+ [R] - Gabriele Jutz - Sonance.net

gabriele.jutz@uni-ak.ac.at 

FILMAVANTGARDE I: 

DIE 1920ER JAHRE 

READER 

Deutschland: Abstrakter Film 

Frankreich: Dadaismus, Surrealismus 

Sowjetunion: Kino der Montage 

Universität für angewandte Kunst 

Wintersemester 2009/10

Dieser Reader darf nur für Studienzwecke benutzt werden. 

Der Reader ist nach Text durchsuchbar. 

Bei der Erstellung wurde eine automatische Texterkennung verwendet. 

Daher sind vereinzelt Schreibfehler möglich.

Filmavantgarde I: Die 1920er Jahre (Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien, WS 2009/10) 


LITERATURLISTE 

[R] = Text befindet sich im Reader; online unter: http://jutz.sonance.net/ 

[H] = Buch befindet sich im Handapparat (Bibliothek) 

BLOCK 0 

ALLGEMEIN EINFÜHRENDE LITERATUR 

Andreas HUYSSEN: The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde – Technology – 

Mass Culture (1980). In: Ders.: After the Great Divide. Modernism, 

Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 

1986, S. 3–15. [R] 

Bernd HÜPPAUF: Das Unzeitgemäße der Avantgarden. Die Zeit, 

Avantgarden und die Gegenwart. In: Wolfgang Asholt, Walter 

Fähnders (Hg.): Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer. Avantgarde, 

Avantgardekritik, Avantgardeforschung. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000, 

S. 547–579. [R] 

Hans SCHEUGL und Ernst SCHMIDT JR: Eine Subgeschichte des 

Films. Lexikon des Avantgarde-, Experimental- und Undergroundfilms, 

Bd. 1 und Bd. 2. Frankfurt/M. 1974. [H] 

Heinrich KLOTZ: Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert. Moderne, Postmoderne, 

Zweite Moderne. München: Beck 1994. [H] 

Leicht zu lesende Einführung in den Moderne-Begriff der bildenden Kunst 

Anne FRIEDBERG: The End of Modernity: Where Is Your Rupture? In: 

Dies.: Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: 

University of California Press 1994, S. 157–179. [H] + [R] 

Thematisiert die Frage nach der filmischen Moderne



Danny BIRCHALL: The Avant-Garde Archive Online. In: Film 

Quaterly,Vol. 63. University of California 2009, S. 12-14. [R] 

BLOCK 1 

DEUTSCHLAND – ABSOLUTER/ABSTRAKTER FILM 

Helmut HERBST: Mit der Technik denken: Konstruktion einer 

Augenmusik. In: Sound & Vision – Musikvideo und Filmkunst. Katalog 

zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung im Deutschen Filmmuseum/Frankfurt/M. 

1994, S. 37–41. [R] 

Thomas MANK: Die Kunst des Absoluten Films. In: Sound & Vision – 

Musikvideo und Filmkunst. Katalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung im 

Deutschen Filmmuseum/Frankfurt/M. 1994, S. 73–87. [R] 

Holger WILMESMEIER: Deutsche Avantgarde und Film. Die 

Filmmatinee „Der absolute Film“ (3. und 10. Mai 1925). Münster, 

Hamburg: LIT Verlag 1994. [H] 

Christine N. BRINCKMANN: „Abstraktion“ und „Einfühlung“ im 

deutschen Avantgarde-Film der 20er Jahre. In: Dies.: Die 

anthropomorphe Kamera und andere Schriften zur filmischen Narration. 

Zürich: Chronos 1997, S. 276–275. 

BLOCK 2 

FRANKREICH – DADAISMUS UND SURREALISMUS 

Hans RICHTER: Le coeur à barbe. In: Ders.: Dada – Kunst und 

Antikunst. Köln: DuMont 1964, S. 194–196. [R] + [H] 

Wieland HERZFELDE: Zur Einführung (1920). In: Uwe M. Schneede



(Hg.): Die zwanziger Jahre. Köln: DuMont 1979, S. 31–34. [R] + [H] 

Thomas ELSAESSER: Dada/Cinema? In: Rudolf E. Kuenzli (Hg.): Dada 

and Surrealist Film. Cambridge, London: MIT Press 1996, S. 13–27. [R] 

+ [H] 

Judi FREEMAN: Bridging Purism and Surrealism: The Origins and 

Production of Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique. In: Rudolf E. Kuenzli 

(Hg.): Dada and Surrealist Film. Cambridge, London: MIT Press 1996, 

S. 28–45. [R] + [H] 

Sandy FLITTERMAN-LEWIS: Dulac in Context: French Film 

Production in the Twenties. In: Dies.: To Desire Differently. Feminism 

and the French Cinema. Univ. of Illinois Press 1990, S. 78-97. [R] 

Sandy FLITTERMAN-LEWIS: From Fantasy to Structure of the 

Fantasm: The Smiling Mme Beudet and The Seashell and the Clergyman. 

In: Dies.: To Desire Differently. Feminism and the French Cinema. Univ. 

of Illinois Press 1990, S. 98-140. [R] 

Linda WILLIAMS: Un Chien andalou. In: Dies.: Figures of Desire. A 

Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film. Univ. of Calif. Press 1981, S. 

53–105. [R] + [H] 

BLOCK 3 

SOWJETUNION – KINO DER MONTAGE 

Mark JOYCE: The Soviet Montage Cinema of the 1920s. In: Jill Nelmes 

(Hg.): An Introduction to Film Studies (second edition). London, New 

York: Routledge 1999, S. 417–450. [R] + [H] 

Sergej M. EISENSTEIN: Über die Reinheit der Filmsprache (1934). In:



Ders.: Schriften 2, Hans-Joachim Schlegel (Hg.). München: Hanser 

1973, S. 141–150. [R] 

Dziga VERTOV: Wir. Variante eines Manifestes (1922). In: Franz-Josef 

Albersmeier (Hg.): Texte zur Theorie des Films. Stuttgart 1979, S. 19– 

23. [R] 

Dziga VERTOV: Kinoglaz (1924). In: Franz-Josef Albersmeier (Hg.): 

Texte zur Theorie des Films. Stuttgart: Reclam 1979, S. 39–41. [R] 

Vlada PETRIC: Constructivism in Film. The Man with the Movie 

Camera. A Cinematic Analysis. Cambridge University Press 1987. [H] 

Prüfungsmodalitäten 

***** 

Fragenkatalog, der zu Hause auf der Basis des Readers und der 

Lehrveranstaltung beantwortet werden soll. 

– 1. Abgabetermin: bis 11. März 2010 

– 2. Abgabetermin: bis 10. Juni 2010 (letzter Termin!) 

***** 

Gastvortrag Stephen Zepke am 12. Jänner

BLOCK 1 

Deutschland – Abstrakter Film 

FILMLISTE 

Hans Richter 

Rhythmus 21 (1921, stumm, 4 Min.) 

Rhythmus 23 (1923, stumm, 4 Min.) 

Filmstudie (1926, 5 Min.) 

Dadaistische und surrealistische Filme von Richter: 

Vormittagsspuk (1927–28, 7 Min.) 

Race Symphony (1928–29, 7 Min.) 

Zweigroschenzauber (1928-29, 2 Min.) 

Inflation (1927–28, 3 Min.) 

Alles dreht sich, alles bewegt sich (1929, 3 Min.) 

Viking Eggeling 

Diagonal Symphonie (1921? 1925?, s/w, stumm, 8 Min.) 

Walter Ruttmann 

Opus IV (1925, stumm, 3 Min.) 

Weekend (1930, Hörspiel, 11 Min. 10 Sek.) 

Oskar Fischinger 

Muratti greift ein (1934, Farbe, 2 Min.) 

Spiritual Constructions (1927, s/w, 7 Min.) 

Study N° 7 (1931, s/w, 2 Min. 30 Sek.) 

Study N° 8 (1931, s/w, 5 Min.) 

Kreise (1933, Farbe, 2 Min.) 

Allegretto (1936, Farbe, 3 Min.) 

Motion Painting N° 1 (1947, Farbe, 11 Min.) 

Filmavantgarde I: 1920er Jahre 

Universität für angewandte Kunst, WS 2009/10 

gabriele.jutz@uni-ak.ac.at

BLOCK 2 

Frankreich – Dadaismus und Surrealismus 

Marcel Duchamp 

Anémic Cinéma (1926) 

Fernand Leger 

Le Ballet Mécanique (1924) 

René Clair 

Entr’acte (1924) 

Man Ray 

Le retour à la raison (1923) 

Emak Bakia (1927) 

L'étoile de mer (1928) 

Filmavantgarde I: 1920er Jahre 

Universität für angewandte Kunst, WS 2009/10 


Germaine Dulac 

La coquille et le clergyman (Die Muschel und der Kleriker) (1927) 

Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali 

Un chien andalou (1929) 

BLOCK 3 

Sowjetunion – Kino der Montage 

Esfir Shub 

The Fall of the Romanoff Dynasty (1927) – Ausschnitt 

Sergej M. Eisenstein 

Streik (1924) – Finalsequenz 

Panzerkreuzer Potemkin (1925) – Analyse von 14 Einstellungen 

Dziga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)

BLOCK 0 

ALLGEMEIN EINFÜHRENDE LITERATUR

Andreas HUYSSEN: The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde – Technology – 

Mass Culture (1980). In: Ders.: After the Great Divide. Modernism, 

Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 

1986, S. 3-15. 

1 

The Hidden Dialectic: 

Avantgarde—Technology— 

Mass Culture (1980) 

I 

Historical materialism wishes to retain that image 

of the past which unexpectedly appears to 

man singled out by history at a moment of danger. 

The danger affects both the content of the 

tradition and its receivers. The same threat 

hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the 

ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be 

made anew to wrest tradition away from conformism 

that is about to overpower it. 

Walter Benjamin 

Theses on the Philosophy of History 

When Walter Benjamin, one of the foremost theoreticians of avantgarde 

art and literature, wrote these sentences in 1940 he certainly did 

not have the avantgarde in mind at all. It had not yet become part of 

that tradition which Benjamin was bent on salvaging. Nor could Benjamin 

have foreseen to what extent conformism would eventually 

overpower the tradition of avantgardism, both in advanced capitalist 

societies and, more recently, in East European societies as well. Like a 

parasitic growth, conformism has all but obliterated the original iconoclastic 

and subversive thrust of the historical avantgarde 1 of the first 

This essay was first published in The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial 

Culture, ed. by Kathleen Woodward (Madison, Wis.: Coda Press, 1980), pp. 151-164.

4 AFTER THE GREAT DIVIDE 

three or four decades of this century. This conformism is manifest in 

the vast depoliticization of post-World War II art and its institutionalization 

as administered culture, 2 as well as in academic interpretations 

which, by canonizing the historical avantgarde, modernism and 

postmodernism, have methodologically severed the vital dialectic between 

the avantgarde and mass culture in industrial civilization. In 

most academic criticism the avantgarde has been ossified into an elite 

enterprise beyond politics and beyond everyday life, though their 

transformation was once a central project of the historical avantgarde. 

In light of the tendency to project the post-1945 depoliticization of 

culture back onto the earlier avantgarde movements, it is crucial to 

recover a sense of the cultural politics of the historical avantgarde. 

Only then can we raise meaningful questions about the relationship 

between the historical avantgarde and the neo-avantgarde, modernism 

and post-modernism, as well as about the aporias of the avantgarde 

and the consciousness industry (Hans Magnus Enzensberger), the 

tradition of the new (Harold Rosenberg) and the death of the avantgarde 

(Leslie Fiedler). For if discussions of the avantgarde do not break 

with the oppressive mechanisms of hierarchical discourse (high vs. 

popular, the new new vs. the old new, art vs. politics, truth vs. ideology), 

and if the question of today's literary and artistic avantgarde is 

not placed in a larger socio-historical framework, the prophets of the 

new will remain locked in futile battle with the sirens of cultural 

decline—a battle which by now only results in a sense of deja vu. 

II 

Historically the concept of the avantgarde, which until the 1930s was 

not limited to art but always referred to political radicalism as well, 3 

assumed prominence in the decades following the French Revolution. 

Henri de Saint Simon's Opinions litteraires, philosophiques et industrielles 

(1825) ascribed a vanguard role to the artist in the construction of the 

ideal state and the new golden age of the future, 4 and since then the 

concept of an avantgarde has remained inextricably bound to the idea 

of progress in industrial and technological civilization. In Saint Simon's 

messianic scheme, art, science, and industry were to generate and 

guarantee the progress of the emerging technical-industrial bourgeois 

world, the world of the city and the masses, capital and culture. The 

avantgarde, then, only makes sense if it remains dialectically related to 

that for which it serves as the vanguard—speaking narrowly, to the 

older modes of artistic expression, speaking broadly, to the life of the 

The Hidden Dialectic 5 

masses which Saint Simon's avantgarde scientists, engineers, and artists 

were to lead into the golden age of bourgeois prosperity. 

Throughout the 19th century the idea of the avantgarde remained 

linked to political radicalism. Through the mediation of the Utopian 

socialist Charles Fourier, it found its way into socialist anarchism and 

eventually into substantial segments of the bohemian subcultures of 

the turn of the century. 5 It is certainly no coincidence that the impact of 

anarchism on artists and writers reached its peak precisely when the 

historical avantgarde was in a crucial stage of its formation. The attraction 

of artists and intellectuals to anarchism at that time can be attributed 

to two major factors: artists and anarchists alike rejected 

bourgeois society and its stagnating cultural conservatism, and both 

anarchists and left-leaning bohemians fought the economic and technological 

determinism and scientism of Second International Marxism, 

which they saw as the theoretical and practical mirror image of the 

bourgeois world. 6 Thus, when the bourgeoisie had fully established its 

domination of the state and industry, science and culture, the avantgardist 

was not at all in the forefront of the kind of struggle Saint 

Simon had envisioned. On the contrary, he found himself on the 

margins of the very industrial civilization which he was opposing and 

which, according to Saint Simon, he was to prophesy and bring about. 

In terms of understanding the later condemnations of avantgarde art 

and literature both by the right (entartete Kunst) and by the left 

(bourgeois decadence), it is important to recognize that as early as the 

1890s the avantgarde's insistence on cultural revolt clashed with the 

bourgeoisie's need for cultural legitimation, as well as with the preference 

of the Second International's cultural politics for the classical 

bourgeois heritage. 7 

Neither Marx nor Engels ever attributed major importance to culture 

(let alone avantgarde art and literature) in the working-class 

struggles, although it can be argued that the link between cultural and 

political-economic revolution is indeed implicit in their early works, 

especially in Marx's Parisian Manuscripts and the Communist Manifesto. 

Nor did Marx or Engels ever posit the Party as the avantgarde of the 

working class. Rather, it was Lenin who institutionalized the Party as 

the vanguard of the revolution in What Is to Be Done (1902) and soon 

after, in his article "Party Organization and Party Literature" (1905), 

severed the vital dialectic between the political and cultural avantgarde, 

subordinating the latter to the Party. Declaring the artistic 

avantgarde to be a mere instrument of the political vanguard, "a cog 

and screw of one single great Social Democratic mechanism set in


motion by the entire politically conscious avantgarde of the entire 

working class," 8 Lenin thus helped pave the way for the later suppression 

and liquidation of the Russian artistic avantgarde which began in 

the early 1920s and culminated with the official adoption of the doctrine 

of socialist realism in 1934. 9 

In the West, the historical avantgarde died a slower death, and the 

reasons for its demise vary from country to country. The German 

avantgarde of the 1920s was abruptly terminated when Hitler came to 

power in 1933, and the development of the West European avantgarde 

was interrupted by the war and the German occupation of Europe. 

Later, during the cold war, especially after the notion of the end of 

ideology took hold, the political thrust of the historical avantgarde was 

lost and the center of artistic innovation shifted from Europe to the 

United States. To some extent, of course, the lack of political perspective 

in art movements such as abstract expressionism and Pop art was a 

function of the altogether different relationship between avantgarde 

art and cultural tradition in the United States, where the iconoclastic 

rebellion against a bourgeois cultural heritage would have made neither 

artistic nor political sense. In the United States, the literary and 

artistic heritage never played as central a role in legitimizing bourgeois 

domination as it did in Europe. But these explanations for the death of 

the historical avantgarde in the West at a certain time, although critical, 

are not exhaustive. The loss of potency of the historical avantgarde 

may be related more fundamentally to a broad cultural change in the 

West in the 20th century: it may be argued that the rise of the Western 

culture industry, which paralleled the decline of the historical avantgarde, 

has made the avantgarde's enterprise itself obsolete. 

To summarize: since Saint Simon, the avantgardes of Europe had 

been characterized by a precarious balance of art and politics, but since 

the 1930s the cultural and political avantgardes have gone their separate 

ways. In the two major systems of domination in the contemporary 

world, the avantgarde has lost its cultural and political explosiveness 

and has itself become a tool of legitimation. In the United States, a 

depoliticized cultural avantgarde has produced largely affirmative culture, 

most visibly in pop art where the commodity fetish often reigns 

supreme. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the historical 

avantgarde was first strangled by the iron hand of Stalin's cultural 

henchman Zhdanov and then revived as part of the cultural heritage, 

thus providing legitimacy to regimes which face growing cultural and 

political dissent. 

Both politically and aesthetically, today it is important to retain that 

image of the now lost unity of the political and artistic avantgarde, 


which may help us forge a new unity of politics and culture adequate to 

our own times. Since it has become more difficult to share the historical 

avantgarde's belief that art can be crucial to a transformation of society, 

the point is not simply to revive the avantgarde. Any such attempt 

would be doomed, especially in a country such as the United States 

where the European avantgarde failed to take roots precisely because 

no belief existed in the power of art to change the world. Nor, however, 

is it enough to cast a melancholy glance backwards and indulge in 

nostalgia for the time when the affinity of art to revolution could be 

taken for granted. The point is rather to take up the historical avantgarde's 

insistence on the cultural transformation of everyday life and 

from there to develop strategies for today's cultural and political context. 

Ill 

The notion that culture is a potentially explosive force and a threat to 

advanced capitalism (and to bureaucratized socialism, for that matter) 

has a long history within Western Marxism from the early Lukacs up 

through Habermas's Legitimation Crisis and Negt/Kluge's Offenthchkeit 

und Erfahrung. 10 It even underlies, if only by its conspicuous absence, 

Adorno's seemingly dualistic theory of a monolithically manipulative 

culture industry and an avantgarde locked into negativity. Peter Burger, 

a recent theoretician of the avantgarde, draws extensively on 

this critical Marxist tradition, especially on Benjamin and Adorno. He 

argues convincingly that the major goal of art movements such as 

Dada, surrealism, and the post-1917 Russian avantgarde was the 

reintegration of art into life praxis, the closing of the gap separating art 

from reality. Burger interprets the widening gap between art and life, 

which had become all but unbridgeable in late 19th century aestheticism, 

as a logical development of art within bourgeois society. In its 

attempt to close the gap, the avantgarde had to destroy what Burger 

calls "institution art," a term for the institutional framework in which 

art was produced, distributed, and received in bourgeois society, a 

framework which rested on Kant's and Schiller's aesthetic of the necessary 

autonomy of all artistic creation. During the 19th century the 

increasingly categorical separation of art from reality and the insistence 

on the autonomy of art, which had once freed art from the fetters 

of church and state, had worked to push art and artists to the margins 

of society. In the art for art's sake movement, the break with society—the 

society of imperialism—had led into a dead end, a fact painfully 

clear to the best representatives of aestheticism. Thus the histori-


cal avantgarde attempted to transform l'art pour l'art's isolation from 

reality—which reflected as much opposition to bourgeois society as 

Zola's j'accuse—into an active rebellion that would make art productive 

for social change. In the historical avantgarde, Burger argues, 

bourgeois art reached the stage of self-criticism; it no longer only 

criticized previous art qua art, but also critiqued the very "institution 

art" as it had developed in bourgeois society since the 18th century." 

Of course, the use of the Marxian categories of criticism and selfcriticism 

implies that the negation and sublation (Aufhebung) of the 

bourgeois "institution art" is bound to the transformation of bourgeois 

society itself. Since such a transformation did not take place, the 

avantgarde's attempt to integrate art and life almost had to fail. This 

failure, later often labelled the death of the avantgarde, is Burger's 

starting point and his reason for calling the avantgarde "historical." 

And yet, the failure of the avantgarde to reorganize a new life praxis 

through art and politics resulted in precisely those historical phenomena 

which make any revival of the avantgarde's project today 

highly problematic, if not impossible: namely, the false sublations of 

the art/life dichotomy in fascism with its aesthetization of politics, 12 in 

Western mass culture with its fictionalization of reality, and in socialist 

realism with its claims of reality status for its fictions. 

If we agree with the thesis that the avantgarde's revolt was directed 

against the totality of bourgeois culture and its psycho-social mechanisms 

of domination and control, and if we then make it our task to 

salvage the historical avantgarde from the conformism which has 

obscured its political thrust, then it becomes crucial to answer a number 

of questions which go beyond Burger's concern with the "institution 

art" and the formal structure of the avantgarde art work. How 

precisely did the dadaists, surrealists, futurists, constructivists, and 

productivists attempt to overcome the art/life dichotomy? How did 

they conceptualize and put into practice the radical transformation of 

the conditions of producing, distributing, and consuming art? What 

exactly was their place within the political spectrum of those decades 

and what concrete political possibilities were open to them in specific 

countries? In what way did the conjunction of political and cultural 

revolt inform their art and to what extent did that art become part of 

the revolt itself? Answers to these questions will vary depending on 

whether one focuses on Bolshevik Russia, France after Versailles, or 

Germany, doubly beaten by World War I and a failed revolution. 

Moreover, even within these countries and the various artistic movements, 

differentiations have to be made. It is fairly obvious that a 

montage by Schwitters differs aesthetically and politically from a 

photomontage by John Heartfield, that Dada Zurich and Dada Paris 


developed an artistic and political sensibility which differed substantially 

from that of Dada Berlin, that Mayakovsky and revolutionary 

futurism cannot be equated with the productivism of Arvatov or 

Gastev. And yet, as Burger has convincingly suggested, all these phenomena 

can legitimately be subsumed under the notion of the historical 

avantgarde. 

IV 

I will not attempt here to answer all these questions, but will focus 

instead on uncovering the hidden dialectic of avantgarde and mass 

culture, thereby casting new light on the objective historical conditions 

of avantgarde art, as well as on the socio-political subtext of its inevitable 

decline and the simultaneous rise of mass culture. 

