Page 55 - Studio International - July August 1971

outline of the film in question, enough of one at to 'Hollywood, Innovation and Experiment'). underground cinema—as it is called. In the
least to make the point he is trying to drive home He continues with America since the war, East meantime, Hollywood's experimentation forces
(usually in terms of various technical Coast, West Coast, The New Film Poets an emphasis on gimmicks and gags which is still
innovations). (Brakhage, Anger, Markopoulos), and concludes at the basis of commercial film-making (film
On Bunuel's classic Un Chien Andalou, he with short chapters on 'Short Film Craftsmen', production) and audience 'satisfaction'
writes, 'The plot is the result of a `The Informal Vision' and 'Structural Cinema' (Pavlovian). Curtis says that ' ... technical
CONSCIOUS psychic automatism and, to that (Kubelka, Kren, LeGrice, Hein, Landow, innovation such as sound and wide-screen ,
extent, it does not attempt to recount a dream, Warhol, Snow). systems required considerable capital
though it profits by a mechanism analogous to What is most interesting in this book is the investment and might never have been
that of dreams'. He then quotes from Bunuel's tracing of effects from early experimentation to contemplated without the security afforded b
1929 scenario: 'Once upon a time. A balcony (in some cases) re-invention at present; eg centralization and the tight control of
at night. A man, Bunuel, sharpens his razor Léger's first use of the medium of film itself as exhibition outlets'. He doesn't take any account
near the balcony; looks at the sky through the the subject-matter of the film in Le Ballet of what someone like Marcuse would say to
window and sees ... a light cloud floating Mécanique (1924), wherein 'A large woman with that; he also doesn't seem quite to grasp that it
towards the full moon. The head of a young girl a load on her shoulders is climbing up a flight of is precisely this centralization which destroyed
with large eyes. The light cloud passes in front steps. She is shown seven steps from the top; the cinema, which made the post-war
of the moon. The razor blade passes through she climbs four and a half more, then suddenly underground avant garde such a difficult
the girl's eye, cutting it in two.' And Curtis she is back at the seventh again. Léger repeats proposition; one which even a considerable
adds, 'Bunuel had hoped to avoid her action, loopwise, ten times, creating an minority audience has not yet been able to deal
misinterpretation and denounced "the crazy abstraction of movement/duration ... that with in serious terms. At the same time, most
madness which finds beauty or poetry in this probably ranks as the first completely conscious serious early experimentation did come about
film, which is ultimately, nor more nor less than recognition of the "unit of cinema" to be in countries where the cinema was a
a despairing call to murder".' Enough recorded on film. At last, film has become the nationalized industry: Russia and Germany.
information has been culled to give us a clear subject of film.' One might add that there are And Curtis does grasp that ' ... the true
picture of what Curtis is talking about; he does other levels besides the creating of an amateur' (he means outsider) 'is often freer to
not just abstractly chat on and on about a film abstraction in this film; the increased frustration experiment ... than the so-called profession '
most of his readers will not have seen. In that through repetition, the allusion to the myth of Consequently some of the best work has been
sense, the book is neat and precise. Sisyphus, and the actualization of that myth in made by independent film-makers working
Curtis traces the European Avant Garde, a piece of 'documentary' footage; etc. consciously as film-artists outside the
from France and Germany (1919-1931), the Unfortunately, such structural/formalist "industry'."
Russian Experiments (Kuleshov, Pudovkin, conceptions as Léger's went relatively neglected The invention of sound had to be
Eisenstein, Vertov), through America between until the emergence of structural film-makers, re-invented in the sixties by underground
the wars (`Avant-Garde Film-makers 1921-34' who form the most solid part of the film-makers who were working in silent films