International Trends of the 1920s - module 11

 International Trends of the 1920s

 

 Film Europe 1920s

Major alternatives to the classical filmmaking style of Hollywood arose in the years after World War I: French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Soviet Montage. These three movements occurred within the context of a general reaction against the domination of international markets by Hollywood films.

Directly after World War I, nations competed against each other as well as against Hollywood, hoping to prosper in the international film market. The German government fostered the growth of its film industry by continuing the wartime ban on imported films. In France, despite many efforts, adverse conditions kept production low. For a few years, Italy continued to produce many films but could not regain its strong pre-1914 position. Other countries sought to establish even a small amount of steady production.

Erich Pommer, head of the powerful German company Ufa, concluded a pact with Louis Aubert, a major Parisian distributor. Ufa agreed to release in Germany French films provided by the Aubert company, in exchange for Aubert’s distribution of Ufa films in France. Previously, French-German deals had meant the sale of a film or two, but now mutual distribution became regular. Pommer declared: “It is imperative to create a system of regular trade which will enable the producers to amortise their films rapidly. It is necessary to create ‘European films,’ which will no longer be French, English, Italian, or German films, but entirely ‘continental’ films.” The Ufa-Aubert agreement provided the model for later transactions. Exchange of films among France, Germany, Britain, and other countries increased during the second half of the 1920s.

Abrupt changes cut it short. Most important was the introduction of sound in 1929. Dialogue created language barriers, and each country’s producers began to hope that they could succeed locally because English-language imports would decline. Several countries did benefit from audiences’ desire for sound films in their own languages, and some national industries became major forces as a result of sound. Competitiveness among European nations reappeared.

In addition, the Great Depression began to hit Europe in 1929. Faced by hard times, many businesses and governments became more nationalistic and less interested in international cooperation.

International Style 1920s

Stylistic influences also circulated among countries. French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Soviet Montage began as largely national trends, but soon the filmmakers exploring these styles became aware of each other’s work. By the mid-1920s, an international avant-garde style blended traits of all three movements.

 Carl Theodor Dreyer 1920s

The epitome of the international director of the late silent era was Carl Dreyer. He began in Denmark as a journalist and then worked as a scriptwriter at Nordisk from 1913 on, when the company was still a powerful force. Dreyer’s first film as a director, The President (1919), used traditional Scandinavian elements, including eye-catching sets, a relatively austere style, and dramatic lighting. His second film, Leaves from Satan’s Book (1920), was also made for Nordisk; influenced by D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, it told a series of stories of suffering and faith. In The President and other early films, Dreyer often calls as much attention to the set and incidental props as to the main action.

Cinéma Pur
Cinéma Pur 1920s Cinema Pur

In 1924, a casual collaboration of artists resulted in an abstract film that did not use animated drawings but rather everyday objects and rhythmic editing. American set designer Dudley Murphy had decided to mount a series of “visual symphonies,” the first of which was a rather literal-minded ballet film, Danse Macabre (1922). In Paris, he encountered Man Ray and modernist poet Ezra Pound, who inspired him to do a more abstract work. Ray shot some footage, but the French painter Fernand Léger completed the filming of Ballet Mécanique. Murphy did the cinematography, and Léger directed a complex film juxtaposing shots of objects like pot lids and machine parts with images of his own paintings. There were prismatic shots of women’s faces, as well as an innovative shot of a washerwoman climbing a flight of steps, repeated identically many times. Léger aspired to make a film about Charlie Chaplin, and he opened and closed Ballet mécanique with an animated figure of the comedian in his own painting style. The film pays tribute to Chaplin with a moving puppet designed by Léger.

Cinéma pur (French for "pure cinema") was an avant-garde film movement of French filmmakers, who "wanted to return the medium to its elemental origins" of "vision and movement."^[28] It declares cinema to be its own independent art form that should not borrow from literature or stage. As such, "pure cinema" is made up of nonstory, noncharacter films that convey abstract emotional experiences through unique cinematic devices

 

Dada
Dada was a movement that attracted artists in all media. It began around 1915, as a result of artists’ sense of the vast, meaningless loss of life in World War I. Artists in New York, Zurich, France, and Germany proposed to sweep aside traditional values and to elevate an absurdist view of the world. They would base artistic creativity on randomness and imagination. Max Ernst displayed an artwork and provided a hatchet so that spectators could demolish it. Marcel Duchamp invented “ready-made” artwork, in which a found object is placed in a museum and labeled; in 1917, he created a scandal by signing a urinal “R. Mutt” and trying to enter it in a prestigious show. Dadaists were fascinated by collage, the technique of assembling disparate elements in bizarre juxtapositions. Ernst, for example, made collages by pasting together scraps of illustrations from advertisements and technical manuals.