Mass culture as we know it in the West is unthinkable without 20th 

century technology—media techniques as well as technologies of transportation 

(public and private), the household, and leisure. Mass 

culture depends on technologies of mass production and mass reproduction 

and thus on the homogenization of difference. While it is 

generally recognized that these technologies have substantially transformed 

everyday life in the 20th century, it is much less widely acknowledged 

that technology and the experience of an increasingly 

technologized life world have also radically transformed art. Indeed, 

technology played a crucial, if not the crucial, role in the avantgarde's 

attempt to overcome the art/life dichotomy and make art productive in 

the transformation of everyday life. Burger has argued correctly that 

from Dada on the avantgarde movements distinguish themselves from 

preceding movements such as impressionism, naturalism, and cubism 

not only in their attack on the "institution art" as such, but also in their 

radical break with the referential mimetic aesthetic and its notion of 

the autonomous and organic work of art. I would go further: no other 

single factor has influenced the emergence of the new avantgarde art 

as much as technology,-which not only fueled the artists' imagination 

(dynamism, machine cult, beauty of technics, constructivist and productivist 

attitudes), but penetrated to the core of the work itself. The 

invasion of the very fabric of the art object by technology and what one 

may loosely call the technological imagination can best be grasped in 

artistic practices such as collage, assemblage, montage and photomontage; 

it finds its ultimate fulfillment in photography and film, art forms 

which can not only be reproduced, but are in fact designed for mechanical 

reproducibility. It was Walter Benjamin who, in his famous 

essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," first 

made the point that it is precisely this mechanical reproducibility which


has radically changed the nature of art in the 20th century, transforming 

the conditions of producing, distributing, and receiving/consuming 

art. In the context of social and cultural theory Benjamin conceptualized 

what Marcel Duchamp had already shown in 1919 in 

L.H.O.O.Q. By iconoclastically altering a reproduction of the Mona Lisa 

and, to use another example, by exhibiting a mass-produced urinal as a 

fountain sculpture, Marcel Duchamp succeeded in destroying what 

Benjamin called the traditional art work's aura, that aura of authenticity 

and uniqueness that constituted the work's distance from life and 

that required contemplation and immersion on the part of the spectator. 

In another essay, Benjamin himself acknowledged that the intention 

to destroy this aura was already inherent in the artistic practices of 

Dada. 13 The destruction of the aura, of seemingly natural and organic 

beauty, already characterized the works of artists who still created 

individual rather than mass-reproducible art objects. The decay of the 

aura, then, was not as immediately dependent on techniques of mechanical 

reproduction as Benjamin had argued in the Reproduction 

essay. It is indeed important to avoid such reductive analogies between 

industrial and artistic techniques and not to collapse, say, montage 

technique in art or film with industrial montage. 14 

It may actually have been a new experience of technology that 

sparked the avantgarde rather than just the immanent development of 

the artistic forces of production. The two poles of this new experience 

of technology can be described as the aesthetization of technics since 

the late 19th century (world expos, garden cities, the cite industrielle of 

Tony Gamier, the CittaNuova of Antonio Sant'Elia, the Werkbund, etc.) 

on the one hand and the horror of technics inspired by the awesome 

war machinery of World War I on the other. And this horror of 

technics can itself be regarded as a logical and historical outgrowth of 

the critique of technology and the positivist ideology of progress articulated 

earlier by the late l9th-century cultural radicals who in turn were 

strongly influenced by Nietzsche's critique of bourgeois society. Only 

the post-1910 avantgarde, however, succeeded in giving artistic expression 

to this bipolar experience of technology in the bourgeois 

world by integrating technology and the technological imagination in 

the production of art. 

The experience of technology at the root of the dadaist revolt was 

the highly technologized battlefield of World War I—that war which 

the Italian futurists glorified as total liberation and which the dadaists 

condemned as a manifestation of the ultimate insanity of the European 

bourgeoisie. While technology revealed its destructive power in the big 

Materialschlachten of the war, the dadaists projected technology's destructivism 

into art and turned it aggressively against the sanctified 


sphere of bourgeois high culture whose representatives, on the whole, 

had enthusiastically welcomed the war in 1914. Dada's radical and 

disruptive moment becomes even clearer if we remember that 

bourgeois ideology had lived off the separation of the cultural from 

industrial and economic reality, which of course was the primary 

sphere of technology. Instrumental reason, technological expansion, 

and profit maximization were held to be diametrically opposed to the 

schöner Schein (beautiful appearance) and interesseloses Wohlgefallen (disinterested 

pleasure) dominant in the sphere of high culture. 

In its attempt to reintegrate art and life, the avantgarde of course did 

not want to unite the bourgeois concept of reality with the equally 

bourgeois notion of high, autonomous culture. To use Marcuse's 

terms, they did not want to weld the reality principle to affirmative 

culture, since these two principles constituted each other precisely in 

their separation. On the contrary, by incorporating technology into 

art, the avantgarde liberated technology from its instrumental aspects 

and thus undermined both bourgeois notions of technology as progress 

and art as "natural," "autonomous," and "organic." On a more 

traditional representational level, which was never entirely abandoned, 

the avantgarde's radical critique of the principles of bourgeois 

enlightenment and its glorification of progress and technology were 

manifested in scores of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other art 

objects in which humans are presented as machines and automatons, 

puppets and mannequins, often faceless, with hollow heads, blind or 

staring into space. The fact that these presentations did not aim at 

some abstract "human condition," but rather critiqued the invasion of 

capitalism's technological instrumentality into the fabric of everyday 

life, even into the human body, is perhaps most evident in the works of 

Dada Berlin, the most politicized wing of the Dada movement. While 

only Dada Berlin integrated its artistic activities with the working-class 

struggles in the Weimar Republic, it would be reductive to deny Dada 

Zurich or Dada Paris any political importance and to decree that their 

project was "only aesthetic," "only cultural." Such an interpretation 

falls victim to the same reified dichotomy of culture and politics which 

the historical avantgarde had tried to explode. 

V 

In Dada, technology mainly functioned to ridicule and dismantle 

bourgeois high culture and its ideology, and thus was ascribed an 

iconoclastic value in accord with Dada's anarchistic thrust. Technology 

took an entirely different meaning in the post-1917 Russian avantgarde—in 

futurism, constructivism. Droductivism, and the proletcult.


The Russian avantgarde had already completed its break with tradition 

when it turned openly political after the revolution. Artists organized 

themselves and took an active part in the political struggles, many of 

them by joining Lunacharsky's NARKOMPROS, the Commissariat for 

Education. Many artists automatically assumed a correspondence and 

potential parallel between the artistic and political revolution, and their 

foremost aim became to weld the disruptive power of avantgarde art to 

the revolution. The avantgarde's goal to forge a new unity of art and 

life by creating a new art and a new life seemed about to be realized in 

revolutionary Russia. 

This conjunction of political and cultural revolution with the new 

view of technology became most evident in the LEF group, the productivist 

movement, and the proletcult. As a matter of fact, these left 

artists, writers, and critics adhered to a cult of technology which to any 

contemporary radical in the West must have seemed next to inexplicable, 

particularly since it expressed itself in such familiar capitalist 

concepts as standardization, Americanization, and even taylorization. 

In the mid-1920s, when a similar enthusiasm for technihcation, Americanism, 

and functionalism had taken hold among liberals of the 

Weimar Republic, George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde tried to explain 

this Russian cult of technology as emerging from the specific 

conditions of a backward agrarian country on the brink of industrialization 

and rejected it for the art of an already highly industrialized 

West: "In Russia this constructivist romanticism has a much deeper 

meaning and is in a more substantial way socially conditioned than in 

Western Europe. There constructivism is partially a natural reflection 

of the powerful technological offensive of the beginning industrialization." 

15 And yet, originally the technology cult was more than just a 

reflection of industrialization, or, as Grosz and Herzfelde also suggest, 

a propagandistic device. The hope that artists such as Tatlin, Rodchenko, 

Lissitzky, Meyerhold, Tretyakov, Brik, Gastev, Arvatov, Eisenstein, 

Vertov, and others invested in technology was closely tied to the 

revolutionary hopes of 1917. With Marx they insisted on the qualitative 

difference between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions. Marx had 

subsumed artistic creation under the general concept of human labor, 

and he had argued that human self-fulfillment would only be possible 

once the productive forces were freed from oppressive production and 

class relations. Given the Russian situation of 1917, it follows almost 

logically that the productivists, left futurists, and constructivists would 

place their artistic activities within the horizon of a socialized industrial 

production: art and labor, freed for the first time in history from 

oppressive production relations, were to enter into a new relationship. 

PerhaDS the best examDle of this tendency is the work of the Central 


Institute of Labor (CIT), which, under the leadership of Alexey Gastev, 

attempted to introduce the scientific organization of labor (NOT) 

into art and aesthetics. 16 The goal of these artists was not the technological 

development of the Russian economy at any cost—as it was for the 

Party from the NEP period on, and as it is manifest in scores of later 

socialist realist works with their fetishization of industry and technology. 

Their goal was the liberation of everyday life from all its material, 

ideological, and cultural restrictions. The artificial barriers between 

work and leisure, production and culture were to be eliminated. These 

artists did not want a merely decorative art which would lend its 

illusory glow to an increasingly instrumentalized everyday life. They 

aimed at an art which would intervene in everyday life by being both 

useful and beautiful, an art of mass demonstrations and mass festivities, 

an activating art of objects and attitudes, of living and dressing, of 

speaking and writing. Briefly, they did not want what Marcuse has 

called affirmative art, but rather a revolutionary culture, an art of life. 

They insisted on the psycho-physical unity of human life and understood 

that the political revolution could only be successful if it were 

accompanied by a revolution of everyday life. 

VI 

In this insistence on the necessary "organization of emotion and 

thought" (Bogdanov), we can actually trace a similarity between late 

19th-century cultural radicals and the Russian post-1917 avantgarde, 

except that now the role ascribed to technology has been totally reversed. 

It is precisely this similarity, however, which points to interesting 

differences between the Russian and the German avantgarde of the 

1920s, represented by Grosz, Heartfield, and Brecht among others. 

Despite his closeness to Tretyakov's notions of art as production and 

the artist as operator, Brecht never would have subscribed to Tretyakov's 

demand that art be used as a means of the emotional organization 

of the psyche. 17 Rather than describing the artist as an engineer of 

the psyche, as a psycho-constructor, 18 Brecht might have called the 

artist an engineer of reason. His dramatic technique of Verfremdungseffekt 

relies substantially on the emancipatory power of reason and on 

rational ideology critique, principles of the bourgeois enlightenment 

which Brecht hoped to turn effectively against bourgeois cultural 

hegemony. Today we cannot fail to see that Brecht, by trying to use the 

enlightenment dialectically, was unable to shed the vestiges of instrumental 

reason and thus remained caught in that other dialectic of 

enlightenment which Adorno and Horkheimer have exposed. 19 

Brecht, and to some extent also the later Beniamin. tended toward


fetishizing technique, science, and production in art, hoping that modern 

technologies could be used to build a socialist mass culture. Their 

trust that capitalism's power to modernize would eventually lead to its 

breakdown was rooted in a theory of economic crisis and revolution 

which, by the 1930s, had already become obsolete. But even there, the 

differences between Brecht and Benjamin are more interesting than 

the similarities. Brecht does not make his notion of artistic technique as 

exclusively dependent on the development of productive forces as 

Benjamin did in his Reproduction essay. Benjamin, on the other hand, 

never trusted the emancipatory power of reason and the Verfremdungseffekt 

as exclusively as Brecht did. Brecht also never shared Benjamin's 

messianism or his notion of history as an object of construction. 20 But it 

was especially Benjamin's emphatic notion of experience (Erfahrung) 

and profane illumination that separated him from Brecht's enlightened 

trust in ideology critique and pointed to a definite affinity between 

Benjamin and the Russian avantgarde. Just as Tretyakov, in his 

futurist poetic strategy, relied on shock to alter the psyche of the 

recipient of art, Benjamin, too, saw shock as a key to changing the 

mode of reception of art and to disrupting the dismal and catastrophic 

continuity of everyday life. In this respect, both Benjamin and Tretyakov 

differ from Brecht: the shock achieved by Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt 

does not carry its function in itself but remains instrumentally 

bound to a rational explanation of social relations which are to be 

revealed as mystified second nature. Tretyakov and Benjamin, however, 

saw shock as essential to disrupting the frozen patterns of sensory 

perception, not only those of rational discourse. They held that this 

disruption is a prerequisite for any revolutionary reorganization of 

everyday life. As a matter of fact, one of Benjamin's most interesting 

and yet undeveloped ideas concerns the possibility of a historical 

change in sensory perception, which he links to a change in reproduction 

techniques in art, a change in everyday life in the big cities, and the 

changing nature of commodity fetishism in 20th-century capitalism. It 

is highly significant that just as the Russian avantgarde aimed at creating 

a socialist mass culture, Benjamin developed his major concepts 

concerning sense perception (decay of aura, shock, distraction, experience, 

etc.) in essays on mass culture and media as well as in studies on 

Baudelaire and French surrealism. It is in Benjamin's work of the 

1930s that the hidden dialectic between avantgarde art and the Utopian 

hope for an emancipatory mass culture can be grasped alive for the last 

time. After World War II, at the latest, discussions about the avantgarde 

congealed into the reified two-track system of high vs. low, elite 

vs. popular, which itself is the historical expression of the avantgarde's 

failure and of continued bourgeois domination. 


VII 

Today, the obsolescence of avantgarde shock techniques, whether 

dadaist, constructivist, or surrealist, is evident enough. One need only 

think of the exploitation of shock in Hollywood productions such as 

Jaws or Close Encounters of the Third Kind in order to understand that 

shock can be exploited to reaffirm perception rather than change it. 

The same holds true for a Brechtian type of ideology critique. In an 

age saturated with information, including critical information, the 

Verfremdungseffekt has lost its demystifying power. Too much information, 

critical or not, becomes noise. Not only is the historical avantgarde 

a thing of the past, but it is also useless to try to revive it under any 

guise. Its artistic inventions and techniques have been absorbed and 

co-opted by Western mass mediated culture in all its manifestations 

from Hollywood film, television, advertising, industrial design, and 

architecture to the aesthetization of technology and commodity aesthetics. 

The legitimate place of a cultural avantgarde which once carried 

with it the Utopian hope for an emancipatory mass culture under 

socialism has been preempted by the rise of mass mediated culture and 

its supporting industries and institutions. 

Ironically, technology helped initiate the avantgarde artwork and its 

radical break with tradition, but then deprived the avantgarde of its 

necessary living space in everyday life. It was the culture industry, not 

the avantgarde, which succeeded in transforming everyday life in the 

20th century. And yet—the Utopian hopes of the historical avantgarde 

are preserved, even though in distorted form, in this system of secondary 

exploitation euphemistically called mass culture. To some, it 

may therefore seem preferable today to address the contradictions of 

technologized mass culture rather than pondering over the products 

and performances of the various neo-avantgardes, which, more often 

than not, derive their originality from social and aesthetic amnesia. 

Today the best hopes of the historical avantgarde may not be embodied 

in art works at all, but in decentered movements which work 

toward the transformation of everyday life. The point then would be to 

retain the avantgarde's attempt to address those human experiences 

which either have not yet been subsumed under capital, or which are 

stimulated but not fulfilled by it. Aesthetic experience in particular 

must have its place in this transformation of everyday life, since it is 

uniquely apt to organize fantasy, emotions, and sensuality against that 

repressive desublimation which is so characteristic of capitalist culture 

since the 1960s.

Bernd HÜPPAUF: Das Unzeitgemäße der Avantgarden. Die Zeit, 

Avantgarden und die Gegenwart. In: Wolfgang Asholt, Walter Fähnders 

(Hg.): Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer. Avantgarde, Avantgardekritik, 

Avantgardeforschung. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000, S. 547-579. 

DAS UNZEITGEMASSE DER AVANTGARDEN 

Die Zeit, Avantgarden und die Gegenwart 

Bernd Hüppauf 

The present is a period of rapid change and continuous innovation 

through the electronic revolution, the creation of a cyberspace and the 

emergence of a virtual reality. Yet, there is no connection with the 

movements that, from the middle of the 19' century on, associated 

themselves with the new and the future, namely the avantgardes. 

Compared to the present, their language and concept of time seem 

anachronistic. It is the contention of this essay that the avantgarde 

movements were determined by a specific relationship to time. This 

relationship can be interpreted through Nietzsche's term of 'untimeliness'. 

However the avantgardes tended to isolate one dimension of the 

complexity of an untimely relationship to the present and remained 

modernist in a way that current changes in the relationship to time 

and space associated with the electronic revolution (or the post-modern) 

make them obsolete. 

Die Gegenwart ist eine Periode der schnellen und ununterbrochenen 

Innovation durch die elektronische Revolution, die Herstellung eines 

Cyberspace und das Entstehen einer Virtual reality. Es gibt jedoch 

keine Verbindung mit den Bewegungen, die sich selbst seit der Mitte 

des 19. Jahrhunderts mit dem Neuen und mit der Zukunft assoziierten, 

mit den Avantgarden. Im Vergleich mit der Gegenwart erscheinen ihre 

Sprache und ihr Zeitbegriff anachronistisch. Dieser Aufsatz stellt die 

These aufi daß die Avantgarde-Bewegungen durch ein spezifisches 

Verstandnis von Zeit bestimmt waren. Dies Verhältnis läßt sich mit

548 Bernd Hüppauf 

Nietzsches Begriff des 'Unzeitgemäßen' interpretieren. Die Avantgarden 

tendierten jedoch dazu, lediglich eine Seite der Komplexität des 

Unzeitgemäßen im Verhältnis zur Gegenwart herauszugreifen, und so 

blieben sie auf eine Weise modernistisch, daß die gegenwärtigen, mit 

der elektronischen Revolution (oder der Postmoderne) assoziierten 

Wandlungen im Verhältnis zu Raum und Zeit die Avantgarden obsolet 

machen. 

Die Avantgarden gehören in die Welt von gestern. Dem Namen 

haftet etwas erstaunlich Anachronistisches an. Die Avantgarden waren 

ein Produkt der Epoche des Fortschrittsdenkens, dessen Höhepunkt 

im 19. Jahrhundert lag und das seit der Erfahrung des Ersten 

Weltkriegs unwiderruflich verloren ist. Ihr Selbstverständnis war 

eng mit der Rhetorik von einer Entwicklung der Kunst und Literatur 

und ihrem Ende in einer sich beständig beschleunigenden Rationalisierung 

und Technisierung verknüpft. Ihre Programme und ästhetische 

Praxis lassen sich nicht als ein Symptom dieser umfassenden 

Entwicklung der Rationalisierung verstehen, sondern müssen als eines 

ihrer konstitutiven Element aufgefaßt werden. Wie die Rhetorik 

vom Ende der Literatur und Kunst bald ihre Herausforderung einbüßte 

und bloß historisch wurde, so erreichten auch die Avantgarden 

bemerkenswert rasch ein Ende. Allerdings ist keineswegs ausgemacht, 

ob nicht der avantgardistische Gedanke eines Abschlusses 

sich verwirklicht hat, Literatur und Kunst ihr Ende bereits hinter 

sich haben und in der Welt von Elektronik und Hypertext zur Bedeutungslosigkeit 

absinken, 1 ohne davon bisher Kenntnis genommen 

zu haben. Unabhängig von der Frage, ob die Literatur ihr Ende bereits 

hinter sich habe, ist jedoch das Ende der Avantgarden offensichtlich. 

Von einem Rückblick auf die Avantgarden zu sprechen, 

gibt der Distanz der Gegenwart zum Gedanken einer Avantgarde 

und des Avantgardistischen Ausdruck. Mit der im Wort „Rückblick" 

des Tagungstitels implizierten These, daß die Avantgarden historisch 

geworden sind, dürfte ein zentraler Aspekt im Verhältnis der 

Gegenwart zu den Avantgarden getroffen sein. 2 Die Zeit der Avantgarden 

liegt hinter uns, und sie leben auch nicht mehr als Teil der 

Erinnerung an die literarischen Bewegungen des Jahrhunderts, sondern 

sind in die Literaturgeschichte entrückt. 3 Das Denken in Vorstellungen 

einer Speerspitze oder Vorhut der literarischen und künst- 

Das Unzeitgemäße der Avantgarden 549 

lerischen Entwicklung ist anachronistisch geworden. Ich halte den 

Niedergang des Avantgardistischen für bemerkenswert und erstaunlich, 

insbesondere insoweit es sich, besonders prominent im 

Futurismus, in deutlicher Anlehnung an die technologisch definierte 

Moderne entworfen hatte. 4 Der Gedanke einer Verlängerung des 

Avantgardistischen in die Postmoderne scheint sich anzubieten. 

Aber von einer solchen Beziehung kann nicht die Rede sein. Die 

Welt des Cyberspace weiß nichts von der Technikbewunderung des 

Futurismus, und die neue Privilegierung von Raum gegenüber Zeit 

sowie die Wiederentdeckung von konkreter, primitiver Lokalität 

schließen nicht an den Surrealismus an. 

In der Gegenwart entsteht so viel Neues wie selten zuvor. Die 

Gegenwart ist auf eine Weise von Innovationen und vom Vertrauen 

auf das Neue geprägt wie wenige frühere Zeiten. Die Veränderungen 

durch elektronische Datenverarbeitung und Digitalisierung oder 

das Entstehen eines Cyberspace halte ich für Neuerungen einer Dimension 

und Auswirkung, die in der Geschichte wenig Vorbilder 

haben. Die Avantgarden betrieben einen Kult des Neuen, und ihre 

Obsession war der Vorgriff auf die Zukunft. Zukunft wird in der 

elektronischen Welt der Gegenwart so umfassend hergestellt wie in 

wenigen früheren Epochen. Dennoch wäre es ein Anachronismus, 

von Silicon Valley als einem Ort der Avantgarde und vom Zukunftsschub 

der Digitalisierung in Wörtern aus der Sprache der 

Avantgarden zu reden. 5 Den Pionieren des Cyberspace oder der 

Virtual reality selbst liegt es ganz fern, von sich als einer Avantgarde 

zu sprechen. Die abstrakte Bewunderung des Futurismus für moderne 

Technologie wird durch den elektronischen Hypertext, so 

ließe sich argumentieren, zur Wirklichkeit einer neuen Literatur 

transformiert. 

Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis der Avantgarden zur Postmoderne 

ist oft gestellt worden. Eine häufige Antwort ist, daß die 

Postmoderne das Erbe der Avantgarden angetreten habe, da bereits 

die Avantgarden Elemente der Populärkultur, der Unterhaltungsindustrie 

und der Volkskunst, Variete, Kabarett und andere Formen 

der kommerziellen Kleinkünste aufgenommen hätten (vgl. u.a. Fischer-Lichte/Schwind, 

1991 und Riese 1990). Folgt man den technologiefreudigen 

Theorien vom Cyberspace, hätte sich der Traum 

der Avantgarden von einer neuen und von den Fesseln der bürgerlichen 

Kultur befreiten, erneut das Ganze der menschlichen Existenz

550 


umfassenden Literatur verwirklicht. „Cyberspace ist eine Wohnstätte 

der Einbildungskraft, eine Wohnstätte für die Einbildungskraft... 

der Ort, an dem sich bewußtes Träumen mit unbewußtem 

Träumen trifft, eine Landschaft des rationalen Zaubers, der mystischen 

Vernunft, der Ort und Triumph der Dichtung über die Armseligkeit, 

des 'so kann es sein' über das 'so soll es sein.'" (Novak 

1991: 225-226) 6 Die optimistische Einschätzung einer Verbindung 

von Mystik und Rationalität im Traum der Zukunft stammt in diesen 

glaubensfesten Theorien der Technologie aus einem ungebrochenen 

Vertrauen auf den Fortschritt, das auf den Futurismus zurückverweist, 

aber nicht von allen Avantgarden geteilt und selbst im Futurismus 

weniger linear verstanden wurde. Solche optimistischen Einschätzungen 

sind nicht unwidersprochen geblieben. 7 

Die Unterschiede zwischen den Avantgarden und dem postmodernen 

Cyberspace sind vielfältig. Die Sprache der avantgardistischen 

Manifeste war emphatisch, da ihr propagiertes Ziel in weiter 

Ferne schwebte; die Gegenwart hat wichtige Fortschritte auf dem 

Weg zur Verwirklichung der technologischen Träume gemacht. Ihre 

Sprache ist nüchterner geworden. Aber nicht nur ist das Vokabular 

der Avantgarden verbraucht, sondern die mit ihm bezeichneten Dispositionen 

kommen in den Neuerungsbewegungen der Gegenwart 

nicht mehr vor. Ihre Technologien verändern die Lebenspraxis tiefgreifend 

und ununterbrochen, aber ohne Programm und Erneuerungspathos. 

Die Reste des Heroischen, der modernen Epen, die in 

den Avantgarden nachwirkten, haben sich nun auch zersetzt. Die 

Avantgarden blieben bei aller Provokation der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft 

und Opposition gegen ihre Literatur noch immer, wenn auch 

durch Negation, an den Kanon gebunden und bewegten sich, wenn 

auch durch Widerspruch, im Feld der Literaturgeschichte und des 

gedruckten Buches. Trotz ihrer Faszination durch das Primitive, 

Gewalt und das Fremde blieben sie eurozentriert, weiß und männlich. 

Nicht die Kunst der Primitiven oder Kenntnisse ihrer Gesellschaften 

beeinflußten die avantgardistischen Theorien und 

Kunstproduktion, sondern sie konstruierten sich die Gegenwelt eines 

Mythos des Primitiven (vgl. Rubin, 1984: 6f). Eine solche Faszination 

durch die Gegenwelt des Primitivismus gibt es nicht mehr. Der 

' schwarze Kontinent' ist zu einer Fortsetzung des Marktes für elektronisches 

Gerät geworden. Die Avantgarden bauten weiterhin auf 

ein rationales Zeitverständnis, das die Erkennbarkeit und Planbarkeit 


von Zukunft einschloß. Diese Bindungen der Avantgarden an die 

Tradition wirken in der Welt der Digitalisierung und des Cyberspace 

nicht mehr. Eine Theorie der Zukunft und des Neuen, die Adorno im 

Hinblick auf die Avantgarden emphatisch vertrat, 8 gibt es für diese 

Welt beständiger Innovationen nicht, und sie ließe sich kaum noch 

als ein Desiderat bezeichnen. Die Theorien der Postmoderne und der 

virual reality stellen nicht diesen Anspruch, und es ist fraglich, ob 

ein solches Bedürfnis nach theoretischem Begreifen überhaupt besteht. 

Es ist ebenso bemerkenswert, daß auch die Theorien der 

Avantgarden keine Angebote enthalten, das Neue der Gegenwart auf 

den Begriff zu bringen. Sie sind gegenüber der Eigendynamik der 

technologischen Neuerungen sprachlos. Ein Rückgriff auf sie läßt 

eher Hilflosigkeit als Ansätze des Verstehens aufkommen. Aber 

daraus entsteht kein Unbehagen. 

Eine Differenz liegt darin, daß der Cyberspace eine total abstrakte 

Verräumlichung aller Informationen der globalen Systeme 

zur Informationsverarbeitung anstrebt. Die uneingeschränkte Präsens 

aller Benutzer zu allen Zeiten und ihre vollständige Gleichstellung 

gegenüber den Informationen und den Systemen der Informationsverarbeitung 

macht die Simulation realer und virtueller Welten 

und die Interaktion mit allen Teilnehmern in der realen Welt zu jeder 

Zeit auf der Ebene einer vollständigen Gleichheit und Gleichzeitigkeit 

möglich. Der Preis ist die vollständige Entkörperlichung 

der Teilnehmer ihres Raums. Die Avantgarden hielten dagegen am 

Primat der Zeitlichkeit fest. Lediglich der surrealistische Kult des 

Unbewußten als einem zeitlosen Raum ließe sich als ein Vorgriff 

auf die Entzeitlichung durch Elektronik verstehen. 

Die von den Avantgarden aufrecht erhaltenen Grenzen, die 

Grenze zwischen Gegenwart und Zukunft, hoher und populärer 

Kunst, Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit lösen sich in der elektronischen 

Postmoderne auf. Unterscheidungen, die in den Avantgarden 

stets erkennbar blieben, 9 werden zur vollständigen Unkenntlichkeit 

zersetzt. Mit ihnen zerfällt das Zeitbild der Moderne. Die an Differenzierungen 

in der Zeit gebundenen qualitativen Unterscheidungen 

fallen in der technologischen Gegenwart der Gleichzeitigkeit und 

Abstraktion des Raums zum Opfer. Sie mußten erkennbar bleiben, 

solange eine Herausforderung des angesprochenen bürgerlichen Publikums 

intendiert war. Nur aus der Differenz ließ sich der Effekt 

der Verstörung und des Schocks eines bürgerlichen p ublikums, an


das sich die Avantgarden richteten, gewinnen. Die Dissonanz wurde 

für die Avantgarden bedeutend. Schoenberg stellte die „Emanzipation 

der Dissonanz" ins Zentrum seiner Ästhetik einer schockierenden 

musikalischen Avantgarde. Die Dissonanz wurde in der Wiener 

Schule nicht nur zu einem Kompositionsprinzip erhoben, sondern 

wirkte ebenso in der musikalischen Praxis, indem sie hergebrachte 

Harmonien im Leben der Konzertbesucher zersetzte, Differenzen 

schuf und Widerstand herausforderte. Die Postmoderne kennt die 

Dissonanz nicht. Sie geht von einem grundsätzlich veränderten 

Kunstverständnis aus, in dem Widersprüche zurückgezogen und 

Gegensätze geglättet werden. Innovation und Destruktion werden 

zunehmend entkoppelt. Die hohe Kunst ist nicht mehr neu, schließt 

sich nicht ab und destruiert nicht mehr das Vorhandene, um Platz zu 

gewinnen und aus den Trümmern das neue Eigene zu schaffen. 

Auch ist die Unterhaltungskunst nicht länger die popularisierte hohe 

Kunst von gestern. Die Unterhaltungskunst ist nicht mehr als ein 

Zitat in einem ihr fremden Kontext hoher Kunst erkennbar, sondern 

ist ununterscheidbar von der E-Kunst. Der Ausgang in den imaginierten 

Raum der elektronischen Gegenwart läßt die Unterschiede 

zwischen technischer Erfindung, künstlerischer Kreativität und gesellschaftlicher 

Lebenspraxis verschwinden. Der Cyberspace der 

Postmoderne zielt darauf, Grenzen in Gegenden der Verbindung zu 

verwandeln und die konventionellen Bewertungen irrelevant zu machen. 

An ihm nimmt ein anders konstituiertes Publikum Teil. Das 

Selbstverständnis der Avantgarden ist ihr fremd und geradezu entgegengesetzt. 

Die Postmoderne versteht sich als die Überwindung 

der Moderne, und mit der Moderne überwindet sie auch deren Zeit 

und die Zeit der Avantgarden. Es ist eine eigene Frage, ob sie sich 

der Politik der Ausgrenzungen und Hierarchisierung, der sich die 

Avantgarden ausgeliefert fanden, entziehen kann. Es ist jedoch offensichtlich, 

daß ihr Verhältnis zur Zeitlichkeit sich nicht als eine 

Fortsetzung der Praktiken der Avantgarden verstehen läßt. 

Warum das Denken in den Vorstellungen des Avantgardistischen 

in der Gegenwart anachronistisch wirkt, ist nicht leicht zu verstehen. 

Ich will mich im folgenden auf einen Aspekt konzentrieren, 

der in der Behandlung der Avantgarden wenig Beachtung gefunden 

hat und leicht übersehen wird, weil er offensichtlich zu sein scheint, 

nämlich das Verhältnis der Avantgarden zur Zeit. Meine erste These 

lautet, daß die Avantgarden von einem Verhältnis zur Zeit ausge- 


zeichnet waren, das sie restlos relational machte. Sie waren, im Unterschied 

zu Epochen, Bewegungen, die sich an den homogenen 

Zeitstrom der Moderne anpaßten. Sie inszenierten den modernen 

Kult des Neuen, das von einem stets Neueren abgelöst wird, um Zukunft 

herzustellen. In einem linearen Zeitverständnis läßt sich keine 

absolute Position bestimmen, von der aus zu definieren wäre, was 

die Zukunft ist. Die Zukunft des Jetzt ist in jedem Augenblick stets 

schon Vergangenheit. 

Was eine Avantgarde, die sich als die Vorhut ihrer Zeit versteht, 

sein könnte, geht im Fluß der Zeit verloren. Sie kann keine Grenzen 

ziehen, die ihr eine Identität geben könnten. Nicht einmal die oft 

emphatisch betonte Abgrenzung zur Vergangenheit ist von dem beständig 

sich bewegenden Grund der Avantgarde zu denken, Avantgarden 

sind ihrer Zeit immer schon voraus. Obwohl sie sich in dieser 

Hinsicht gern einer Illusion hingaben, existierten sie jedoch nicht 

in einem geschichtlichen Niemandsland, und so ist die Frage nicht, 

ob eine Avantgarde sich auf eine Vergangenheit bezog, sondern auf 

welche Vergangenheit sie sich bezog. Und die Antwort auf diese 

Frage veränderte sich mit dem Bild, das eine Avantgarde von der 

Zukunft entwarf. Das Verhältnis der Avantgarden zu Vergangenheit 

und Zukunft machte sie zu einem weiteren instabilen Moment in der 

Zeitstruktur der Moderne, die alle festen, substantiellen Beziehungen 

auflöst. 

In der Bezeichnung 'Avantgarde' selbst kommt zum Ausdruck, 

daß ihr Denken über Literatur, Kunst und Lebenswelt eine räumliche 

Beziehung verzeitlicht. Das Wort stammt aus der Militärsprache 

und bezeichnet die kleine Vorhut, die vor dem Heer auf das 

Schlachtfeld zieht und einen Raum erkundet und klärt, der vor dem 

Heer selbst liegt. 10 Die Avantgardebewegungen in Kunst und Literatur 

projizierten diese räumliche Beziehung zwischen sich und einer 

Mehrheit in die Zeitlichkeit eines Denkens in Begriffen von 

Entwicklung und Fortschritt, das sie in ein Oppositionsverhältnis zur 

Gegenwart brachte. In ihrem Selbstverständnis sind die Avantgarden 

wohl ohne Ausnahme durch Formen der Opposition zu ihrer Gegenwart 

ausgezeichnet. Breton spricht einmal vom Prinzip der totalen 

Auflehnung (insubordination). 11 Dies Eigenbild gilt für alle 

Avantgarden, auch für den Futurismus, obwohl sich Marinetti zu einer 

Verherrlichung der Gegenwart als dem Zeitalter der Industrie 

und Geschwindigkeit bekannte. Aber dies Zeitalter war, in seiner


Einschätzung und der anderer Futuristen, in Italien noch nicht angebrochen. 

Für die Futuristen galt daher ebenso wie für alle nennenswerten 

Avantgarden, daß sie sich aus dem Denken von Widerstand, 

aus einer Opposition zur Gegenwart verstanden. Die literarischen 

Avantgarden erkundeten und klärten einen imaginären Raum. Diesen 

Raum nahmen sie in einer Richtung, nämlich vorn wahr und interpretierten 

ihn als eine Zeit nach dem bevorstehenden Ende der eigenen 

Gegenwart, als Zukunft. Die Verzeitlichung im Eigenbild ist 

ein signifikantes Element für das Verständnis der Avantgarden, das 

über die bloße wörtliche Bedeutung des ihnen zugeschriebenen Namens 

hinausgeht und das Zentrum der meisten Avantgarden trifft. 

Sie trugen zur Verzeitlichung und damit zur Abstraktion des Denkens, 

das die Moderne seit der frühen Neuzeit auszeichnet, bei und 

nahmen darüber hinaus an der Beschleunigung der ästhetischen Prozesse, 

die das 20. Jahrhundert vor allen früheren Epochen auszeichnet, 

aktiven Anteil. 

Ihr Zeitbild erschöpfte sich jedoch nicht in den Abstraktionen 

der rationalisierten Zeit der Moderne. Es war in sich widersprüchlich, 

und ihre Programme lassen sich auch als Widerstand gegen 

diese grenzenlose Auflösung lesen. Sie hielten an einem inhaltlich 

konkretisierten Zukunftsbild fest. Dies Bild war nicht einheitlich. Es 

konnte ebenso apokalyptische wie paradiesische Züge tragen. Die 

Beziehungen der Avantgarden zu christlich heilsgeschichtlichen 

oder apokalyptischen wie zu jüdisch eschatologischen Geschichtskonstruktionen 

sind verschlungen. Aber an der Wirksamkeit dieser 

Beziehungen für das Zeitdenken der Avantgarden kann kein Zweifel 

bestehen. Gerade in ihrem Versuch, das Denken und Schreiben zu 

modernisieren, ohne sich jedoch der Rationalisierung auszuliefern, 

läßt sich eine Ursache dafür sehen, daß sie schließlich aus derzeit 

herausfielen und in der Postmoderne in Bedeutungslosigkeit versinken. 

Wie alle Programmatik zum alsbaldigen Veralten neigt, sind 

auch die Avantgarden, die stets programmatische Bewegungen waren, 

wie Asholt und Fahnders kürzlich wieder zu Recht betonten 

(Asholt/Fähnders 1995), vom Veralten noch nachhaltiger betroffen 

als andere avancierte Positionen in der Dynamik des Entwicklungsdenkens 

der Moderne. Im Gegensatz zu dieser Anpassung blieben 

sie jedoch - und dies bildete den Boden ihrer Opposition - der Zeit 

dgs Gestern auf eine emphatische Weise verpflichtet. Die Opposition 

zum modernen Ideal des Universalismus hat zu einer Rehabili- 


tierung von Ort und Region geführt, und aus einem anhaltenden Widerstand 

gegen die Abstraktion des verzeitlichten Raums in der Tradition 

Newtons und Kants folgt eine Wiederentdeckung des Konkreten. 

In der damit entstehenden mentalen Topographie büßt das 

Avantgardistische seine Faszination ein. Auch an die dazu in einem 

krassen Gegensatz stehende Abstraktion des Raums im Cyberspace 

kann die Avantgarde nicht anknüpfen, da sie einem anderen Bild 

von Technik und technischem Fortschritt verpflichtet blieb. 

Ich will die Avantgarden im folgenden beim Wort nehmen und 

sie aus ihrem Verhältnis zur Zeit verstehen. Ein ambivalentes Verhältnis 

zur eigenen Gegenwart und zur Zeit verknüpft die vielen literarischen, 

künstlerischen und lebenskünstlerischen Avantgarden bei 

allen weitreichenden Unterschieden zu einem Zusammenhang. Dem 

empirisch begründeten Plural der Avantgarden kann aus ihrem Verhältnis 

zur Zeitlichkeit ein Begriff des Avantgardistischen entgegengestellt 

werden. Auf der Metaebene läßt sich vom Verhältnis der 

Avantgarden zur Zeit sprechen, ohne daß dies Verhältnis sich in ein 

Bündel von Einzelbeobachtungen auflöst. Ein theoretisch begründeter 

Begriff der Avantgarde und des Avantgardistischen bildet die 

notwendige Voraussetzung für ein Verständnis der Avantgarden, das 

sich über die Ebene der Deskription erheben soll. Die Welt, in der 

wir lebten, meinte Breton über die Jahre 1924/25 bis 1931, war den 

Surrealisten vollkommen fremd, und sie wiesen ihre Prinzipien 

kompromißlos zurück. „Wir fühlten, daß eine veraltete Welt auf 

dem Weg in den Untergang sich nur noch halten konnte, indem sie 

Taboos durchsetzte und Verbote vermehrte, und wir wollten ihr auf 

eine radikale Weise entkommen... wir waren von einem Bedürfnis 

nach einer allgemeinen Subversion erfaßt." 12 Die Surrealisten waren 

in dieser Hinsicht repräsentativ. Sie standen in einer gespannten Beziehung 

zu ihrer Gegenwart, und stellten sich der Gegenwart, die sie 

als Zwang und Beengung, als inauthentisch empfanden, im Namen 

einer zu gewinnenden Zukunft entgegen. Sie intendierten, die Tyrannis 

der Gegenwart zu brechen, indem sie die eigene Zeit zielbestimmt 

zu beschleunigen suchten. Aber dies Verhältnis zur Zeitlichkeit 

verhinderte gerade, daß sie sich von der Dominanz der Rationalisierung 

lösten. Ihre Konstruktion von Zeit blieb dem Zeitverständnis 

der Moderne so tiefgreifend verbunden, daß ihre Opposition aus 

der heutigen Distanz als eine Variation des Bekämpften erscheint


und sie aus dem Abstand unserer heutigen Perspektive selbst zum 

Gestern werden. 

Die Avantgarden bezogen aus einem spezifischen Verhältnis 

zur Zeit ihre Dynamik und Dramatik, und aus ihm konstituiert sich 

eine Einheit der Avantgarden. Unsere eigene Gegenwart ist durch 

ein verändertes Verhältnis zur Zeit charakterisiert, und so verlor das 

avantgardistische Denken seinen Bezugsrahmen. Zeit büßt zunehmend 

an Bedeutung ein. Die Verzeitlichung, die seit der frühen 

Neuzeit das Sein und das Denken auf eine in der Geschichte einmalige 

Weise durchdrungen hat, verliert ihre Kraft und ihren universalen 

Anspruch. Gegen die Rationalisierung der Verzeitlichung regte 

sich seit dem 19. Jahrhundert ein oft anti-moderner Widerstand, dessen 

literarische und philosophische Dimension im Anti-Newtonismus 

und Anti-Kantianismus zu finden ist. 13 Das Abseitige und Eskapistische 

des Anti-Modernismus, das noch bis in die Schriften von 

Ludwig Klages wirkt, streifte dieser Widerstand bald ab. Die Wiederentdeckung 

des Konkreten, des Partikularen und der ortsgebundenen 

Raumerfahrung befreite sich von der bloß romantischen Verehrung 

des Alten. Zunehmend war die Gegenwart von der Wiederkehr 

des Räumlichen geprägt. In diese Entwicklung kann man den 

Begriff der Postmoderne einbeziehen, wenn auch ihre Position in 

dieser Entwicklung zwiespältig ist. Dem Wiedergewinnen eines 

konkreten und ortsgebundenen Raums steht die totale Abstraktion 

von Raum in Cyberspace und Virtual reality gegenüber. 

Die Opposition der Avantgarden gegen die eigene Gegenwart 

büßte ihre Dramatik und Herausforderung ein, sobald die Herrschaft 

des modernen Zeitbegriffs gebrochen schien. Der mangelnden Authentizität 

sowie der Abstrahierung und Rationalisierung des Lebens 

den Kampf anzusagen und sich als die Speerspitze der Zukunft in 

der eigenen Gegenwart zu definieren, erfüllt gegenwärtig weder die 

Funktion des Schockierens, noch ist die Programmatik, mit der sich 

alle Avantgarden aus der eigenen Gegenwart auf meist aggressive 

Weise verabschiedeten, eine Herausforderung der Gegenwart durch 

das Neue. Die Wirkung solcher Opposition verflüchtigte sich in dem 

Maß, wie sich diese Programme doch wiederum in ihre Zeit einschrieben. 

Die Gegenwart ist gegenüber aggressiver Programmatik 

indifferent geworden. Zukunftsprogrammatik dient ihr allenfalls als 

ein Mittel der Werbeindustrie für die Zukunftsbranchen der Elektronik 

oder der Gentechnologie. Das Verhältnis zur Zeit, das die Ge- 


genwart bestimmt, ist distanzierter und weniger erwartungsgeladen 

als das in der hinter uns liegenden Phase der Moderne. Die Tyrannei 

der Verzeitlichung scheint in der Gegenwart ihre Macht zu verlieren. 

Sie ist daher nicht länger durch die gespannte und aggressive, 

oft verkrampfte Distanz bestimmt, die im Zentrum aller Avantgarden 

wirkte. Wir lesen heute die aufgeregte Sprache vieler avantgardistischer 

Programme ohne großes Verständnis und mit Verwunderung 

über den emotionalen Aufwand in der Distanzierung von der 

Gegenwart. 

Die von Peter Bürger eingeführte Assoziation der Avantgarden 

mit Melancholie ist unter diesem Gesichtspunkt fragwürdig. „Der 

barocken Abwertung der Welt zugunsten des Jenseits steht in der 

Avantgarde eine geradezu enthusiastische Weltbejahung gegenüber," 

meint Bürger ganz zu Recht im Hinblick auf eine Dimension 

der Avantgarden. Er sieht diese Zuwendung zur Welt modern gebrochen 

und melancholisch (Bürger 1974: 97). Aber nicht durch 

Melancholie, nicht durch einen unüberwindbaren Schmerz über einen 

Verlust zeichneten sich die Avantgarden aus. Vielmehr begannen 

sie programmatisch das Experiment, die Zukunft einer anderen 

Wirklichkeit zu schaffen, ohne doch von der Zeit der eigenen Gegenwart 

endgültigen Abschied nehmen zu wollen. Sie vermieden 

den radikalen Gedanken vom Tod der geschichtlichen Zeit und damit 

die Melancholie des Allegorikers, von der Bürger im Anschluß 

an Benjamins Thesen über den Barock sprach. Ihre Praktiken führten 

nicht in den Verlust, über den sich der Melancholiker nicht hinwegtrösten 

kann. Sie wollten die Gegenwart abschaffen, weil sie 

leer war, und hielten doch gleichzeitig an der Zeit der Moderne fest, 

die diese Leere schuf; und sie wollten aus der Zeit herausspringen, 

machten aber gleichzeitig den Versuch, an einem Ideal der Zukunft 

festzuhalten. Dies zeitliche Kontinuum schloß die Abwertung, nicht 

die Abschaffung der Wirklichkeit der Moderne ein. 

