main concept. Circus is just a joy, a literal circus
where the viewer as the patron sees a show by wire and mechanical creations. The
similarities to toys and dioramas with moving parts are clear, but there s a
sense of childlike joy I got seeing these creations move. Calder even shows hands (his own?) moving some of his creations,
regardless of the rule of showing animation as its own world when it is the
creation of objects and figures moved by its creators in various ways that the art
form is about. It also has a black sense of humour, as the injury and death
rate for employees (and wire circus lions) is exceptionally high.
Narcissus (Directed by Hans Richter): The bookend of the frame
story and the final segments that ends the film completely. The most
nightmarish part of the film, it follows a character based on the protagonist,
his true self, ostracised from society when he suddenly turns blue. The piece
is about the struggle of conformity against independence reproduced as the most
surreal and sinister of the pieces, the blue ‘Narcissus’ blocked by random men
who believe in blocking others for the sake of it and various routes – a cord
to a goal, ladders which lose their rungs – in front of him as a maze. He loses
his friends and ordinary life but, as the self analysing monologue admits as it
goes through the segment, his attempts to be normal again are prevented by how
he has changed as a person. The look and tone of the piece would be replicated in
later films, especially from the 1960s onwards, but using the worn yet blooming
colours the film is painted in, the segment is the perfect way to end the film.
Every sequence is referenced in part to a personality who is being given this
dream and their personal issues, Narcissus
giving a narrative end for the protagonist but also poking at the whole concept
of the film, the desire to have dreams that make us whole when in fact they are
fragmentary and are ends with countless lose threads and remaining materials
left. From the erotic randomness of Desire,
the first short, to the use of everyday materials to create new realities in
others, Dreams That Money Can Buy
ends up being a dissection of the idea of dreaming and its base compounds even
if the premise is childishly simple and the project was designed to introduce
people to new artistic concepts. The contradictions of the film’s purpose
against Narcissus - where the protagonist
is offered to enjoy his life and society, the post-World War era the film was
made in amplifying this, but ignores it for his free thought even if it will
doom him - is as much as part of the dream logic of the whole film. By
dissecting, by accident or purpose, this idea it fits a month, and autumn
season, where picking apart reality is intrinsic even in wearing costumes and
going trick or treating, but also fits the concept I uphold greatly as a person
of questioning reality, even in the smallest of ways, when it is more unreal
than we pronounce it to be.
Dreams That Money Can Buy though is one of the few in this season
though that is directly tied to an art movement or two. Dreams... was viewed as a complete failure when it was first
released, and while many now still see it as a flawed film, I will actually defend
it as far more better than merely a flawed gem. It’s major mistakes, the Film
Noir trappings and satire, actually make it a far more interesting film if
viewed in a new light, a trinket like those in the film – a scrapbook of
cut-out pictures, a picture, a blue tiddlywink, an object so innocuous even its
name sounds like fairytale language, that opens into the darkest segment Narcissus – that leads one on into a
dream. As an introduction to these artists as it was intended to be, it is a
success if you give it your time, and is a good beginning to anyone wanting to
dabble in the avant-garde but are afraid of the vast catalogue of films in
existence.
After a group of outlaws, led by Gregory Peck, rob a small town bank,
they escape through into a barren desert wasteland. It sets up a great deal of
promise to keep for the black-and-white shot western. A great amount of time is
spent with just these characters at first. The actors - Peck, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan
and Charles Kemper - have a good repartee,
already established that the outlaws can easily gun other down if pushed to it.
The lifeless landscape emphasises the great cinematography on display in the
film and the use of locations, as the journey to an unknown place is physically
felt. One of the biggest virtues of the western, in any country's cinema or
language, is that it requires the use of landscape outside of human comfort,
giant rock formations for characters to hide behind in shoot-outs, vast desert
plains, and grand valleys that are silent and overbearing. Geo-formations that
are as much part of the characters as well as the natural landscape. Unlike how
Meek's Cutoff (2010) forgot to use
the land halfway through to depict the characters' minds physically, the
straight forward western, at its best visually, uses the landscapes to
emphasise the actions and journeys of the characters onscreen. Eventually the
outlaws almost halfway through encounter an abandoned ghost town called Yellow
Sky. Lifeless, the dilapidated saloon and buildings set up what could be a very
good film.