Under the leadership of poet Tristan Tzara, Dadaist publications, exhibitions, and performances flourished during the late 1910s and early 1920s. The performance “soirées” included such events as poetry readings in which several passages were performed simultaneously. On July 7, 1923, the last major Dada event, the “Soirée du ‘Coeur à Barbe’” (“Soirée of the ‘Bearded Heart’”), included three short films: Manhatta by American artists Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, one of Richter’s Rhythmus abstract works, and the American artist Man Ray’s first film, the ironically titled Le Retour à la Raison (“Return to Reason”). The element of chance certainly entered into the creation of Le Retour à la Raison, since Tzara gave Ray only twenty-four hours’ notice that he was to make a film for the program. Ray combined some hastily shot live footage with stretches of “Rayograms.” The soirée proved a mixed success, since Tzara’s rivals, led by poet André Breton, provoked a riot in the audience. Man Ray created “Rayogram” images without a camera by scattering objects like pins and tacks directly on the film strip, exposing it briefly to light, and developing the result.

Dada
Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their work

 

Surrealism
Surrealism 1920s

Surrealism resembled Dada in many ways, particularly in its disdain for orthodox art. Like Dada, Surrealism sought startling juxtapositions. André Breton, who led the break with the Dadaists and the creation of Surrealism, cited an image from a work by the Comte de Lautréamont: “Beautiful as the unexpected meeting, on a dissection table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella.” The movement was influenced by the emerging theories of psychoanalysis. Rather than depending on pure chance for the creation of artworks, Surrealists sought to tap the unconscious mind. They wanted to render the incoherent narratives of dreams directly in language or images, without the interference of conscious thought processes. Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Paul Klee were important Surrealist artists.

The ideal Surrealist film differed from Dada works in that it would not be a humorous, chaotic assemblage of events. Instead, it would trace a disturbing, often sexually charged story that followed the inexplicable logic of a dream. With a patron’s backing, Dadaist Man Ray moved into Surrealism with Emak Bakia (1927), which used many film tricks to suggest a woman’s mental state. At the end she is seen in a famous image, her eyes closed, with eyeballs painted on them; she opens her eyes and smiles at the camera. Many Surrealists denounced the film as containing too little narrative. Ray’s next film, L’Étoile de Mer (“The Starfish,” 1927), hinted at a story based on a script by Surrealist poet Robert Desnos. It shows a couple in love, interspersed with random shots of starfish, trains, and other objects. L’Étoile de Mer uses split-screen cinematography to create Surrealist juxtapositions of starfish in jars, roulette wheels, and other objects.

 

 

 In 1928, Jean Epstein combined Impressionist camera techniques with Expressionist set design to create an eerie, portentous tone in The Fall of the House of Usher, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story. A corner in a room of Usher’s mansion in Epstein’s adapation displays the influence of German Expressionism.

By the mid-1920s, the boundaries between the French Impressionist and German Expressionist movements were blurred. In The Street, Impressionist-style superimpositions depict the hero’s visions of delights that await him in the city.

 Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg’s 1926 adaptation of Gogol’s The Cloak contained exaggerations in the acting and mise-en-scène that were reminiscent of Expressionist films. The Cloak contains grotesque elements that recall German Expressionism, such as this giant steaming teapot that heralds the beginning of a strange dream sequence.

. A shot from the final march scene in Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (“Mother Krausen’s Journey to Happiness,” 1929, Piel Jutzi) echoes the climactic demonstration scene in Pudovkin’s Mother. A low angle isolates the major characters against the sky in Soviet Montage fashion as they march in protest.

Underground (1928), used a freely moving camera and several subjective superimpositions to tell a story of love and jealousy in a working-class milieu. As the heroine of Underground looks up at a building, a superimposition reminiscent of French Impressionism conveys her vision of the villain.