Mit der Melancholie wird auch die Rede vom Scheitern der 

Avantgarde-Projekte fragwürdig. Was könnte es bedeuten, von einem 

Scheitern von literarisch-kulturellen Programmen in der Lebenspraxis 

zu sprechen? Welche Programme wären je erfolgreich gewesen 

und politisch verwirklicht worden? Es gehört in die Natur der 

literarisch-kulturellen Programme, Ideale zu postulieren, ohne sich 

um deren gesellschaftlich konkrete Verwirklichung zu besorgen. 

Das 'Prinzip Hoffnung', von dem Bloch so nachdrücklich philoso-

558 


phierte und dessen Glaube an die Zukunft einigen Avantgarden nahesteht, 

ist nicht so zu verstehen, daß sich diese Hoffnung in einer 

nahen oder fernen Zukunft in die Realität von Lebenspraxis umsetzen 

und damit sich selbst abschaffen würde. Auch konventionelle 

Teleologie stellt nicht die Forderung nach solchem Finalismus, und 

die eschatologische Dimension in Blochs Denken steht den Avantgarden 

fern. Die avantgardistische Forderung nach einer Veränderung 

der Lebenspraxis durch Kunst ist nicht so zu verstehen, daß die 

avantgardistischen Manifeste als politische Programme zu lesen wären. 

Sobald sie auf diese Weise gelesen werden, werden sie banal 

oder lächerlich. Ihre Forderungen sind eine literarische Konvention, 

ein Topos, den die Avantgarden wiederholten, indem sie ihn in die 

Semantik der Moderne übertrugen, ihn gleichzeitig als Zukunftsvision 

gegen die eigene Gegenwart kehrend. Die Erwartung einer politischen 

Realisierung literarischer Programme als gelebte Wirklichkeit 

beruht auf einer unzulässigen Vermischung eines imaginären 

Raums mit einem politisch definierten Raum. Das Verhältnis ästhetischer 

Programme zur gelebten Wirklichkeit muß komplexer vorgestellt 

werden als es eine monokausale Linie vom Text ins Leben zuläßt. 

Eine Erziehung der Sinne, einschließlich des Zeit- und Raumsinnes 

läßt sich nicht in Programme politischer Parteien umsetzen, 

auch wenn einige der avantgardistischen Programmschriften selbst 

solchen Illusionen Ausdruck gaben. 14 Anstatt vom Scheitern der 

avantgardistischen Zukunftsprojekte zu reden, scheint es mir aufschlußreicher 

zu sein, ihre Beziehungen zu den sich verändernden 

Raum- und Zeitverhältnissen zu bedenken und das Verhältnis avantgardistischer 

Theorien und Praktiken zur Zeit und konkreten Gegenwart 

zu beschreiben. 

Ein Unterschied zwischen verschiedenen Avantgarden ist oft in 

der Frage gesehen worden, wie sie das Verhältnis zwischen Literatur 

und Geschichte verstehen. Je enger politisch dies Verhältnis gedacht 

wird, desto näher liegt der Gedanke eines Scheiterns. Anders gewendet: 

kann eine Avantgarde, die sich aus dem Programm einer 

Erneuerung der Lebenspraxis entwirft, also eine politische Zukunftsprojektion 

verfolgt, das Ziel eines radikalen Bruchs mit der 

Praxis der Gegenwart überhaupt praktizieren, ohne sich selbst aufzugeben? 

Der Futurismus kann als ein Beispiel dienen. Er inszenierte 

sich noch extremer als der Surrealismus als eine umfassende 

Opposition und spottete gegen jede Bedeutung: vernichtet zu wer- 


den verdienten die Metaphysik, der Klerikalismus, der Intellektualismus, 

das Feminine, die Bourgeoisie, die Subjektivität. Dieser Widerstand 

gegen alles Existierende war identisch mit einem Programm 

zur Abschaffung der Geschichte. Geschichte kann nicht 

mehr gedacht werden, sobald alle ihre Agenten verbannt sind. Das 

avantgardistische Denken des Futurismus war innovativ in dem 

Maß, wie es die Moderne von allen Inhalten zu reinigen suchte und 

damit in sich widerspruchsfrei wurde. Erhalten blieb dann ein formalisierter 

Fortschrittsgedanke, und Zeit reduzierte sich auf eine bedeutungslose 

Chronologie. Die Zukunft wird beschworen, aber 

schrumpft zu einem bedeutungslosen Wort. Wie wäre die Zeit zu 

denken, in der die verachtete Gegenwart ans Ende gekommen wäre 

und eine neue Existenz entstehen könnte? Aus dem Jetzt wäre in ein 

Dann nur durch einen unvermittelten Sprung zu gelangen, etwa wie 

sich Kierkegaard den Sprung in den Glauben dachte. Dem Futurismus 

fehlt aber jede inhaltliche Bestimmung einer theologischen 

Welt. Er kann daher nur einen Sprung in die Leere denken. Mehr: er 

muß die Paradoxe des Denkens als Paradoxe der Lebenspraxis denken. 

Kontinuität und Brüche, Beschleunigung und Zeitlosigkeit 

müssen simultan sein, soll an diesem - ungeschichtlich entworfenen 

- Fortschrittsglauben festgehalten werden. Sobald das avantgardistische 

Programm fordert, Humanismus durch Krieg und verstaubte 

Bibliotheken durch Stahl, Glas oder Giftgas zu ersetzen, verschreibt 

es sich einer Totalität des Augenblicks. Damit endet das Denken in 

Affirmation, der beständigen Bewegung im Cyberspace nicht unähnlich. 

Fortschritt als entleerte Bewegung ist identisch mit Stillstand. 

Wenn die Dynamik der Technologie zum antibürgerlichen 

Moment der Geschichte avanciert, wird der Fortschritt zur Bewegung 

auf der Stelle. Die resignative Einsicht der Postmoderne unterscheidet 

sich von den Theorien der Avantgarden durch die vollständige 

Abwesenheit von Erwartungen. Sie kennt keine Hoffnung auf 

eine bessere Zukunft mehr und will den Gedanken von Zukunft gar 

nicht mehr denken. Sie will die Apotheose des Jetzt. Die Avantgarden 

dagegen entwickelten ein Programm zum Vorstoß in die Zukunft. 

Aber ihr Verhältnis zur Zeit blieb auf eine Weise der entleerten 

Zeit der Moderne verhaftet, daß dieser Vorstoß bloß abstrakt 

blieb. Nicht eine Überwindung technischer Zivilisation der Gegenwart, 

sondern einen Kult des ins Technische transformierten Lebens 

forderte der Futurismus, und andere avantgardistische Bewegungen


folgten einem vergleichbaren Muster. Die Anpassung der Avantgarden 

führte zum Bedeutungsverlust der unzeitgemäßen Ideale einer 

humanen Gesellschaft, von der Peter Bürger ausgeht, und gleichzeitig 

zum Sieg des Avantgardistischen, das als Vorhut der Bewegung 

vorauseilte und, angeschmiegt, zu ihr gehörte, am Triumph des 

Technologischen partizipierend. Scheitern setzt die Alternative des 

Gelingens voraus, und die gab es in einem praktisch-politischen 

Sinn für die Programme der Avantgarden nicht. 

Der Beginn der Avantgarden, wird oft argumentiert, läßt sich 

auf Jahr und Tag genau festlegen: die Veröffentlichung von Marinettis 

Futuristischem Manifest. Die Bedeutung dieses Ereignisses 

wird nicht reduziert, wenn man darauf hinweist, daß Innovationen 

nie abrupt und aus einem Nichts entstehen. Die Diskontinuität in der 

Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte dieser Jahre war radikal und schokkierend, 

da sie radikale Diskontinuitäten auf einen sehr kurzen Zeitraum 

kondensierte. Dennoch erweckt die künstliche Isolation, die in 

vielen Literaturgeschichten die Avantgarden aus der Geschichte der 

Literatur und Kunst herausreißt, ein verzerrtes Bild. Ich denke, daß 

ein besonderes Verhältnis zur Zeit, das sich seit dem 19. Jahrhundert 

ausgebildet hatte, einen Rahmen abgab, innerhalb dessen sich der 

Bruch der Avantgarden, der sich auf bemerkenswerte Weise mit einer 

Kontinuität verknüpfte, als Element einer problematisch werdenden 

Temporalstruktur der Moderne verstehen läßt, ohne sie von 

den literarischen, künstlerischen und philosophischen Kontexten zu 

isolieren. Zwar scheinen mir Verweise auf die Frühsozialisten, Fourier 

und die politische Welt der Julirevolution ein unpassendes politisches 

Assoziationsfeld anzusprechen. Aber die größere geschichtliche 

Tiefe, die in dieser Zurückverlegung der Anfänge der Avantgarden 

wirkt, wird dem avantgardistischen Denken eher gerecht als 

die Identifikation mit der Technikverherrlichung, die mit dem Futuristischen 

Manifest in der Literatur unvermittelt einzusetzen 

schien. 15 

Ich will nun meine Ausgangsthese erweitern und hinzufügen, 

daß der Relativismus der Avantgarden in widersprüchlicher Weise 

mit einem teleologischen Zeitverständnis verschränkt blieb. Im 

Zentrum der Avantgarden stand ein Verhältnis zur Zeit und eigenen 

Gegenwart, das mit dem Adjektiv unzeitgemäß zu charakterisieren 

ist. Soweit ich sehe, benutzte als erster Nietzsche diese Bezeichnung 

in seinen Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen, und er benutzte nicht nur 


das Wort, sondern entwickelte auch eine Philosophie des Unzeitgemäßen, 

die sich in radikale Opposition zur Zeit stellt, aber nicht auf 

das Denken der Revolution zurückgreift. In offensiver Distanzierung 

zum hegelschen Geschichtsmodell und zur marxistischen Revolutionstheorie 

greift das Denken des Unzeitgemäßen auf ältere Quellen 

zurück und versteht die Theorien des bürgerlichen 19. Jahrhunderts \ 

über Zeit und Gegenwart als eine Verirrung. 

Das Problem des Zeitgemäßen oder Unzeitgemäßen ist eminent 

modern. Das Bewußtsein einer unlösbaren Spannung zur Zeit und 

der Gefahren und Möglichkeiten des Unzeitgemäßen entwickeln 

Literatur und Philosophie erst, wenn ihr Verhältnis zur Gegenwart 

auf eine grundlegende Weise gestört ist. Gesteigerte Bewußtheit, 

Zweifel und kalkulierte Inszenierungen von Schreiben gehen damit 

einher. Es verweist, wie Nietzsches dramatische Genealogie dieser 

Störung im Verhältnis zur Zeit herausarbeitet, auf einen elementaren 

Bruch. Das Anti-Natürliche der Kunst der Moderne, das Nietzsche 

auf Euripides und Sokrates zurückverfolgte (Nietzsche 1980), hat 

seinen Ursprung in der Störung einer Einheit, in die das Bewußtsein 

einbricht, „...im Anfang war alles beisammen: da kam der Verstand 

und schuf Ordnung" zitiert Nietzsche in seiner sarkastischen Abrechnung 

mit den Verderbern des Lebens und der Kunst durch das 

Denken, Sokrates und Euripides, den ersten Satz des Anaxagoras 

(Nietzsche 1980: 87), der bekanntlich die Philosophie aus Kleinasien 

nach Athen brachte. Etwas tritt dazwischen, die Einheit ist gestört, 

Trennung entsteht und verlangt nach Ordnung, und sie wiederum 

benötigt den Verstand, der Dinge scheidet und damit, so 

meinte Anaxagoras, eine Unlust in die Welt bringt. Mit der Trennung 

entstand das Bewußtsein, argumentiert Nietzsche, und mit ihm 

ein Unbehagen, bewußte Erkenntnis, die stets mit Schmerz verbunden 

sei. Der Traum und das Nicht-Rationale werden nun zum bloß 

„Unverständigen" der Dichtung degradiert, in der sich das ursprüngliche 

Beieinander von allem erhalten konnte, aber nun abgewertet 

als bloßer Rausch, als ein Irrationales, als der von Sokrates 

und Euripides und auch vom „göttlichen Plato" als Lüge verschrieene 

Traum. So entstand, argumentiert Nietzsche, das Denken, 

das in die von ihm verachtete Gegenwart führte, und dessen Grundsätze 

seien, „alles muss bewusst sein, um schön zu sein" sowie „alles 

muss bewusst sein, um gut zu sein." Mit der Trennung des Alls 

durch den Nous endete die Welt, in der „noch alles in einem chaoti-


sehen Urbrei beisammen" war, und die Ordnung entstand (Nietzsche 

1980: 87). Ordnung macht ein Eingreifen notwendig und ist eine 

Störung der Welt durch den Verstand. Mit der Öffnung im Chaos 

kamen das Bewußtsein, die Rationalität und die Unlust in die Welt. 

Die neue Ordnung der Welt bedeutete eine Verarmung und führte 

zur Herrschaft des Bewußtseins, das die Welt aufteilt, die Einbildungskraft 

verdrängt und die Poesie abwertet. Das Unzeitgemäße 

läßt sich als eine spezifische Reaktion in der Moderne auf dies anhaltend 

gestörte Verhältnis zum Leben verstehen. Es stellt sich dem 

Problem eines Verlusts von authentischem Leben, indem es die Zeit 

zu verkehren sucht. Die Avantgarden waren unzeitgemäß, indem sie 

den Versuch einer Umkehr erneuerten. Sie paßten. sich ihrer Zeit 

/ nicht an, um aus dem Abstand das seit Euripides verkehrte Verhältnis 

zur Imagination grundlegend zu verändern. 

Als „unzeitgemäß" bezeichnete Nietzsche vier heterogene Essays, 

die er zwischen 1873 und 1876 verfaßte und zu einer Publikation 

zusammenstellte. Aber warum sollte es eigens hervorzuheben 

sein, daß Essays über Schopenhauer oder über den „Nutzen und 

Nachteil der Historie" sich durch das Moment des Zeitgemäßen oder 

Unzeitgemäßen auszeichnen? Nietzsche geht von einer neuen Erwartung 

gegenüber einem philosophisch-literarischen Lext aus. Indem 

er im Titel die Frage der Zeitgemäßheit erhebt, weist er ihr eine 

besondere Bedeutung zu, und mit seiner Antwort geht er auf ironisch-sarkastische 

Distanz zur eigenen Zeit. Er bezeichnet seine Betrachtungen 

als unzeitgemäß, weil er vom Gegenteil überzeugt ist. 

In dem Attribut spricht sich die Erwartung aus, daß eben in dem 

Maß, wie diese Essays sich ihrer Zeit nicht anpassen, sondern aus 

ihr planvoll herausfallen, sie von Ihrer Zeit sprechen. Sie stellen 

Fragen, die niemand zu stellen wagte, die geradezu peinlich vermieden 

wurden, weil die „öffentliche Meinung," wie Nietzsche schreibt, 

sie „zu verbieten" schien (Nietzsche 1980: 159). In diesem Sinn bezieht 

sich „unzeitgemäß" auf die eine Form der in diesem Wort liegenden 

Negation: das Unangepaßte des nicht-Zeitgemäßen ist eine 

Zurückweisung der Gegenwart. Das Schreiben verweigert sich der 

Zeit, verstanden als Präsens, indem es ablehnt zu passen, sich anzupassen, 

sich dem Maß der Zeit zu fügen. Eine andere Bedeutung ist 

jedoch gleichzeitig auch anwesend. Sie folgt aus dem Wort „Unzeit", 

das auch in diesem Adjektiv steckt. Die Zeit selbst ist in dieser 

Lesung als ungemessen und falsch definiert. Eine Unzeit ist - wie 

Das Unzeitgemäße der Avantgarden 

563 

ein Ungetüm, Unheil, Unmensch und viele andere Wortprägungen 

mit 'un' - mit sich selbst zerfallen und ihr eigener Gegensatz. Der 

Zeit, insoweit sie ohne Maß und mit sich selbst uneins ist, sind die 

ihr gewidmeten Betrachtungen dann gerade 'angemessen'. Auch 

diese Lesung des Adjektivs geht von einem ironischen oder sarkastischen 

Verhältnis zur Zeit als einer Zeit der Nicht-Identität aus. Essays, 

die ihre Gegenwart als 'Unzeit' beurteilen, um sich programmatisch 

als ihr 'gemäß' zu bezeichnen, müssen durch einen tiefen 

Bruch von ihrer Zeit getrennt sein. Dem Handeln, Sprechen oder 

Schweigen zur Unzeit liegt, wie zahlreiche literarische Beispiele von 

Parzival zu Oskar Mazerath zeigen, eine fundamentale Störung zugrunde, 

für die ursprünglich allein das Subjekt verantwortlich war. 

In einer Umkehrung dieses Topos wird bei Nietzsche - die Anfänge 

dieser Entwicklung lassen sich allerdings bis in die Gegenaufklärung 

des späten 18. Jahrhunderts zurückverfolgen - die Zeit selbst 

zur Störung, zu einer Unzeit. In Nietzsches Hauptthema der frühen 

Jahre, Dekadenz, Kritik am Rationalitätsideal der Moderne und eine 

Rehabilitation von (apollinischem) Traum und dem (dionysischen) 

Irrationalen, liegen wesentliche Übereinstimmungen mit dem avantgardistischen 

Denken. 

Die Betrachtungen gehören, versichert der Titel in jeder der 

beiden Lesarten, nicht der Zeit. Aber, so muß man fragen, wem und 

wohin gehörten sie dann? Wo findet sich der Leser, dem sie gehören, 

wenn nicht in der Gegenwart? Und gehören sie in die Vergangenheit 

oder in die Zukunft oder in einen zeitlosen Raum? Wie wäre 

der zu denken und woher stammt die Autorität, mit der die Diagnosen 

des Zeitgemäßen oder Unzeitgemäßen gestellt werden, wenn die 

eigene Zeit kein Bewußtsein davon hat, was ihr gemäß ist und nottut? 

Doch muß die Zeit wohl, in Nietzsches Einschätzung, ein Organ 

haben, um die Botschaft, die sie sich selbst verbietet, dennoch aufnehmen 

zu können. Dies Spannungsverhältnis zur eigenen Zeit, in 

dem der Autor eben das als ihr wahrhaft gemäß bezeichnet und ausspricht, 

wogegen sie sich wehrt und was sie aus sich ausschließen 

will, läßt sich als ein Grundelement nicht nur in Nietzsches Selbstverständnis, 

sondern im Verhältnis von Philosophie und Literatur 

der Moderne zur Zeit verstehen und findet seine letzte Steigerung im 

avantgardistischen Denken. Dessen programmatische Unzeitgemäßheit 

gilt in vier verschiedenen Weisen; es betrifft die Zeit, die in 

ihm zu einem der großen Probleme gemacht wird, den Zeitraum der

5 64 Bernd Hüppauf 

eigenen Präsenz, mit dem es sich nicht als synchron empfinden will, 

die Zukunft, auf die hin es sich entwirft, blindlings und, durch die 

futuristische Zukunftsemphase bloß notdürftig verhüllt, mit gesteigertem 

Unbehagen, und schließlich die Welt, deren Ungemessenheit 

den avantgardistischen Denkern und Experimentierern kein Zuhause 

bietet. Nur insoweit sie sich außerhalb der Zeit stellen und eine andere 

Zeit gewinnen, schaffen sie die Chance, den „Wahn", in dem 

die Zeit nach Nietzsche verfangen ist, aufzudecken und ihm zu entfliehen. 

Nur_soweit Literatur ihrer Zeit und der Zeit nicht gehört, 

kann sie sich erhoffen, zu ihrer Zeit zu sprechen und etwas zu sagen 

zu haben. Das ist die Botschaft der Avantgarden, die sich aus ihrer 

Unzeitgemäßheit ableitet. Diese Botschaft wird in der Postmoderne 

nicht mehr vernommen. Das ambivalente Unzeitgemäße ist aus der 

Welt der Elektronik und der Hypertexte verschwunden. 

Das Unzeitgemäße entwickelt sein Widerspruchsverhältnis gegenüber 

der eigenen Zeit, indem es eine Distanz zum Ideal erhebt, 

aber gewinnt doch nur in dem Maß Bedeutung, wie es zugleich die 

Zeit als eine Unzeit trifft. Nietzsche stellt dies doppeldeutige Verhältnis 

wiederum in einen zeitlichen Horizont. Zukunft habe nur 

eine Kultur, die die Kraft aufbringe, sich unbequemen Wahrheiten 

zu stellen und den Wahn der Gegenwart als Wahn zu erkennen bereit 

ist, und die Rechtfertigung des Unzeitgemäßen verlegt er in ein 

Denken, das sich an der Dimension der Zukunft orientiert. Die Zukunft 

erfordere das Unzeitgemäße, gerade gegenüber einer Zeit, die 

auf sich selbst „stolz" ist und ihre technologischen Errungenschaften 

als eine profane Religion verehrt, so daß es besonders schwer ist, 

nicht mit ihr zu gehen (Nietzsche 1980: 246). 16 Sie ist, meint Nietzsche, 

in der Illusion ihrer Überlegenheit befangen, da sie ihre Rationalität 

mißversteht und den aus der Herrschaft des Bewußtseins 

folgenden Kult des Neuen nicht als eine tödliche Bedrohung des Lebens 

erkennt. 

Nietzsche beschreibt seine Position seiner eigenen Zeit gegenüber 

durch eine komplizierte Temporalstruktur, in der die Erinnerung 

an eine lange zurückliegende Zeit den Blick auf die Gegenwart 

schaffe, der diese von sich selbst entfernt. Nur insofern er der „Zögling 

älterer Zeiten, zumal der griechischen," sei, sieht er sich in die 

Lage versetzt, „als Kind dieser jetzigen Zeit zu so unzeitgemäßen 

Erfahrungen" (Nietzsche 1980: 247) zu kommen. 17 Er sieht den 

„Sinn" der klassischen Philologie in seiner eigenen Zeit darin, „un- 


zeitgemäß - das heißt gegen die Zeit und dadurch auf die Zeit und 

hoffentlich zu Gunsten einer kommenden Zeit - zu wirken." 