 In The Ring, Hitchcock uses distorting mirrors in this shot of dancers to suggest the hero’s mental turmoil during a party.
from A Page of Madness, an inmate obsessed with dancing appears in an elaborate costume, performing in an Expressionist set containing a whirling, striped ball.

April 8 -

The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)  sitting at dinnertable grabs guitar books fall
   knight costume
The Street (Karl Grune, 1923) looking out window clown street superimposed
The Cloak (Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, 1926) teapot, steam soldier
Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (Piel Jutzi, 1929) girl walking among protestors, knees low  
  angle shot up
Underground (Anthony Asquith, 1928) Guys face between two concrete smoke stacks
The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927) flappers, drinking, smoking superimposed images of
  wife long keyboard with record – record over his head.
A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926) rain window big striped ball dancer –
    expressionist and impressionist techniques
The President (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919) lovely mini photo frames a window sepia
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) muted expressionist design -
  panchromatic film, no makeup low framings accelerated torture chamber soviet  french
Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932) Shadow – man  staircase sitting shadows dancing
   man in coffin seeing things from his pov outwards
Opus 2 (Walter Ruttmann, 1921) blue full moon shape, contrasts black and fog staircase
   red blob – experimental animation
Diagonal Symphony (Viking Eggeling, 1924) shape of combs variations white drawings
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926) sexy cut outs Arabic
Tusalava (Len Lye, 1929) horizontal three areas – dots black grey bubbles aboriginal art
Le Retour à la Raison (Man Ray, 1923) tacks pins circles/black carnival springs morse code
   ice tray inside boobs images directly on film strip nails springs
Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924) – circus camel coffin chase rollercoaster superimposed shots -
   a Dadaist fantasy
Anémic Cinéma (Marcel Duchamp, 1926) swirl French words in circle thumb print at end.
Ghosts before Breakfast (Hans Richter, 1928) clock bolos tie head in target guns men eat
L’Étoile de Mer (Man Ray, 1927) 8 things going on at once in little boxes an orchid – split-
  screen surrealist juxtapositions of starfish in jars roulette wheels
The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1928) strangling priests lady church –
  priest’s head splits in half red blood down face woman in weird fur bonnet surreal
Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí, 1928) pull piano ants hand cocktails – the
  quintessential surrealist film.
L’Age d’or (Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí, 1930) ox in her bed looks like cow
Ballet Mécanique (Dudley Murphy & Fernand Léger, 1924) lady smiling swinging objects
  eyes whisk tribute to Chaplin eyes upside down nonnarrative cinema pur
Cinq Minutes de Cinéma Pur (Henri Chomette, 1926) glass circles squares crystals trees
Thème et Variations (Germaine Dulac, 1928) engine ballet trees hands seedlings
H2O (Ralph Steiner, 1929) foam in water clear but light ripples in water
Manhatta (Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand in 1920)  high to down of ny streets also walking -
  abstract views of battery park old trolley  men with hats
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927) water vertical lines train berlin
Rain (Joris Ivens, 1929) rainy Amsterdam puddles on a drum tin on street shadows
The Life and Death of 9413—a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey, 1927) vertical bldgs.   
    man happy stencils of bus Hollywood super happy man with hat
The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber, 1928) diagonal
  shot grabbing at lens stairs flying hat woman up stairs shadow double vision
Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson, 1930) black guy woman waving on bed dresses hat
Impatience (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1929) Heavy eyebrows hair in bun riding bike
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) eskimos canoes walrus husky dogs inuit
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (Ernest B. Schoedsack & Merian Cooper, 1925) Iranian
   nomads in snow up a hill horses up snow hills zig zag
Kino-Pravda (Number 21) (Dziga Vertov, 1925) audience lenin in coffin marching signs kids a
  lady marching lenin’s head above building
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esfir Shub, 1927) tons of people white furry hat of military
 dress flags sign down broken monuments hand on ball Russian female director newsreels
Turksib (Viktor Turin, 1929) train Turkestan – Siberian railway chase camel
Quo Vadis? (Georg Jacoby & Gabriellino D’Annunzio, 1923) nero feeding eels
Curro Vargas (José Buchs, 1923) old Spanish doorway walk into living room top hats read
  paper son present