(Nietzsche 1980: 247) Aus einem Kontrast zur Herde, die nicht 

weiß, „was Gestern, was Heute ist...und... kurz angebunden mit ihrer 

Lust und Unlust, nämlich an den Pflock des Augenblicks," (Nietzsche 

1980: 248) lebt, definiert er die Fähigkeit, die Vergangenheit 

als ein Gedächtnis mit sich zu tragen. Den Menschen gibt es nicht 

ohne Bewußtsein und Erinnerung, doch zugleich sind sie eine Last, 

und so stemmt er sich „gegen die große und immer größere Last des 

Vergangenen." (Nietzsche 1980: 249) Die Erinnerung an Vergangenes 

ist wie ein „Wunder", denn die Gegenwart ist ein Nichts, „der 

Augenblick, im Husch da, im Husch vorüber, vorher ein Nichts, 

nachher ein Nichts, kommt doch noch als ein Gespenst wieder und 

stört die Ruhe eines späteren Augenblicks." (Nietzsche 1980: 248) 

Dagegen stemmt sich der Mensch vergeblich und tut es doch immer 

wieder. Ist das Gedächtnis eine Voraussetzung für Unzeitgemäßheit, 

so entsteht sie doch erst aus dem Gegensatz, dem Vergessen. 

Gedächtnis schwächt das Verhältnis zum Leben. Der unzeitgemäße 

Widerstand gegen die Zeit erfordert die aktive Leistung, Erinnerung 

zu vernichten. Erst wenn die Fähigkeit, zu vergessen, gegen die 

Forderungen der historistischen Epoche wiedergewonnen wird, läßt 

sich die moderne Zeit destruieren und aus dieser Destruktion die 

Umkehr gewinnen. Nur aus diesem gewollten Abstand wird das 

Unzeitgemäße nicht erlitten, sondern läßt es sich in zukunftsgerichtete 

Tat verwandeln. 

Dieses verschobene Verhältnis der kritischen Subjektivität zum 

Sein in der Moderne und ihrer Literatur und Philosophie zur Zeitgemäßheit 

ist nicht als eine dialektische Spannung zu verstehen, 

vielmehr ist es eine Aporie, aus der keine Synthesis herausführt und 

aus der es keinen Weg ins Freie oder nach oben gibt. Es ist eine Erfahrung 

von „quälenden Empfindungen", die, so schreibt Nietzsche 

bereits in dieser frühen Phase, das Ich auf sich selbst zurückwirft. 

Dies Ich, das sich mit einer „Naturbeschreibung" seiner Empfindungen 

hervorwagt, isoliert sich und erscheint in Relation zur „mächtigen 

historischen Zeitrichtung" als „unwürdig" (Nietzsche 1980: 

246). Es ist diese Position des Solipsismus (vgl. Jünger 1963: 392), 

die den einsamen und verachteten Diagnostiker der Zeit aus seiner 

Zeit herausdrängt und nach unpassenden Ausdrucksmitteln suchen 

läßt, die er doch als die einzig passenden empfindet. Zum „schwa-


chen" Ich der Moderne (Nietzsche 1980: 324) gehört die Flucht in 

ein Draußen, aus der Zeit ins Unzeitgemäße und Unangemessene. 

Es findet sich dort in einer paradoxen Lage, in der gerade seine 

Schwäche und Isolation in eine Position von Stärke, Aggression und 

Zurückweisung der Zeit überführt wird. Denn im herrischen Zurückweisen 

der Zeit durch das gewollt Unzeitgemäße ermächtigt 

sich das Ich. In dieser paradoxen Lage wird das Unpassende und 

Unzeitgemäße zum einzig Passenden und Zeitgemäßen. Um sich der 

Zeit stellen zu können, überführt das schwache Ich etwa den philosophischen 

Diskurs durch Ironie und Zynismus in innere Widersprüchlichkeit 

oder verweigert sich, Nietzsches eigenes Werk liefert 

das Beispiel, den Erwartungen der Zeit auf Bestätigung und Versicherung, 

entzieht im Unangemessenen der Produktion die Übereinstimmung 

mit ihrer Rationalität und ihrem Bewußtsein. Durch 

Krieg, Traum, Gewalt, das Vorbewußte, Irrationale, Primitive versuchten 

die Avantgarden, das Arsenal dieser Techniken der Verweigerung 

ins Unerhörte zu steigern. 

Das Unzeitgemäße widersetzt sich dem „Götzendienst des Tatsächlichen" 

und empört sich gegen die „Tyrannei des Wirklichen", 

wie Nietzsche in einer Polemik der Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen 

gegen Hegels Lehre von der „Bewunderung vor der 'Macht der Geschichte'" 

schreibt. Führe Hegels Dialektik nicht nur zu einer Abstrahierung 

vom Wirklichen, sondern letztlich zur „Bewunderung 

des Erfolgs" und zum „'Ja' zu jeder Macht, sei dies nun eine Regierung 

oder eine öffentliche Meinung oder eine Zahlen-Majorität" 

(Nietzsche 1980: 309f), so schätzt das Unzeitgemäße den Erfolg gering, 

entfernt sich aus der Gegenwart und macht sie fremd. Aber 

sein Verhältnis zur Wirklichkeit erschöpft sich nicht in einem bloßen 

'Nein'. Vielmehr ist die Distanz zur Gegenwart die Voraussetzung 

dafür, die Wirklichkeit anzuerkennen, nämlich sie als die gelebte 

und nicht zur Geschichte abstrahierte Wirklichkeit überhaupt 

wahrzunehmen. Das Unzeitgemäße hält am Anspruch fest, auf die 

Zeit zu wirken. Ihm wird alles zur Gegenwart. Es fordert, die Zeit 

des geschichtlichen Denkens zu verlernen und auch das Vergangene 

als Gegenwart zu verstehen, da es zum Entstehen der Welt im Kopf 

nicht weniger beiträgt als das zeitlich Präsente. Das ist auch eine 

Form des Vergessens. Das Unzeitgemäße denkt die eigene Gegenwart 

aus einer zeitlichen Tiefe, die das Historische übersteigt, um 

aus dieser Position jenseits der eigenen Zeit die Unabhängigkeit zu 


gewinnen, die notwendig ist, um die Zwänge der unverstandenen 

Bindungen zu sehen und sich aus ihnen zu lösen. Für das Unzeitgemäße 

ist die Zeit der Geschichte das eigentliche Problem. 

Wenig Jahre nach Nietzsche stellte Sigmund Freud ganz unzeitgemäße, 

nämlich unheldische Betrachtungen über Krieg, Zivilisation 

und Tod an und bezeichnet sie ausdrücklich als Zeitgemäßes 

über Krieg und Tod (1915). Zur selben Zeit schreibt Thomas Mann 

sehr Zeitgemäßes über den Krieg. In den verdrehten Betrachtungen 

eines Unpolitischen (1918), die er als „Gedankendienst mit der 

Waffe" bezeichnete, zu dem „nicht Staat und Wehrmacht..., sondern 

die Zeit selbst" ihn eingezogen hatte (Mann 1974, Bd. XII: 9; Bd. 

XI: 108-144), setzte er das Denken des Unzeitgemäßen in die Literatur- 

und Kulturtheorie des beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert fort. Er 

bezeichnete seinen langen Essay in Anlehnung an Nietzsches Titel 

als Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. Auch Nietzsches Betrachtungen 

waren ja durch einen Krieg, den deutsch-französischen Krieg 

von 1870/71 ausgelöst worden. 

Ernst Bloch hat später dem Unzeitgemäßen einen anderen Namen 

gegeben. Er sprach von „Ungleichzeitigkeit". In Erbschaft dieser 

Zeit entwickelt er diese Vorstellung eines Lebens aus dem Widerspruch 

zur 'eigenen' Zeit damals noch sehr kritisch. Er sah in der 

Zeit des Triumphs der Nationalsozialisten die bedrohliche, die geschichtszerstörende 

Seite der Widersprüche, die sich, gemessen an 

Marx's Modell der simultanen geschichtlichen Entwicklung auf ein 

Ziel hin, als ungleichzeitig denunzieren ließen, reaktionär, gegenrevolutionär, 

anti-humanistisch. Seine Einschätzung des Ungleichzeitigen 

änderte sich später, nahm die Unterschiede im Widerstand 

gegen die Zeit wahr und entdeckte das Offene, Umstürzende, 

Selbstbestimmte in ihm. Bloch kam nie von der Faszination des 

Temporalen los, und zumindest in dieser Hinsicht gehört sein Denken 

in die Avantgarden. Was ihn später zum Gedanken des Unzeitgemäßen 

hinzog, benannte er zunächst als das Utopische. 

„Mit etwas gehen, das kann sehr wohl feige sein. Ist dann dasselbe, 

wie wenn einer den Mantel nach dem Wind hängt." (Bloch 

1963: 121-124) Diesen Mitläufern, die stets mit der Zeit mitmachen, 

gilt seine Verachtung. Er entdeckt im Mitläufertum die Interessen, 

die kurzfristigen und standpunktlosen Verbiegungen des Ichs. Denn 

„dasjenige, was im Schwange ist, findet seine Mitläufer nicht so 

sehr, weil es modisch als weil es vorteilhaft ist." Von der Zeit und


ihren Moden abweichen, sich gegen die Zeit stellen, kann zwei Ursprünge 

haben: die Schwäche der Zurückgebliebenen und dann findet 

er darin die Haltung des „ganz gängigen, ... Typen, ... die nur 

verhinderte smarte sind..." Das ist die Haltung des Ressentiments, 

der Spießer, die sich jeder Ideologie, die Anerkennung verspricht, in 

die Arme werfen, und sich gegen die Zeit zu stellen, von der sie sich 

benachteiligt glauben. Aber dann spricht er von den anderen Ungleichzeitigen, 

„weit weg vom Strom der Zeit, in abgelegener Gegend; 

so bereits viele Kleinstädter." „Vor allem aber gibt es Berufsgruppen 

(Fischer und unter den Bauern nicht nur die Waldbauern), 

deren Sein und Arbeitsweise noch durchaus Züge aus früheren Zeiten 

trägt. Neue Arbeitsmittel, Zeitung Radio und so fort haben hier 

gewiß gewirkt und abgeschliffen, gleichzeitig machend. Dennoch 

leben noch Typen aus verschiedenen Jahrhunderten unter uns, trotz 

des wachsenden Abschliffs." Eine Idealisierung des Alten, Ursprünglichen 

auf dem Land ist nicht zu überhören. Eine Nähe zu 

Heideggers Romatisierung der angeblichen Bauernschuhe auf van 

Goghs Bild liegt nahe. Aber es geht Bloch um etwas anderes. Nicht 

mit allen Schwingungen der Zeit mitzumachen, macht die Beziehung 

zu einer anderen Zeit notwendig. „Vielmehr lebt hier ein Widerstand 

gegen ein herrschend Schlechtes in der Zeit wie auch echte 

Zustimmung zu übergehend Bedeutendem in ihr. Und beides wächst 

dann auf dem gleichen Holz: auf dem Baum des Morgens im Heute. 

Demgemäß und um die Geburt des Morgen zu befördern, ist sein 

Denken zwar mitten in der Zeit, doch so, daß es sie weisen kann und 

überholt." 

Blochs Denken ist mit dem Denken in utopischen Zukunftsbildern 

so durchsetzt, daß der ganz und gar anti-temporale Boden dieses 

Gedankens ihm entgeht. Er kämpft den Kampf Friedrich Engels 

gegen die utopischen Sozialisten und rettet das Unzeitgemäße der 

Utopisten, indem er ihre Utopien verzeitlicht. Vom Gedanken der 

Entwicklung auf das Ziel in der Zukunft kommt er nicht los. Selbst 

die Fischer und Bauern sieht er zu dieser Entwicklung beitragen, 

obwohl doch der Gegensatz zu den „herrschend Gleichzeitigen", die 

er die „Männer up to date" nennt, sie ganz offensichtlich zu den Unzeitgemäßen 

macht, von denen Nietzsche sprach. Sie haben ihren 

Ort, und den bewahren sie vor der Zeit, die von Kapitalisten wie von 

Utopisten gleichermaßen gemacht wurde. 


Ich will nun als weitere These formulieren, daß das „Unzeitgemäße" 

und die zugehörige ästhetische Disposition das Verhältnis der 

Avantgarden zur Zeit auszeichnete. Der Kampf der Avantgarden 

war unzeitgemäß und galt der Zeit der Moderne, deren Wert vom 

zeitgemäßen Denken zu einer profanen Religion erhoben wurde. 18 

Ein Wert für die Vorbereitung auf das „Leben", das neue Stichwort 

der Unzeitgemäßen, wurde der historischen Zeit der Moderne seit 

dem späten 19. Jahrhundert immer mehr bestritten. Je moderner das 

Denken, desto nachdrücklicher entwertete es den Gedanken der Erinnerung. 

'Los vom Historismus' war die Maxime der akademischen 

Diskussion. In den Avantgarden gewann dieser Kampf als Entwertung 

der rational geordneten Zeit eine sprachbildende Kraft. Sie 

suchten sich zwischen-Naturwissenschaften (Neurologie, Astrophysik, 

Paläontologie) und traditionellen Formen des Literarischen neu 

zu schaffen. 19 Die Unzeitgemäßen kombinierten eine Kampfansage 

an die Gegenwart mit der Forderung nach einer Konstruktion von 

Zukunft aus der wiederzugewinnenden Imagination. Es gab für sie 

keine Wirklichkeit. „Es gibt das menschliche Bewußtsein," schreibt 

Benn, „das unaufhörlich aus seinem Schöpfungsbesitz Welten bildet, 

umbildet, erarbeitet, erleidet, geistig prägt." (Benn 1984: 344) 

Der Wunsch der Avantgardisten, die Zeit der Moderne zu destruieren, 

um Kunst und Leben zu versöhnen, hat hier seine philosophische 

Grundlage. 

Intellektuelle verstanden sich seit dem 18.Jahrhundert in betonter 

Weise als der Zeit im Sinn eines übersehbaren Zeitraums ebenso 

wie als Teil eines geschichtlichen Verlaufs zugehörig. Die kritische 

Funktion von Intellektuellen, Schriftstellern und Philosophen in der 

Tradition von Voltaire oder Zola basierte auf der Teilhabe an der eigenen 

Gegenwart. Diese Anteilnahme wurde im 19. Jahrhundert 

fragwürdig, und die Zugehörigkeit verlor ihre Selbstverständlichkeit. 

Sie wurde zunehmend als ein Problem empfunden. Die Eigenund 

Fremddefmition bezog das Verhältnis zur Zeit als ein neues 

Problem ein. Die Zugehörigkeit zur eigenen Gegenwart wurde nicht 

länger als ein fragloses Verhältnis erfahren. Dies Verhältnis war nie 

spannungsfrei oder kritiklos gewesen. Aber nun wurde diese Spannung 

selbst zum Thema und die Distanz als nicht überbrückbar empfunden. 

Aus diesem Zerfall entstand die Angst, aus der eigenen Zeit 

herauszufallen, ebenso wie ein Bedürfnis, nicht zu dieser Zeit zu gehören, 

sich ihr zu entziehen oder sich ihr gegenüberzustellen und der

570 


Zeit als dem elementaren Konstitutionselement der Moderne den 

Kampf anzusagen. Das Unzeitgemäße, als Angst wie als Begehren, 

setzt einen intellektuellen Bruch und eine emotionale Ambivalenz 

voraus, die unter den spezifischen Bedingungen der Moderne im 

Lauf des 19. Jahrhunderts entstanden. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur 

war nicht so zeitlos, wie es Freud erschien. Es war der Grund für 

Widerstand gegen die Zeit und benannte eine Mentalität, die - sobald 

sie nicht einen subjektiven und bloß partikularen Eskapismus 

meint - für die Konstruktion der Avantgarden konstitutiv war. Die 

Avantgarden entstanden aus diesem Unbehagen und waren unzeitgemäß, 

jedoch auf eine selektive Weise. Sie wichen Nietzsches radikaler 

These vom Ursprung der Gegenwart in der Herrschaft des 

Kalküls aus und blieben, bei aller exponierten Unzeitgemäßheit, 

dennoch an das rationalistische Zeitmodell der Moderne gebunden, 

das sie radikalisierten, so daß sie den Rahmen der zurückgewiesenen 

Gegenwart nicht verließen, sondern im Opponieren doch exponierter 

Teil der zurückgewiesenen Zeit blieben. 

Das avantgardistische Kunstwerk verweigert die Sinnerfahrung 

des konventionellen Werks. Diese Verweigerung schließt eine Interpretation 

der Gegenwart als einem die Biographie mit der kollektiven 

Zeit vermittelnden Zusammenhang aus. Fragmentierung zersetzt 

das avantgardistische Werk ebenso wie die Verbindung zwischen 

dem Ich und seiner Gegenwart. Das avantgardistische Werk ist in 

sich widersprüchlich und bleibt sich undurchsichtig. Es widersetzt 

sich der Anpassung an die Zeit, der es entstammt und die dennoch 

nicht zu seiner eigenen Zeit wird. Es stellt für die Rezeption die 

Aufgabe, einen Zusammenhang zwischen sich und der Zeit zu erfinden. 

In dieser nie abzuschließenden Aufgabe, einen Zusammenhang 

zu konstituieren, liegt neben der provozierenden Abwendung von 

der Gegenwart die Spekulation auf eine Reaktion der Aufmerksamkeit 

der zurückgewiesenen Gegenwart. In der unterschwelligen Erwartung 

ließe sich eine Ursache dafür vermuten, daß die Avantgarden, 

aus der zeitlichen Distanz betrachtet, ihrer Zeit stärker verhaftet 

blieben als ihr Eigenbild zuläßt. 

Mir scheint, daß die Avantgarden in anderer Weise als Epochen 

des Widerstands, etwa das Junge Deutschland oder der Naturalismus, 

Anlaß zu Fragen nach der Synchronizität geben, eben den Fragen, 

die das Unzeitgemäße aufwirft. Das Problem von Nähe oder 

Ferne zwischen dem literarischen Werk und der Zeit, zwischen indi- 


vidueller Zeit und kollektiver Zeit ergeben sich aus den von den 

Avantgarden bevorzugten Gattungen, Themen und ästhetischen 

Praktiken, die auf einem Anti-Werk-Verständnis von Kunst aufbauen, 

Narrativität unterlaufen und Zeit fragmentieren. Einer Ästhetik 

der Distanzierung durch eine betont nicht-mimetische und konstruierende 

Sprache korrespondiert eine Provokation der Gegenwart 

Die bevorzugten literarischen Formen wie Gedicht, Kurzprosa, Experimentaltheater 

oder Varietesketch schaffen durch ihre spezifische 

Poetik nicht so sehr Konjunktionen mit der Zeit als eine Distanz. 

Sprechen Nietzsche und die Autoren des Unzeitgemäßen von 

der Isolation des Ichs gegenüber der eigenen Zeit, der gegenüber 

ihre Einstellung als „unwürdig" erscheine, so trifft auf die Avantgarden 

diese Charakterisierung ebenso zu. Sie sind unwürdig und 

verachtet und sind es mit Bedacht. Dada und der Surrealismus verstießen 

gegen das Rationalitätsgebot und rehabilitierten den Traum 

und das Irrationale. Der Futurismus stellte die Systeme der Repräsentation 

und der Wahrnehmung in Frage und löste Zeitthemen wie 

Krieg und Gewalt, Subjektivität und die Zukunft aus ihrer Zeitbezogenheit, 

und stellte sie in schockierende literarische oder anthropologische 

Bezüge. Alltag wurde durch Metaphorik in 'unzeitgemäße' 

und 'unpassende' ferne Imaginationsräume entrückt. Unter den Bedingungen 

der überwältigend 'großen' Gegenwart überführte das 

schwache Ich mit den Mitteln der Imagination seine Schwäche in 

die Stärke der Zurückweisung, indem es die eigene Zeit vergaß oder 

ihr eine andere Zeit gegenübersetzte. Das machte die Avantgarden 

unwürdig, jedenfalls für einige Zeit, bis schließlich ihr Widerstand 

eingeordnet war und selbst ihre radikalen Widersprüche konsumierbar 

wurden. Dann gewannen sie Würde, die ihnen vom Markt verliehen 

wird. Was am Schreiben zeitgemäß ist und was unzeitgemäß 

im Sinn Nietzsches, also die Zeit gegen sich selbst aber im Namen 

der Zukunft anspricht, verschränkte sich auf komplexe Weise in den 

Avantgarden. 

In Deutschland war die Avantgarde schwach entwickelt. Das 

„Expressionistische Jahrzehnt" kann nicht als Avantgarde verstanden 

werden. Dada war die einzige avantgardistische Bewegung, und 

teilte das Schicksal der Avantgarden, einen Sprung aus der Gegenwart 

zu wollen aber sich in die Zeitlichkeit der Moderne zu verstrikken. 

An den Rändern der europäischen Avantgarden schrieben einzelne 

Autoren, die von Futurismus oder Surrealismus beeinflußt wa-


ren und aus der Opposition zur Zeit an dem von Nietzsche erneuerten 

Schreiben einer Umkehr teilnahmen. Das Unzeitgemäße erwies 

sich als eine Position, die der als Unzeit verstandenen der Moderne 

am ehesten gewachsen zu sein schien, die Illusionen der politischen 

Revolution vermeidend. In diesem Feld des radikal Unzeitgemäßen 

bewegten sich die Werke des frühen Döblin, Brecht, Benn und Musil. 

Sie hatten für die Ambivalenzen des Unzeitgemäßen ein offenes 

Gespür und vermieden die Einseitigkeiten der Avantgarde und die 

Euphorien des Revolutionären. Den Widerstand gegen ihre Zeit und 

gegen die Tyrannei der Zeitlichkeit der modernen Existenz mit den 

Avantgarden teilend, gelang es ihnen eher, sich davor zu bewahren, 

in den Sog des Fortschrittsdenkens gezogen zu werden und letztlich 

doch selbst zum Opfer der Zeit der Moderne zu werden. Der frühe 

Döblin lieferte Beispiele für die innere Widersprüchlichkeit, in die 

diese Position jenseits des Revolutionären aber mit radikalem Anspruch, 

außerhalb der Avantgarde aber mit avantgardistischem Engagement 

führen konnte. Zwischen Berge, Meere und Giganten und 

Das Ich über der Natur kann es keine Vermittlung geben. Dennoch 

war diese unscharfe Position des Unzeitgemäßen nicht so leicht von 

der Zeit einzuholen wie die der Avantgarden und erhielt sich vor 

dem Fall ins Anachronistische. 

Gottfried Benns frühe experimentelle Prosa und Lyrik liefern 

ein machtvolles Beispiel für die unzeitgemäße Opposition zur Zeit. 

Sie nehmen eine „Kälte des Denkens, Nüchternheit, letzte Schärfe 

des Begriffs,... vor allem aber die tiefe Skepsis, die Stil schafft," 

(Benn 1984: 362) für sich in Anspruch. Seine frühe Lyrik ist aus 

dem Bewußtsein eines Ichs geschrieben, für das „die Welt in jedem 

einzelnen Augenblick fertig ist und ihr Ende erreicht." Benns Begriff 

„Stil" bezeichnet das zentrale Moment in der Position, die das 

Unzeitgemäße im Verhältnis zur Moderne einnimmt. Die Dadaisten 

und später die Surrealisten gebrauchten ein anderes Vokabular, das 

jedoch Benns Rede von „Stil" und „Form" weitgehend entspricht. 

Aus Benns Bemerkungen über mangelnde Popularität und Anerkennung 

spricht nicht unbedingt die Enttäuschung, sondern ebenso 

eine Genugtuung: er ist stolz darauf, für niemanden in seiner Gegenwart 

zu schreiben, aber er hat gleichzeitig keinen Zweifel daran, 

daß er gegenüber den vielen, die ihn nicht wahrnehmen wollen, 'im 

Recht' ist, daß sein Werk in diese Zeit nicht gehört, aber daß seine 

Zeit kommen wird. Ein beinahe prophetischer Ton des einsamen 


Sprechers in der Wüste liegt über mancher seiner Aussagen über 

seine von der Gegenwart ungeliebte Dichtung, die sich keinen Kompromissen 

unterwirft, sondern einem avantgardistischen Ideal der 

Zukunft verschreibt. Es hätte ihn mißtrauisch gemacht, wäre er gelesen, 

verstanden, geliebt worden. Er wollte Opposition gegen die Gegenwart, 

gegen den Erfolg, der stets durch Anpassung und Aufgabe 

des Eigenen und des Eigensinns erkauft werde. Es sind Töne der 

Aggression und eines Triumphes, mit denen er einmal feststellt, Literatur 

sei eine Sache von fünfzig Lesern, und von denen seien die 

meisten psychisch gestört. Er bittet keineswegs um Verständnis oder 

Vergebung für solche Störungen und Abweichungen, die er an sich 

selbst beobachtet, für das Schizoide an sich und in seinem Werk. 

Ganz im Gegenteil: Er verachtet die Normalität. Um der Produktivität 

und Genialität willen, die sich in diesen Störungen und Abweichungen 

ausspricht, besteht nach seiner Anschauung die menschliche 

Gesellschaft. Sie rechtfertigen, ganz im Gegensatz zu den Idealen 

der egalitären und demokratischen Gegenwart, jedes Opfer. Die 

Wunde, die das Bewußtsein der Natur schlägt, läßt sich nicht schließen. 

Der Verstand, der das Leben bedroht, kann in dieser Sicht nur 

durch die Produktion einer imaginierten Welt, durch Literatur und 

Kunst gerechtfertigt werden. Aber diese Schöpfung einer Welt aus 

Kunst und Literatur ist nur aus der Distanz zur Zeit, in Opposition 

zur Selbstgenügsamkeit und Selbstgerechtigkeit der eigenen Gegenwart 

zu gewinnen. Erfolg zu haben, ist daher in Benns Augen 

notwendig kompromittierend. Das Unzeitgemäße erfordert eine Immunisierung 

gegenüber dem unverständigen Wunsch nach Anerkennung 

und Erfolg in der Gegenwart. 

Aus diesem gebrochenen Verhältnis zum Erfolg und zur Anerkennung 

spricht nicht nur eine persönliche Vorliebe, es ist keine 

Bennsche Idiosynkrasie. Vielmehr ist diese Opposition gegen die 

Zeit und die Suche nach einer Position des 'Außen', jenseits ihrer 

Bindungen und Gratifikationen die Folge eines tiefen Mißtrauens 

gegen das Allgemeine. Dies Mißtrauen kann ebenso wie das vieler 

Avantgarden als Grundlage von Benns Ästhetik verstanden werden. 

Die objektivistischen und universalisierenden Tendenzen einer Gegenwart, 

die noch immer im Bann der rationalistischen Aufklärung 

stand, will Benn, in der Tradition der Gegenaufklärung und der Romantik 

denkend, als epochalen Irrtum decouvrieren und als den 

letzten Schritt auf dem Weg der „Zerebralisierung" zersetzen. „Daß


dies das Leben sei," reflektiert Rönne einmal, könne nur angenommen 

werden, solange man an „das an von leitender Stelle aus Geregelte, 

...das staatlich Genehmigte, ja Vorgeschriebene...." glaube 

(Benn 1984: 53). In diesem verdrehten Anfangssatz der Erzählung 

„Die Insel" verbirgt Benn seinen Zynismus gegenüber der Normalität 

in der Anschauung von „Leben". Dieser Satz ist keineswegs 

ironisch. Er weist ebenso radikal wie die Avantgarden, die versöhnende 

Ironie verachten, jede Versöhnung durch Ironie zurück. So, 

durch Genehmigungen und Vorschriften geregelt, ist das Leben in 

der Tat, sagt Rönne, solange er als Arzt einem geregelten Leben 

nachgeht, erkrankte Knie behandelt und gerötete Rachen bepinselt. 

Aber daß dies das Leben sei, ist eine Annahme, die bei der ersten 

Gelegenheit zu denken, zerstiebt. Sobald das Ich sich von Arbeit 

und den auferlegten Regeln befreit und eigene Zeit gewinnt, beginnt 

es zu phantasieren, „denken", wie Benn schreibt. Aus diesem 

Augenblick der Befreiung entstehen die Avantgarden und ihre Forderung 

nach einer anderen Welt und einem anderen Leben. Wenn 

dies also nicht das Leben ist, stellt sich die Frage, wo, außerhalb 

dieser Bahnen des Vorgeschriebenen und Geregelten, das Leben zu 

suchen wäre. Rönnes Antwort in der kurzen Erzählung „Die Insel" 

ist so ambivalent wie in allen frühen Texten Benns: es läßt sich nicht 

finden, es muß ausgedacht werden. Rönne hat nach dem Ende des 

Dienstes als Arzt ein wenig Zeit, und da fängt er an zu „denken" und 

erfindet sich in einem assoziativen Strom an Gedanken einen konkreten 

Ort der Entfernung, eine Insel der Südsee. Er versetzt sich in 

deren zeitlosen Raum, imaginiert eine Zimternte, ein Dasein in 

ursprünglicher Sinnlichkeit und schließlich eine Liebesszene, die ihn 

aber in Angst versetzt, da er die Festigkeit des Bodens, das männlich 

Sichere tatsächlich zu verlieren droht. Da scheut er vor den 

Konsequenzen seiner eigenen, avantgardistischen Phantasie zurück. 

Die nietzscheanische Auffassung des Lebens als einer rein 

ästhetisch zu rechtfertigender Leistung ohne die Hilfe der Metaphysik 

löst in diesem Text Furcht aus und veranlaßt Rönne, in die 

geordnete Zeit aus Regeln und Vorschriften des Dienstes zurückzukehren. 

So teilt Rönne das Schicksal der Avantgarden. 

Der junge Brecht schrieb aus der Haltung der unzeitgemäßen 

Destruktion. Seine Gedichte sprechen von einem gesteigerten Bewußtsein 

von der Problematik des Subjekts in der Zeit. In provokanter 

Opposition zum geschichtlichen Denken seiner Zeit und zu 


den verachteten Werten des 'bürgerlichen Zeitalters' lassen seine 

frühen Gedichte Vergangenheit und Erinnerung aus der Vorstellungswelt 

verschwinden. Zeit wird subjektiviert, und Erinnerung hat 

sich vor der Instanz der ungeschichtlichen Subjektivität zu rechtfertigen. 

Die Hauspostille läßt sich als ein bedeutendes Beispiel des 

Unzeitgemäßen sowie des Avantgardistischen lesen. Das Zerstören 

der Erinnerung ist eines der durchgehenden Themen. Im Gedicht 

„Von den Resten älterer Zeiten" heißt es „An den großen neuen 

Antennen/Ist von alter Zeit/Nichts mehr bekannt." (Brecht 1988: Bd. 

3, 308) In der technischen Welt verliert die Erinnerung an die gute 

alte Zeit, das Ideal der Klassik und Romantik, ihren Wert. Diesen 

Wertverlust konstatieren Brechts Gedichte auf allen Ebenen. „Ich 

erinnere mich ihres Gesichts nicht mehr" und „Man sagt mir, ihr 

Gesicht vergaß sich schnell" (Brecht 1988: Bd. 1, 21; Bd. 3, 302) 

beziehen das Vergessen auf das Erinnernswerteste, was es in den visuellen 

und emotionalen Beziehungen zwischen einem Ich und der 

Welt der Anderen gibt, das Gesicht. Das Verlernen des Sich-Erinnerns 

und des überlieferten Wissens (etwa im „Lied der verderbten 

Unschuld"), oft mit Hilfe der „guten Droge" (Opium oder Kokain) 

macht „das Subjekt sehr vergeßlich." Und schließlich erklärt ein 

Gedicht das Vergessen zum Prinzip des Lebens und preist „das 

schlechte Gedächtnis des Himmels/Und daß er nicht /Weiß euren 

Nam' noch Gesicht..." (Brecht 1988: Bd. 3, 302; Bd. 1, 77) 

Die Avantgarden bezogen ihre Vitalität aus der Entfremdung vom 

Hier und Jetzt. Trotz ihres unzeitgemäßen Widerstands gegen die 

Zeit blieb ihre Literatur und Kunst aber an die Utopie der zukünftigen 

Gesellschaft, die sie im schönen Schein entgegen der entwerteten 

Gegenwart anwesend machten, gebunden. Das Dionysische des 

Südens, der Tropen, Asien, die Südsee, das dunkle Afrika wurden zu 

geographischen Hieroglyphen für die Orte, an denen die Ketten der 

Rationalität gesprengt werden und das Leben in größerer Fülle erfahren 

werden konnte. Diese andere Welt konnte, etwa bei Benn, 

Brecht oder Jünger, die Züge der kalten Mitleidlosigkeit einer 

Traumwelt, die Blutigkeit des Kriegs und die Gewaltsamkeit eines 

rechtlosen, archaischen Zustands annehmen. Der Surrealismus oder 

Benn und der frühe Brecht haben zu einer Literatur, die eine andere 

Zeit erfahrbar zu machen sucht, wesentliche Beiträge geleistet. 

Längst bevor Brecht von Mei Lanfang und der Penkinger Oper


hörte, hatte er seinen Osten entdeckt, und der war wilder und destruktiver 

als die gut organisierte chinesische Oper. Benn lernte das 

Unzeitgemäße in den Sezierräumen der Charite und im Sprechzimmer 

des Militärarztes in Belgien. Brechts anarchische und Benns zerebrale 

Lyrik und Prosa sind avantgardistisch in dem Maß, wie sie 

modern und gleichzeitig auch das Gegenteil sind: kalkulierte Formen 

von eruptiver Gewalt, Transformationen des Magischen im 

Gewand der Rationalität. Das rationale Denken ist ein Sonderfall 

des Denkens, das im Dunklen und Vorbewußten lauert und das Ich 

jederzeit überwältigen kann. Benns und Brecht Sprache betonen die 

Rationalität der Moderne, wenn sie von Experiment, Labor, Analyse, 

Wissenschaft sprechen, und sie betonen ebenso die Moderne, 

wenn sie vom Irrationalen, Mystischen, Primitiven reden. Es gibt 

keinen Widerspruch zwischen diesen beiden Dimensionen in der 

Literatur der Moderne, und darin war das unzeitgemäße Denken uneingeschränkt 

modern. Es verstellt den Blick auf das Eigentliche des 

Unzeitgemäßen, diese Gleichzeitigkeit als mangelhafte Inkonsistenz 

aufzufassen. Ein Verständnis der Moderne als Projekt der Rationalisierung 

ist fehlgeleitet und basiert auf ihrer Halbierung. Das Unzeitgemäße 

hatte seit langem eine ebensolche Daseinsberechtigung in 

der Moderne wie das Zeitgemäße, und es setzte sich von einem 

Denken ab, das durch eine Verknüpfung von Aufklärung und Revolution 

gekennzeichnet war. Die Entfernung der Gegenaufklärung 

und weiter Felder der Literatur und Philosophie aus der Moderne 

macht das Unzeitgemäße unsichtbar. Die Avantgarden hatten daran 

partiell Anteil. Ihr Kompromiß koppelte sie an das Schicksal der 

Moderne. 

Die Avantgarden blieben dem Zeitmodell der Moderne auf eine 

Weise verpflichtet, daß ihnen die andere Dimension in Nietzsches 

Vorstellung des Unzeitgemäßen entging. Sie verstanden das Unzeitgemäße 

als den Sprung von einer Kritik der Gegenwart in eine Position 

außerhalb der Zeit, aber suchten diese Position doch wieder innerhalb 

des Fortschrittsdenkens der Moderne. Sie verstanden ihre 

Gegenwart als eine Unzeit. Aber sie strebten - mit divergenten Mitteln 

- danach, die in ihr verborgene authentische neue Zeit aus den 

Fesseln der Tradition und der Gegenwart zu befreien. Sie entwikkelten 

keinen Sinn für das Wiedergewinnen einer ganz anderen 

Wirklichkeit jenseits der Abstraktionen moderner Zeitlichkeit, einer 

Welt der Konkretheit, Partikularität und Örtlichkeit. So erscheint 


uns das Unzeitgemäße der Avantgarden heute so vergangen wie die 

Vergangenheit, gegen die sie kämpften, aber aus deren kategorialem 

Rahmen sie sich nicht zu lösen vermochten, aus dem sie sich gar 

nicht lösen wollten. 

Anmerkungen 

1 Vgl. Landow und Rosello, 1994. 

2 Die Historisierung der Avantgarden und die These von ihrem Ende entwickelte 

bereits Peter Bürger 1974. 

3 Die Boheme, wie Helmuth Kreuzer sie definiert, gehört dagegen in die 

Moderne und Postmoderne (vgl. Kreuzer, 1968). Kritiker versuchten dagegen, 

die Boheme zu historisieren und sprechen von ihrem Ende, analog 

zum Ende der Avantgarden (vgl. Roberts, 1995). 

4 Das Fortschrittskonzept reiche nicht aus, stellt Marquard in einer Erörterung 

des Verhältnisses von Literatur und Zeit fest, „weil zur Wirklichkeit 

nicht nur der Fortschritt gehört, sondern vor allem auch das Ausrangierte 

und seine Wiederkehr... Darum ist das Fortschrittsmodell... in die Krise geraten, 

und es muß ein anderes - differenzierteres - Wirklichkeitsmodell 

herbei..." (Marquard 1994: 18). 

5 Im Streit um die Frage, ob der Name „Avantgarde" für historische Bewegungen 

des Jahrhunderts zwischen etwa 1830 und 1940 oder eher im Sinn 

eines systematischen Begriffs, für jede avancierte Position, die einer neuen 

Periode vorausgeht, verstanden werden sollte, ist eine solche Beobachtung 

von rückwirkender Kraft. Die Historisierung der Avantgarden als je spezifische 

Bewegungen scheint mir eine unausweichliche Folge ihres Bedeutungsverlustes 

seit den dreißiger Jahren zu sein. 

Die Beziehungen zum Surrealismus sind bis in die Formulierungen hinein 

offensichtlich. Die Formulierungen weisen auch auf eine Nähe zu Robert 

Musils Erdensekretariat der „Genauigkeit und Seele" hin, und legen die 

Verbindung von Cyberspace-Theorien, Musil und Surrealismus nahe. Vgl.


auch Michael Heim, 1998, der sich an einer Metaphysik des Cyberspace 

versucht. 

7 Vgl. etwa die Sammlung von skeptischen Beiträgen in Markley, 1996. 

8 Zur Kritik an Adornos Theorie des Neuen im Horizont der Avantgarden 

vgl. Bürger, 1974: 120ff. 

9 Peltier macht darauf aufmerksam, daß Periodisierungen und Hierarchisierungen 

nach dem Muster der modernen europäischen Kunstgeschichte auch 

auf die Kunst der Primitiven angewandt wurden, so daß eine „Klassifikation 

der Objekte in Hinsicht auf ihre plastische Wertigkeit - je geometrischer 

die Objekte desto höher ihr Wert - und eine vermutete Wildheit der 

Gruppen, die die Kunstwerke produzierten", entwickelt werden konnte 

(Peltier 1984: 109). 

10 Zur Geschichte der Bezeichnung vgl. vor allem Calinescu, 1974, und 

Lohner 1976. 

11 In einem aufschlußreichen Interview mit Andre Parinaud über den Ersten 

Weltkrieg, Apollinaire, Vache und die Ursprünge des Surrealismus (Breton, 

1969). 

12 Interview mit Andre Parinaud über hypnotischen Schlummer und die gefährlichen 

Landschaften der Nachkriegszeit. (Breton, 1969: 71). 

13 „Kant - das ist der Erzfeind, auf den alles zurückgeht." schreibt Ball, 

1992: 21. Ball, der in den Jahren vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg und im folgenden 

Jahrzehnt in die Avantgarde gehörte, teilte deren ambivalentes Verhältnis 

zur Zeit. 

14 Eindrucksvolle Beispiele versammelt der Katalog zur Ausstellung im 

Deutschen Hygiene-Museum Dresden (Lepp/Roth/Vogel, 1999). 

15 Von der Fragestellung nach der „Phantasie als Organ der Poesie" ausgehend, 

entwickelt Karlheinz Barck (1993) diese historische Tiefe, aus denen 

die Avantgardebewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts entstanden. 

16 Der Vertreter der anti-modernen Langsamkeit, Sten Nodolny (1994: 11), 

spricht von dieser unbefragten Identifikation mit der eigenen Zeit: „Aber 

wenn wir 'zeitgemäß' sagen, meinen wir meistens die Zeit in wichtigen, 

angeblich besonders fortgeschrittenen Regionen." Und das sind stets die 

eigenen Regionen. 


17 Er sieht sich veranlaßt, seine Leser um Nachsicht für seine Unzeitge 

mäßheit zu bitten. 

Die entgegengesetzte Position findet sich in diesen Jahren prägnant in 

der Philosophie und Literatur der engagierten Linken vertreten. Nur in einem 

eschatologischen Geschichtsdenken, argumentiert Lukäcs in „Geschichte 

und Klassenbewußtsein" oder, um Benjamins Lieblingsvokabel 

zu benutzen, nur in einer „messianisch" gedachten Geschichte könne das 

Subjekt sich aus der Entfremdung befreien und als wahrhafter Einzelmensch 

seiner Bestimmung entsprechend entstehen. Das eschatologische 

Denken von Geschichte will das Singulare am Menschen an den Gedanken 

der Erlösung durch ein Ende von Geschichte binden. Aus der Perspektive 

des unzeitgemäßen Denkens führt die Eschatologie jedoch gerade 

dazu, das einzelne in Prozeß des Allgemeinen verschwinden zu lassen. 

19 Die Entwicklung dieser Entwertung von Gedächtnis und Erinnerung ist 

nicht abgeschlossen. Das Wort 'Gedächtnis' wird im elektronischen Zeitalter 

für die Speicherung von Daten im Computer benutzt, obwohl zwischen 

der mechanischen Speicherung von Daten, die jederzeit unverändert 

abgerufen werden können, und dem Gedächtnis, das kein Speicher ist und 

keinen festen Ort im Hirn hat, sondern aus einem beweglichen Zusammenspiel 

zahlreicher Hirnfunktionen entsteht und seine Inhalte beständig verändert, 

kaum eine Gemeinsamkeit besteht. Das lebendige Gedächtnis hat in 

diesem neuen Konkurrenzverhältnis mit dem mechanischen Datenspeicher 

keine gute Zukunftsprognose. Die Ursache für das allmähliche Ableben des 

Gedächtnisses ist nicht der Computer. Die Entwicklung ist älter, und der 

Siegeszug der Speicher ist das Symptom einer langen Geschichte, nicht die 

Geschichte selbst. Die Daten im 'Gedächtnis' der datenverarbeitenden 

Maschinen sind nie unzeitgemäß. Sie mögen nicht auf dem neuesten Stand 

sein. Dann sind sie veraltet. Aber sie sind nicht unzeitgemäß und haben 

kein Eigenleben, keine Richtung und sind daher nie gegen etwas, auch 

nicht gegen eine Zeit gerichtet.

Anne FRIEDBERG: The End of Modernity: Where Is Your Rupture? In: 

Dies.: Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: 

University of California Press 1994, S. 157-179. 

THE END OF MODERNITY: WHERE IS YOUR RUPTURE? 

Post: the term itself demands a cultural seismology—an attempt to measure 

the magnitude and moment of rupture with the modern, and to appraise 

its effects. 2 But too frequently arguments about postmodernity take positions 

on modernism but not modernity. The murky quality of much of 

the debate about the postmodern would become more focused by a simple 

clarification: the use of separate terms for the social and philosophical 

dimension—modernity and postmodernity—and for its concurrent cultural 

movements—modernism and postmodernisms (i.e., we live in postmodernity 

but the arts may exemplify modernism). 3 

In each of the various arts where postmodernism has been debated— 

literature, art, architecture, music, dance, performance—modernism itself 

has meant something different. The term, postmodernism, has been used 

in literature since the early 1960s, 4 since the middle 1970s in architecture, 5 

since the late 1970s in dance and performance, 6 and applied to film and 

television only in the 1980s. 7 In film and television criticism, postmodernism 

has come to be used as a descriptive term for a genre or a period style 

but without an account of how the cultural configurations of postmodernity 

have themselves been profoundly altered by cinema and the television. 

As I have been suggesting, cinematic and televisual spectatorship has produced 

a new form of subjectivity; and this subjectivity is produced apparatically, 

whether or not the style per se is "postmodern." 

In the following chapter, I will argue against the type of critical applicationism 

that adopts the adjective postmodern to describe contemporary 

cinematic styles. First, film theorists and film historians have yet to agree 

on what is "modern" in cinematic terms. Second, a description of the 

cinematic apparatus itself will demonstrate the further difficulty of defining 

what is "modern" or "postmodern" in cinematic terms. But first, since 

much of the debate about the postmodern (in both aesthetic style and social 

effect) has taken its terms and assumptions from the architectural model, 

it is first necessary to demonstrate how architectural postmodernism does 

not fit as an analogy for film stylistics.

THE ARCHITECTURAL MODEL For architecture, the rupture between modern and 

postmodern is dramatically visible. Architectural historian Charles Jencks— 

the self-proclaimed definer and typologist of "postmodern architecture"— 

points to a precise moment when the modern ended and the postmodern 

began: the dramatic destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. 

Louis ( "Modern Architecture died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972, 

at 3:32 P.M." 8 ). The image of a dynamite explosion leveling these buildings 

provides an arresting visualization of the "end" of architectural modernism. 

In Jencks's description, "postmodern" style is marked by its departure 

from the aesthetic purity and streamlined functionalism of modernist International 

Style architects like Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, or Walter 

Gropius. The postmodern reaction to these forms of architectual modernism 

relies instead on the pluralist combination of modern and premodern 

architectural styles. The hybrid buildings of Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman, 

Michael Graves, James Stirling, Aldo Rossi, John Portman, and Arata 

Isozaki are models for Jencks's description of "Post-modern Architecture

as "half-Modern, half-conventional." 9 Graves's Portland Building (1982), 

for example, incorporates the boxy functionalism of modern architecture 

and the classical columns and ornamental motifs of premodern architecture. 

Monumental buildings such as Philip Johnson's AT&T Building in New- 

York (1978-1982)—a modernist box with a Chippendale top—or Portman's 

Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles (1976)—a medieval fortress of mirrored 

glass—are vivid illustrations of this additive style. 10 In addition, vernacular 

architecture—condominium units, storefront design, shopping malls, and 

what in Los Angeles is called a "pod mall" or "mini-mall"—also provides 

examples of this combination of stylistic elements from High Modernism's 

nautical railings to portholes and glass surfaces, all decorated with the follycsque 

colors of mint and salmon. 11 

Postmodern architecture, in Jencks's terms, reintroduced elements of 

sryle that modernism had purged—ornament, metaphor, historical allusion—and 

built spaces that were intended to be more popular, more 

human, and more individually oriented than the spartan Le Corbusier and 

Mies glass boxes of High Modernism. Although he partially attributes the 

stylistics of postmodern architecture to a reaction to the social failure of 

modern archirecture, Jencks defines postmodernism most assertively in 

terms of style: a "double-coding" of the elite and the popular, the old and 

the new, a continuation of modernism and its transcendence. 

Jencks makes many of his distinctions between "modern" and "postmodern" 

using analogies with other forms of visual art. Modernists, he 

claims, took the process of art as their subject, while postmodernists take 

the history of art as their subject. As a typologist, Jencks becomes very shrill 

about "category mistakes" in which Late Modernists are confused with 

Postmodernists. Late Modernists still rely on a concept of the "new," 

whereas Postmodernists have a new relation to the past. 12 

As we will see, it would be difficult to find an analogy in film history 

for the Pruitt-Igoe housing failure. Does one assume that the model of 

"modern" cinema was the "classical Hollywood film" with its economy of 

structure, its narrative continuities, its popular appeal, its reducrion of metaphor—a 

sort of refined glass box, efficient in its production of narrative 

pleasure? If so, what moment or film would instantiate such a dramatic 

rupture? Did it occur with the narrative bricolage of Orson Welles's Citizen 

Kane in 1941? Or earlier—before the classical Hollywood "mode of practice" 

took hold—in the montage exercises of Eisenstein and Vertov in the 

1920s?

Jameson confounds this distinction by considering as "modern" a list of 

filmmakers including Fellini and Bergman—whose films have been thought 

of as a challenge to the Hollywood model—along with the films of Alfred 

I litchcock, that master of "classical" editing. In a sentence that requires a 

good deal of parsing to detect its meaning, Jameson discusses symptoms of 

the "postmodernism" style in film: 

It can be witnessed in film, not merely between experimental and commercial 

production, but also within the former itself, where Godard's "break" with 

the classical filmic modernism of the great "auteurs" (Hitchcock, Bergman, 

Fellini, Kurosawa) generates a series of stylistic reactions against itself in the 

1970's and is also accompanied by a rich new development of experimental 

video (a new medium inspired by but significantly and structurally distinct 

lrom experimental film). 13 

This sentence, a key sentence for Jameson's catalog of the postmodern 

changes in cinematic form, has an incredibly tangled sense of where the 

actual "breaks" are. We are left with a series of unanswered questions: Is 

the break between modern and postmodern the same as the break between 

commercial and experimental? Are Hitchcock, Bergman, Fellini—the 

"auteurs"— exemplars of cinematic modernism while Godard is postmodern? 

If Bergman and Fellini are modernists, does this make the classical 

Flollywood cinema premodernist? And what does that say about earlier 

cinematic forms, before the codes of cinematic narrative were well established? 

What do we say about conventions of narrative construction that 

evolved in other national cinemas? How do they relate to "postmodernism"? 

Certainly, the "classical model"—a model deemed in retrospect— 

was challenged in its own day by a variety of avant-gardes that were otherwise 

involved in all that modern came to mean in the other arts. 14 

All of these questions form fault lines underneath the surface application 

of modern and postmodern as stylistic terms. As I will continue to argue, the 

very apparatus of the cinema makes the stylistic categories of modernism 

and postmodernism inappropriate. 

THE CINEMA AND MODERNITY/MODERNISM: THE "AVANT-GARDE" AS A TROUBLING 

THIRD TERM Because the invention of the cinema was coincident with the 

urban and cultural changes that marked modernity, the cinema has been 

commonly thought of as a "modern" apparatus. And yet most work on 

cinema and modernism retreats from theorizing modernity itself, leaving 

the relation between modernity and cinematic modernism ambiguous at 

best. Cinematic modernism has been most frequently described in analogy 

to the aesthetic challenges to the mimetic mandate of representation in 

painterly modernism or literary modernism. 15 

To complicate matters, in historical accounts of cinema, as in the other 

arts, there remains a profound and lasting conflation of what is considered 

"modernism" and what is considered the "avant-garde." 16 While the warring 

definitions of cinematic modernism and the cinematic avant-garde are 

largely a historiographical debate, to examine cinematic modernism one 

cannot avoid a discussion of the history of the cinematic "avant-garde. 

Hence, even to approach a discussion of the cinema in postmodernity, 

wades further into a nominalist quagmire. 

Cinema and the "Avant-Garde" Both Peter Burger ( Theory of the Avant- 

Garde) and Andreas Huyssen (After the Great Divide) have attempted to 

correct an assumed coextensivity between the avant-garde and modernism, 

a conflation assumed by critics as diverse as Renato Poggioli, Irving Howe, 

and Jiirgen Habermas. 18 But if this correction has had any impact on our 

current concept of a cultural avant-garde, it has largely been to exile it to 

a fixed historical period (now referred to as "the historical avant-gardes") 

rather than address it as an ongoing front. 19 In Theory of the Avant-Garde, 

Burger makes the distinction between modernism, which attacks the conventions 

of language, and the avant-garde, which attacks the institutions 

of art. 

The history of the French cinema, a key battleground for these semantic 

disputes, will provide us with an illustrative case of how Burger's distinctions 

do not fit cinema history. One 'of the implicit agendas of both the 

"first" and "second" French "avant-gardes" was to have the cinematic 

medium taken seriously as an art form. Much of this campaign took place 

as a discursive struggle in the French journals, such as Le Film, Le Journal 

du Cine-Club, Cinea, Cinea-Cine-pour-tous, and later, in international journals, 

such as Close-Up and Experimental Film. 20 The language of these critics, 

many of whom became filmmakers, was to announce the cinema as a 

"new art." 21 Filmmakers and their discursive supporters wished for the 

incorporation of the cinema into the institutions of high art, preferring to 

build cathedrals for their art than to challenge the idea of its institutionalization.

Filmmakers Marcel L'Herbier and Louis Delluc, for example, employed 

the terms impressionist and impressionism as self-descriptive labels, drawing 

the parallels between their cinematic visuality and painterly or musical 

impressionism. 22 In this case impressionism was used contemporaneously, 

not just in historical retrospect. Richard Abel has attempted to clarify the 

various labels used in French film histories (impressionism, avant-garde, 

modernism). Abel is dubious of terms that narrowly define modernism as 

anti-illusionist and antinarrative and wants to open modernism to include 

die "narrative avant-garde." 23 Abel appeals to the historical distinction 

between the "First Avant-garde," which included feature-length narrative 

filmmakers (Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein, L'Herbier, and Abel 

Gance) between 1919 and 1924, and the "Second Avant-garde," composed 

of abstract or non-narrative films from 1924 to 1929. In these distinctions, 

the avant-garde includes narrative and non-narrative films. Rather than 

make an exact distinction between modernism and the avant-garde, Abel 

combines them. 

The film experiments of this avant-garde were not confined to a single 

national cinema and also attempted to cross another borderline, that 

between cinema and the other arts—literature, painting, sculpture, music. 

Films such as painters Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 

(1921) and Symphonic Diagonale (1922); photographer Man Ray's Le retour 

a la raison (1923); cubist painter Ferdinand Leger's Ballet mecanique (1924); 

Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (1929) were received 

in the realms of high art, exhibited in galleries or ciné-clubs, separate from 

the venues of the burgeoning new "mass cultural" popular cinema. 

The above experimental films were part of a campaign to challenge the 

assumptions that cinema was a (lowly) form of mass entertainment and 

was, instead, worthy of inclusion in the academies of high art. Hence the 

cinema has its own convoluted history of allegiance to the principles of the 

"avant-garde," and does not neatly fit into Burger's assumptions about the 

avant-garde attacking the institutions of art. In addition, Burger defines the 

techniques of crosscutting and montage as essentially avant-garde. This 

would make every film from Birth of a Nation to Potemkin to Psycho an 

avant-garde film. 

Cinema and Modernism The cinema also has a paradoxical place in critical 

discourse about modernism. The narratological and mimetic conventions 

that developed as the cinema became a popular mass cultural form are 

precisely the conventions of representation that modernisms were challenging. 

The cinema can be seen as a "modern" form embodying distinctly 

anti-modern narratological conventions (closure, mimesis, realism) disguised 

in "modern" technological attire. 

A useful approach to such a terminological impasse about cinematic 

"modernism" is offered by Huyssen's formulation of the "divide" between 

modernism and mass culture. Modernism, Huyssen maintains, was constituted 

"through a conscious strategy of exclusion, an anxiety of contamination 

by its other: an increasingly consuming and engulfing mass culture." 

24 In this context, Huyssen also examines the rhetorical treatment of 

"Mass Culture as Woman," a discursively debased partner in a long-standing 

and bitter cultural divorce. 25 

But Huyssen's effort to locate the chasm on a discursive plane—placing 

a "great divide" between mass culture and modernism—makes it somewhat 

easier to chart a rupture or break between the modern and the division. 26 

The concept of a great divide forces the seismological cleavage, the division, 

onto a cultural rather than temporal model. Attempts to simply periodize 

the modern and the postmodern thus become misplaced road signs supported 

by a misleading post. 

If the "divide" between mass culture and modernism is properly understood, 

Huyssen posits, then the postmodern can be welcomed for its potential 

to reconcile, to fuse these disjunctures. In all of this, the avant-garde 

(a "hidden dialectic") asserts itself as a historical paradigm that rejected the 

"divide" from mass culture, and offers a heritage that Huyssen wishes to 

resurrect. The "historical avant-garde" (which includes Russian constructivism, 

Berlin Dada, and French surrealism) would be Huyssen's chosen 

genealogical forebear for the postmodern. 

Once one endorses the concept of such a divide, it is no longer useful 

to trace a singular history of high art; one must, instead, examine the 

bifurcated lineage of art and its relation to mass culture. Even though the 

boundary between what has been considered the "avant-garde" and what 

has been considered "modernism" may be very fluid, Huyssen maintains 

that the distinction rests in their respective attitudes toward mass culture. 

And because the conflation of modernism with the avant-garde only occurs 

later within art critical discourse, Huyssen wants to point out that the avantgarde, 

unlike modernism, always rejected the separation from mass culture. 

Huyssen uses the "historical avant-gardes" as a wedgelike presence, to 

sharpen modernism's relationship between high art and mass culture, but

the cinematic avant-gardes fall into a tricky terrain. The avant-garde film 

is generally defined in distinction from the mass cultural entertainment 

film, placing its experiments on the modernist side of the divide. Perhaps 

because of the conflation with modernism(s), these cinematic "avantgardes" 

have been defined in strict separation from mass culture. 

Postmodern art, Huyssen wants us to note, follows the lineage of the 

historical avant-garde, in that it has been driven to cross boundaries, to 

force intersections between the spheres of high and low, or public and 

private, which modernism wished to keep separate. In these terms, postmodern 

art exists in new configurations with modernism, with mass culture, 

and with the avant-garde. In Huyssen's view, the "postmodern condition" 

in literature and the arts is one where the distinctions between high 

art and mass culture have become quite blurred. Huyssen's "divide" 

between mass culture and modernism—and its undercurrent, the avantgarde—suggests 

that the cinema is, unlike all other art forms, uniquely 

poised to be "postmodern." 

As if following this lead, J. Hoberman has attempted to rehistoricize the 

American avant-garde and to apply the (early eighties) debates about postmodernism 

to a historical account of the cinematic "avant-garde." 27 In an 

essay entitled "After Avant-Garde Film," Hoberman provides a historical 

survey of the range of manifestations of "avant-garde" filmmaking, and 

adds the strategies often equated with postmodernism—appropriation, 

quotation, pastiche—to his description of the resurgence of "fringe" filmmaking 

in New York in the late 1970s. The films of Beth and Scott B., 

Vivienne Dick, Becky Johnston, James Nares, Eric Mitchell, Charlie 

Ahearn, and others, Hoberman asserts, were a "postmodernist repetition" 

of the New York underground of the mid-1960s. Postmodernist because 

the repetition was "second generation," sometimes parodic, sometimes 

homagistic allusions to Warhol, Fellini, and Antonioni. Although Hoberman 

doesn't claim this explicitly, he is also calling this work "postmodernist" 

because these filmmakers were positioned against what had become an 

"avant-garde ghetto"—the institutionalized empires of the Museum of 

Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, and their academic alliances. These 

filmmakers were challenging what Burger would call "the institutions of 

art." It is as if the cinema only became "avant-garde" after modernism. 

Hoberman also offers a polemical rereading of Peter Wollen's earlier 

polemic, "The Two Avant-Gardes" (1975), which traced the historical 

bifurcation between an avant-garde that followed the formalism of cubist 

cinema and an avant-garde that followed the political concerns of the Soviets. 

28 Hoberman argues that Wollen was describing a subtextual conflict 

between two "postmodernisms"—"the genuinely populist, Sixties postmodernism 

of Pop Art and underground movies versus the mandarin Seventies 

postmodernism of continental theory." 29 Although the ramifications 

of these two postmodernisms—the populist and the mandarin—aren't fully 

elaborated, Hoberman has begun to hint at a cinematic instance of what 

Huyssen described as the "great divide." At the time Hoberman was writing, 

this divide split between films that were aligned with mass culture 

(DePalma's wanton appropriation of Hitchcock and Antonioni)—and 

films that were aligned with the poststructuralist avant-garde (Yvonne Rainer, 

and what Hoberman and others called "the New Talkies"). Hoberman 

concluded with a hint that video art might offer "the perpetuation of a 

postmodern avant-garde." In this sense, Hoberman positioned what might 

be deemed "avant-garde" aesthetic practice in an otherwise foreclosed terrain 

of the televisual. 

Hoberman's piece seems marked now as one written from the vantage 

of the mid-1980s. Are there two postmodernisms? In contemporary film 

culture, does this split between stylistic and political art practices still pertain? 

Is there a formal cinematic postmodernism as opposed to a political 

cinematic postmodernism? If the distinctions between high art and mass 

culture have become ever more blurred, how can we discuss postmodern 

film in terms of style and neglect its place in the larger cultural apparatus? 

Certainly the dissolution of an "avant-garde" into the totality of consumer 

culture was a cultural deficit of the socioeconomic configurations of 

the Reagan 1980s. When, in 1987, Hoberman turned his review of the 

Whitney Biennial into a bleak prophecy, a distressed obituary for the cinematic 

avant-garde ("Individuals persevere, but the movement seems moribund. 

... the real irony is that a major reason for the marginalization of 

the avant-garde is precisely the absence of a commodity to exploit." 30 ), he 

was criticized for his aging standards and his own dismissals. As a letter to 

the editor complained: 

It would never have occurred to him during the heyday of '60s underground 

film to allow an institution like the Whitney Museum to define what was 

innovative and compelling in filmmaking. 31

Hoberman described that year's Whitney Biennial as "the most dismal 

selection of avant-garde films since the Biennial began including the form 

in 1979." And yet, like modernism's inclusion in the institutions of acad 

emy, the institutionalization and academicization of the cinematic avant- 

garde has had its critical effects. 

As if to seal the fate of the avant-garde film, two years later, New York 

Times critic Caryn James, reviewing the next Whitney Biennial, queried: 

"How can avant-gatde filmmaking survive in a consumer culture so pervasive 

that it seems to absorb its own critics?" 32 

JAMESON AND THE CINEMATIC "POSTMODERN" To date, Jameson has provided 

the most detailed account of the role of cinema in postmodernity. In two 

essays, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and 

"Postmodernism and Consumer Society," Jameson directly addresses the 

symptomatic aesthetics of postmodernism and film. 33 In these essays, and 

in his other discussions of postmodernism, Jameson has deftly peeled away 

the first layers of postmodernism's mirrored skin. His descriptions, as we 

will see, offer the depth of cultural insight that is only available to a theorist 

who takes the risk of evaluating a range of aesthetic products—from architecture 

to music to the visual arts. Jameson provides a detailed diagnosis of 

postmodern cultural practice, covering a wide range of symptomatic cases 

with a thin sheen of analytic brilliance. Jameson locates his analysis of film 

and the postmodern in a discussion of the "nostalgia film." 34 The "nostalgia 

film" may indeed be an indication of a key aesthetic symptom, a cinematic 

version of postmodern style, but, as we will see, the phenomenon of nostalgia 

extends well beyond this one genre or period style; it is an inherent 

feature of the photographic and cinematic apparatus itself. 

Although Jameson doesn't perform an exact taxonomy, his descriptions 

divide the "nostalgia film" into: 1) films that are about the past and set in 

the past Chinatown, American Graffiti); 2) films that "reinvent" the past 

(Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark); and 3) films that are set in the present 

but invoke the past (Body Heat; we could add Miami Vice, Moonlighting, 

Batman). The "nostalgia film" is described in stylistic terms—cases where 

a film's narrative and its art direction confuse its sense of temporality. Films 

such as Chinatown and The Conformist take place in "some eternal Thirties; 

beyond historical time." 35 

But if we extend this analysis of diegetic temporality to include the 

apparatus's inherent capacity to alter the spectator's relation to temporality, 

then every film has the jumbled relation to the historical referent that Jameson 

finds exclusively in the "nostalgia film." As I began to illustrate in the 

last chapter, all films—now in the age of easily replayable, accessible timeshifting—provide 

a temporal mobility for the spectator as "time-tourist." 

Perhaps because Jameson is one of the few theorists in the postmodern 

debate who has attempted to account for the role of cinema and the televisual, 

his work has become the cornerstone of most subsequent discussions. 

But it will be necessary to take his analysis a few steps further to 

theorize the institution of the cinema and its larger cultural role in the 

contemporary figuration deemed postmodernity. 

When Jameson first began writing on postmodernism in the early 1980s, 

he began by remarking on the "inverted millennarism" implicit in discourses 

that proclaimed an "end" of ideology, an "end" of history, an 

"end" of modernism. 36 Jameson wanted to posit a coupure and to theorize 

the historiographical problems involved in demarcating a rupture between 

the modern and the postmodern. 

One of Jameson's key contributions as theorist of the postmodern has 

been his assertion that the emergence of postmodernism is directly connected 

to ("late") consumer capitalism and the "postindustrial" 37 society 

that matured after World War II. 38 In the essay, "Postmodernism, or the 

Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," Jameson asserts this relation: 

Postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole 

new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the 

world. 39 

Both internal and superstructural: Jameson argues that the cultural effects 

of American military and economic domination have produced a particulat 

aesthetic form, a superstructural detritus, "postmodern cultute." This is a 

reflection theory, where the schizophrenic, decentered, panicked subjectivity 

produced by late capitalism produces, in turn, cultural products that 

are embodiments of such fragmentation. 

At the core of Jameson's discussion of the postmodern is a shift in cultural 

groundworks which, Jameson claims, gives a different signification 

and valence to aesthetic strategies. Here, the separate terms of modernity 

and modernism might sharpen Jameson's argumenr. When, for example, 

he describes postmodenism as a new social formation, not simply an extension 

of modernism, he is describing postmodernity, where modernisms have

een canonized into the academy and are no longer shocking. The stylistic 

similarities between modernist art and what is called "postmodernist" art 

have to be read, he would argue, in terms of the major differences in the 

socioeconomic context in which they are received. (In short, "modernism(s)" 

read differently in "postmodernity.") 

In a slightly earlier essay, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" 

(1983), Jameson first proposed the idea of a cultural "dominant": 

Radical breaks between periods do not generally involve complete changes of 

content but rather the restructuration of a certain number of elements already 

given: features that in an earlier period or system were subordinate now 

become dominant. 40 

By shifting away from a purely stylistic description, Jameson describes how 

modernisms, once oppositional atts, had, in theit day, a different social 

function than contemporary arts, which "may have all the same formal 

features of the older modernism" but have shifted their cultutal position 

and lost some of their oppositional force. 

In the later essay, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" 

(1984), Jameson elaborates the concept of a "dominant." He questions 

his own "empiiical, chaotic and heterogenous" list of postmodernist 

texts and offers a "periodizing hypothesis," 41 which, instead of simply supplying 

a roster of stylistic innovation, asserts that postmodernism is not a 

style but a "cultutal dominant" 42 or a "force-field." 43 The term cultural 

dominant, then, supplies a mote historiographically rigorous explanation of 

the continuity and discontinuity between the modern and the postmodern; 

it allows for the coexistence of the featutes of both. The idea of a "cultural 

dominant" requires a dialectical imagination of history, where the coupure 

is not temporal but discursive and epistemological. 44 My discussion of postmodernity 

parallels Jameson's theorization of a "cultural dominant." 

Rather than proclaiming a temporal moment of rupture, I have traced the 

subtle transformation produced by the increasing cultural centrality of the 

image producing and teproducing apparatuses. 

Warhol's Multiple: An Aesthetic Symptom If we digress briefly to examine 

Jameson's analysis of the work of Warhol, it will illustrate some of the 

limitations in Jameson's initial conceptualization of the cinema and the 

postmodern. Jameson's consideration of Warhol's work will provide us with 

an insight as to why his account of film in postmodernity slights the multiple 

metonmyic distribution of cinema over time. 

Jameson uses the aesthetic product—a symbolic document of its time 

such as Van Gogh's Peasant Shoes or Munch's The Scream—as an indication 

of a shift in the "dynamics of cultural pathology" from modernity to postmodernity. 

He maintains that the twin symptoms of modernity—anxiety 

and alienation—have given way to a new cultural pathology of fragmentation. 

Jameson finds symptoms of this fragmentation in the wotk of Warhol, 

whose Marilyn series (1962) and Shoes (done with diamond dust, 1980) 

are, to him, symptomatic documents of postmodernity. In these works, as 

in many of Warhol's silkscreen multiples, the pieces are produced by repeating 

a single, celebrated photographic image. Jameson asserts that it is the 

"black and white substratum of the photographic negative" that brought 

Warhol into the "age of mechanical reproduction." 45 

But it was not just that Warhol was using the photogtaphic negative in 

his silkscreened works which brought Warhol into a new configuration 

with reproduction and distribution. A key element of Warhol's work was 

the metonymic display of the multiple: identical images repeated (like 

unchanging film frames) in serial—but not sequential—repetition. 

Grounded in rubber stamp multiples, a staple of the commercial art 

illustration world when Warhol enteted it in the late 1940s, the multiple 

became a central strategy in Warhol's work. 46 Not only were works produced 

in silkscreen series, they were exhibited in multiple serialized display 

{Eighty-Two Dollar Bills [1962]; Marilyn x 100 [1962]; Thirty Are Better 

Than One [1963]; Dollar Signs [1981]). The subject here was fragmented by 

its identical reproducibility. 47 In this way, Warhol used mechanical reproduction 

both diachronically and synchronically—spatially and temporally. 

In a sense, even before Warhol began making "movies," his silkscreen work 

followed the historical trajectory from photography to film. As he spatially 

reproduced his close-up "part objects" (Marilyn's lips, Coke bottles) they 

became temporalized into a series of repeated "part objects" that produce 

an image of timelessness. 48 (In fact, Warhol's film work frequently 

employed a static camera, producing an almost unchanging series of images 

frame to frame; when his film work is reproduced in still illustration it is 

done in the form of a film strip in order to illustrate the frame arrangement. 

Each frame appears as an image in multiple. 49 ) 

As Warhol retrospectives cover the globe (the Museum of Modern Art 

retrospective travels to the Georges Pompidou in Paris then on to Prague,

Andy Warhol, "Thirty Are Better Than One," 1963. 

© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / 

ARS, New York. 

Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Warsaw. Will Moscow be far behind?), the polv 

valent slippages of context—of political context and the passage of time 

force us to rethink these silk-screen images. Hailing so blatantly from the 

United States as if in colorful multiples, they unfurl the flag of Americanbased 

consumer culture. What do these images do, if not celebrate a culture 

of abundance and multiplication? Warhol's work provides an aesthetic 

sanction to these proliferations of spectacle—billboards, supermarkets 

advertisements. Or, if not condoning commercialism, his work provided a 

lesson of adjustment. We live among all of these images, equal under the 

sign of signage: the hammer and sickle is equal to Marilyn or Mao or 

Reagan-for-Van Heusen shirts. Warhol's work makes natural what—in the 

1960s and 1970s and even in the waning Utopian hopes of the 1980s—we 

hoped it might critique. His work had an aesthetic of rebellion that became 

an aesthetic of sanction, an acceptance of the values of the culture of consumption 

that it first intended to critique. The work was forged not out 

of the conviction to relinquish the pleasures of ownership but to celebrate 

it, not an abstraction of commercial signage but instead its prophetic landscape. 

Jameson, unlike many theorists of the postmodern, has forced a political 

analysis of positions in the debate ("every position on postmodernism in 

culture ... is necessarily an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the 

nature of multi-national capitalism today" 50 ). 

By 1987, when Jameson wrote "Postmodernism and Utopia," he had a 

manifest nostalgia for the dialectic, detecting the faint echoes of a "Utopian 

vocation" of "collective cultural fantasies" in the work of contemporary 

artists Salle, Haacke, and Wasow. 51 In this essay, Jameson has a more 

affirmed sense of modernity's passage, a more digested sense of postmodernism's 

effects. (Phrases such as "the sharp pang of death of the modern 

and "the modern is sealed for good" assure us of this. 52 ) And, as he rethinks 

modernity and postmodernity in terms of time -and space, Jameson makes 

a distinction between modernism's experience of existential time and deep 

memory and postmodernism's discontinuous spatial experience. 53 Jameson 

suggests a " 'great transformation'—the displacement of time, the spatialization 

of the temporal" 54 —which separates the postmodern and its new 

spatial aesthetic" where "older form[s] of place" have disappeared, replaced 

by the "Disneyland simulacra of themselves." 55

These more recent descriptions of postmodern temporality suggest a 

productive route for an adequate consideration of cinematic and televisual 

forms. 

CINEMA AND POSTMODERN/TV Despite these semantic battles, the term postmodern 

has entered into the critical vocabulary of film style. If, as James recently 

asserted in the New York Times, "post-modern films rejuvenate old genres—westerns, 

adventure serials and musicals—by being them and mocking 

them at the same time," 56 how do we find a coupure, a historical or stylistic 

moment that separates the categories modern and postmodern? 57 

In a more sophisticated version of the same definition, Linda Hutcheon 

suggests, if not a manifest break between the modern and the postmodern, 

a more nuanced relationship, one of metareferentiality. What happens, 

Hutcheon asks, when a film like Stardust Memories parodies a "modernist" 

film like 8 1//2 

What happens, I think, is something we could label as "postmodernist," 

something that has the same relation to its modernist cinematic past as can be 

seen in postmodern architecture today—both a respectful awareness of cultural 

continuity and a need to adapt to changing formal demands and social 

conditions through an ironic challenging of the authority of that same 

continuity. 58 (emphasis added) 

For Hutcheon, whose work on postmodernism has consistently defended 

the ctitical potentials of parody and dialogism, double-voiced ironic parody 

becomes a corrective antidote to that other form of recalling the past, nostalgia. 

This assumption, that postmodern style involves citation, the invisible 

quotation marks of parody ("being them and mocking them at the same 

time") has come to be an agreed-upon currency of its ctitical usage. In 

James's definition, the "old genre" is made the object of representation, 

not necessarily as parodic travesty—for humor or critique—but also with 

the possible intention of endorsing, repeating, underlining the earlier 

form—recapitalizing, in a sense, on a past success. 

But before we assume that the "post" implies a teferentiality back to an 

earlier instance of representation, it seems imperative that we again consider 

the apparatus of the cinema itself. Certainly the cinema is not the first 

story-telling medium where the same stories are consistently retold. 59 From 

its beginning, the cinema has rejuvenated and replayed its own gentes and 

narratives. The cinematic apparatus is unique in its facility to replay and 

repeat its own exact form—the identical replication made possible by its 

photographic base allows the same film to be teprojected at a variety of 

points in time. Hence one cannot say that only postmodern cinema (as 

distinct from modern cinema) takes its own history, its own form, as a 

subject. 60 

To investigate this assertion, let us briefly consider a particularly cinematic 

form: the remake. From the very beginning of film production, films 

were remade. 61 Once one begins to examine the abundance of historical 

examples of this form, it seems necessary to attempt a taxonomy to distinguish 

how such intertextual teferentiality might opetate between the "original" 

and the remake. The remake itself can produce a mise en abyme of 

references, an "original" that is ever-receding: 

i) Films based on stage or literary properties: Dashiell Hammett's Maltese 

Falcon was made three times in ten years; first in 1931 directed by Roy del 

Ruth with Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez; then as Satan Met a Lady 

(1936) directed by William Dieterle with Bette Davis and Warren William; 

in 1941 as Maltese Falcon, directed by John Houston with Humphrey 

Bogart, Mary Astot, and Peter Lorre. In these examples, the referent—the 

soutce for the remake—is litetary rather than cinematic. 

2) Films that are remakes of earlier films: D. W. Griffith remade his 1911 

one-reeler The Lonedale Operator with Blanche Sweet as The Girl and Her 

Trust with Dorothy Bernard one year later, in January 1912. In these examples, 

the referent is cinematic not literary. 

3) Films that are remade as technology improves: Films that wete made in 

the silent era and later remade as sound films; or films made in black and 

white remade in color. Fannie Hurst's novel, Back Street, was made in 1932 

(directed by John Stahl with Irene Dunne and John Boles; by Robert Stevenson 

in 1941 with Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer, and then [in 

colot] in 1961 by David Miller with Susan Hayward and John Gavin). 

4) Films that are remade to update or change historical details: Four Horsemen 

of the Apocalypse, made first in 1921 (Rex Ingram) as a World War I 

story with Rudolph Valentino and then remade in 1961 (Vincente Minelli) 

with Glenn Ford as a World War II story. 

The intertextual referentiality between a remake and its "original is 

largely extratextual, outside the film text itself in the historical or discursive

context of the film's production or reception. [Parodic remakes may have a 

more directly intertextual referentiality. 

Remakes may or may not refer back to the earlier version, but sequels 

always do. Given the recent seasonal dependence on the sequel, it may 

appear that the sequel itself is a postmodern form. (The summer and fall 

releases of 1990—Die Harder, Two Jakes, Robocop II, Young Guns II, God 

father III—illustrate that the sequel is a reigning conception of successful 

industrial film production.) 

But there are historical precedents for this rash of sequels. Series filmmaking—capitalizing 

on a known, market-tested good—was an early staple 

of film production. Serial films—different from series films that were complete 

in each installment—were another successful marketing strategy as 

the film industry began to experiment with longer narratives. The serial 

was a transitional form in the market war between the standardized onereel 

format of the Motion Picture Patents Trust companies and the renegade 

"independents" who attempted films of a "feature" length. 62 Based 

on the pulp pop-cultural format of the serialized western, comic book, or 

melodrama, the serial connected otherwise complete narratives by frustrating 

their narrative closure. Louis Feuillade's serial detective, Fantomas (Gaumont, 

1913—1914), based on the serial novel by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel 

Allain, was such a successful cinematic venture that it spawned imitations. 

The Pathe serial, Perils of Pauline (1914), produced in the United States 

with the American actress Pearl White, was the first American serial. 63 (The 

serial was a form that was also present in other national cinemas: Germany's 

Homunculus, Italy's Tigris.) 

By 1916, the serial film was already parodying itself. As Abel records, the 

French film La Pied qui etrient (1916) parodies the first Perils of Pauline, 

The Clutching Hand, and the then newly renowned Charlie Chaplin. 

Epstein's Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (1925) was a parody of Henri 

Fescourt's Mandarin (1924) , 64 

The genre film, itself a safe staple of the industry, has offered a solace of 

familiarity in its iconography and narrative concerns. Some would assert 

that a melange of genres or period styles—from forties noir to nineties sci- 

fi—becomes a particularly "postmodern" pastiche of past forms. If this is 

the case, it is unclear where one draws the stylistic line: is postmodernist 

style the additive quality of pastiche or is it the stylistic "literalization" of 

broader cultural symptoms? 65 

Film production has always teetered on this precipice between orig-inalirv 

and repetition. The cinema has repeated and remade the same stories from 

myths and fables to plays and novels that are endlessly returned to for source 

material. But more than this form of repetition, where the textual reference 

is reencoded in a new text, the cinema has a metonymic capacity of repeating 

the exact same film over time: reissuing it, redistributing it, reseeine ir 

At its very base, then, the cinematic apparatus has the capacity to renlav 

itself ("being them and mocking them at the same time"). The repeatability 

of cinema products means that the apparatus can exactly quote itself, repeat 

its earlier form, if not its earlier context. 

Consider, for example, a Victor Fleming film produced in 1939, set in 

1863, but shown in 1992 {Gone with the Wind). Or a film produced in 1968, 

set in 2001, but shown in 1992 (2001: A Space Odyssey). Or more exactly, a 

film made in the city of Paris in 1964, set in a future world, but seen in 

1992 in the city of Los Angeles {Alphaville), or a film made in Los Angeles 

in 1982, set in Los Angeles 2019 {Blade Runner), but seen in Los Angeles 

in 1992. The exact temporal referent of each of these films is quite slippery. 

As work on the genre of the historical film has shown, the particular 

moment of production will determine its view of the past. 66 And as work 

on exhibition has shown, the particular moment of exhibition will determine 

the audience's reception of the past. 67 

In Benjaminian terms, the "aura" of the event has already disappeared 

in the mechanical reproduction itself, but the aura of the original moment 

of exhibition also disappeared. Whereas cinematic spectation is most frequently 

discussed in spatial terms—the elsewhere produced in the cinematic 

effect—it is equally important to interrogate the elsewhen. 

Jameson has dramatized the schizophrenia of the postmodern subject 

because "the ideal schizophrenic's experience is still one of time, albeit or 

the eternal Nietzschean present." 68 It is this subjective timelessness that provides 

an implicit parallel between the "postmodern condition" and cinematic 

and televisual spectatorship. But this subjective timelessness is not 

just a factor of diegetic temporality, it is a condition of the mobilized virtual 

gaze of spectatorship itself. 

POSTMODERNITY WITHOUT THE WORD A range of cultural diagnosticians have 

assessed related social and cultural effecrs of the technologies of the mechanical 

reproduction without relying on the terms modern and postmodern. 

THE END OF MODERNITY I 7|

How, for example, is postmodernity different from what the frequently 

dismissed sociologist Daniel Boorstin called the "Graphic Revolution"? In 

his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Boorstin 

assessed the impact of making, preserving, transmitting, and disseminating 

"images." 69 Although Boorstin does mention Benjamin, whose "The Work 

of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" would seem to be the Urtext 

for such assessments, he nevertheless described a familiar loss of aura 

of the original. The Grand Canyon, Boorstin proclaimed, has become only 

a faint reproduction of the Kodachrome original. While not using semiotic 

terms, Boorstin posits the ascendance of a Kodachrome signifier, the inversion 

of the established sign-signifier relation, as a symptom of modernity. 

As an illustration of the reversed priority of the image, Boorstin coined the 

term pseudo-event for the photo-opportunity staging of image-determined 

"events." 

I Debord also diagnosed a similar impact of representation on culture 

without invoking the terms modernity or postmodernity. In his aphoristic 

Society of the Spectacle, Debord pronounces, "everything that was directly 

lived has moved away into a representation," and he describes the effects 

that this has on our concept of history and memory. In a section called 

"Spectacular Time," Debord describes the spectacle as: 

the present social organization of the paralysis of history and memory. . . . the 

abandonment of history built on the foundation of historical time, is the false 

consciousness of time. 70 

A "false consciousness of time" still implies that there is a "true" one, and 

that the mystifications of the society of the spectacle are a veil that can be 

somehow lifted. Debord and other Situationists elevated their own form 

of appropriation, detournement, as one of the ultimate counterstrategies. 

Baudrillard takes this same phenomenon—representation of the thing 

replacing the thing—and extends it into a mise en abyme of a "hyperreal" 

where signs refer only to signs. Hyperreality is not just an inverted relation 

of sign and signifier, but one of receding reference, a deterence operation 

in the signifying chain. "Body, landscape, time," writes Baudrillard in "The 

Ecstasy of Communication," "all progressively disappear as scenes." 71 

Committing his own detournement, Baudrillard does not mention Debord 

or any of the Situationists whose ideas he roundly appropriates. Baudrillardian 

theory abandons ideological analysis in irs move toward the hyper 

real. In each stage of detournement, the loss of the referent seems to coin- 

cide with a waning of the political. Simply put, the representation of politics 

has been displaced by the politics of representation. 

Another media theorist, Joshua Meyrowitz, describes related cultural features. 

In his book No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social 

Behavior, he claims: 

The evolution of the media had decreased the significance of physical presence 

in the experience of people and events. One can now be an audience to a 

social performance without being physically present; one can communicate 

"directly" with others without meeting in the same place. 72 

In this passage, Meyrowitz is outlining the effect that television has had on 

the "situational geography of social life." 73 Meyrowitz describes how electronic 

media reorganize social space, breaking down the boundaries 

between here and there, live and mediated, personal and public. To describe 

the social impact of these changes, Meyrowitz uses the word "homogenized," 

a concept that implies a classless, genderless world where home, 

office, slum, and government building all have the same access to the world 

through the media. He maintains that the electronic media have not only 

reshaped our sense of "place," but have also blurred the boundaries between 

childhood and adulthood, and masculinity and femininity. 

In all of these cases, the media technologies dematerialize, deindividualize, 

decenter the subject. Without the word postmodern there is no need 

for periodization, a marked break dramatizing these changes. Yet without 

the word, these theorists are less concerned with the stylistic variances in 

cultural products than with the totality of cultural impact, the mode of 

reception determined entirely by the mode of production. 74 

Having examined the subjective changes produced by industrialized 

space and time—when the social configurations of the modern began— 

and by the types of experiences that were first commodified in the middle 

of the nineteenth century, the subjectivity of the "postmodern condition" 

appears to be a product of the instrumentalized acceleration of these spatial 

and temporal fluidities. Postmodernity is marked by the increasing centralization 

of features implicit (from the start) in cinema spectatorship: the 

production of a virtual elsewhere and elsewhen, and the commodification 

of a gaze that is mobilized in both time and space.

Danny BIRCHALL: The Avant-Garde Archive Online. In: Film 

Quaterly,Vol. 63. University of California 2009, S. 12-14.

TALKING POINT DANNY BIRCHALL 

THE AVANT-GARDE ARCHIVE ONLINE 

The Internet may have finally delivered avant-garde film 

makers the audience they always claimed they wanted. With 

experimentation rejected by the moving-image industry, and 

moving image shunned by commercial art galleries until the 

1970s, film and video artists in the twentieth century relied 

on film festivals, grassroots film clubs, artist-run co-operatives, 

and art school curricula as channels of distribution. For any 

one interested in avant-garde films outside the charmed 

circles of distribution in academia and a few metropolitan 

centres, it could be hard to see anything at all. 

Since broadband became a domestic reality, the pro 

liferation of moving image online, including a substantial 

amount of archival material, has swelled to bewildering di 

mensions. Even the most enthusiastic individual now has 

access to more than enough historical avant-garde film and 

video to reward their interest. For the audience, the problem 

now is less how to see it than where to begin, and how to 

organize, or even understand, it. For archives, co-ops, and 

filmmakers themselves, the question is whether a vast new 

audience for the work comes at an unacceptable cost to the 

integrity of the works themselves. 

Imagine that you decide to educate yourself in the his 

tory of avant-garde film and video. Armed only with your 

home computer and broadband Internet access, you sit 

down to spend an afternoon watching work that you've 

heard of but never seen. Searching YouTube, you easily 

find Fernand Leger's Ballet mécanique (1924). It's divided 

into two sections, but moving from part one to part two 

doesn't interrupt the film for more than a couple of sec 

onds. There's even a fairly nuanced (for You Tube) debate in 

the comments section about the appropriateness of the use 

of George Antheil's soundtrack. It's been uploaded by some 

one called "Andyfshito," whose other videos are a mixture of 

experimental films and live performances of trance music. 

More than 35,000 people have watched this particular 

upload. 

Looking for more, you find the whole of Dziga Vertov's 

Man With a Movie Camera (1929), split into nine parts. It 

looks like this has been taken from a commercial release: the 

rights-holders might not be too happy. You also locate 

Norman McLaren's Love on the Wing (1938) on the British 

Film Quaterly, Vol. 63, No. I, pps 12-14, ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630.© 2009 by the Regents of the University of California. 

All rights reserved. Please direct call requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of Califorina Press's 

Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressiournals.com/reprtnrinfo.osp. DOI: 10.1525/FQ.2009.63.1.12. 

FALL 2009 

Film Institute's YouTube channel. The High Definition ver 

sion is recommended, and pretty good it is, too: the BFI have 

published this as a promotion for a compilation DVD of 

experimental and documentary films. 

Searching further afield, you find Stefan and Franciszka 

Themerson's The Eye and the Ear (1945) on Luxonline, a 

dedicated education resource for avant-garde film and video. 

Luxonline also provides plenty of biographical and back 

ground information on the artists. Back on YouTube, there is 

a fragment of Stan Brakhage's Mothlight (1963): the quality 

is terrible, and there's no indication that what you're watch 

ing isn't the complete film. The University of Westminster 

has been hard at work digitizing the Arts Council of England's 

collection of films, mostly documentaries on artists, but also 

a few experimental works. Malcolm Le Grice's Whitchurch 

Down (Duration) (1971) is among them, but it's too bad if 

you don't work at a British university, because although the 

catalogue is public, the works themselves are only available 

to users in the .ac.uk domain. 

Moving onto video art, UbuWeb has Bill Viola's Anthem 

(1983) in its totality; the image is good, and there are some 

contextual notes. There's also a compilation by Pipilotti Rist 

(1992-2003), but other than a list of the works, there's noth 

ing more about Rist. Tank.tv is a relative newcomer as an 

artists' moving-image gallery, but archives all its presenta 

tions, including a good number of works by Ken Jacobs and 

Ian White. Getting right up to the minute, on the Animate 

Projects website, you find a short by Apichatpong Weeraseth- 

akul, Phantoms of Nabua (2009), which is available in high 

quality complete with full credits, synopsis, artist's statement, 

production stills and sketches. 

Having watched all this, hopefully you'll you've had an 

entertaining afternoon and learned something about the evo 

lution of avant-garde film and video. None of what you've 

seen has been hard to find, but the quality of both the mate 

rial and context has been highly variable. While by reputa 

tion you can trust Luxonline, YouTube doesn't even tell you 

when a film is incomplete (though the BFI's YouTube chan 

nel can be considered reasonably authoritative). Perhaps 

more importantly, you've been responsible for your own edu 

cation, from early European experiments to recent global 

video works. Nobody has given you a list of required watch 

ing, and the works mentioned above arc merely a tiny frac 

tion of what you could have watched.

Though the archive remains, inevitably, an incomplete 

and incoherent collection of fragments, the unprecedented 

level of availability has reconfigured these fragments. 

Institutional, educational, and informal channels of distribu 

tion have been replaced by commercial, public, and personal 

channels. To understand the effects of this, it helps to look at 

the platforms and means by which it has become available: 

for some as a deliberate and concerted effort, for others as a 

side effect of the larger boom in online video. 

Like the rest of the Google empire, which provides 

aggregating and organizing functions through which adver 

tising can be sold, YouTube itself isn't particularly interested 

in the nature of video content. Intellectual property rights 

have inevitably become an issue, but a combination of en 

thusiasm on the part of individuals, and the limited resources 

of filmmakers and their estates, means that at any given time 

there will be an unknowable amount of historical avant-garde 

material available on YouTube. At the same time archives 

like the BFI and the National Film Board of Canada have 

established partnerships with YouTube to deliver high-quality 

legitimate archival content. This both reduces the costs of 

networked distribution of the archive material, and attracts a 

larger audience than might otherwise be drawn through the 

organizations' own websites. 

While YouTube suits public organizations attempting to 

reach new audiences, the choice of the avant-garde connois 

seur has always been UbuWeb. Less user-friendly than You 

Tube, the film section greets you with a tightly set four-column 

list of over 350 artists and filmmakers in alphabetical order. 

Here you'll find everything from Dziga Vertov's early Russian 

Kino-Eye (1924) to Jean-Luc Godard's Dziga Vertov Group 

as well as Vito Acconci's discomfitingly intimate performance 

videos, Anthony Balch and William Burroughs's cut-up films, 

over forty short Fluxus films, Vicki Bennett's sound-and- 

vision collages, and Stan YanDerBeek's stop-motion dada 

funnies, accompanied by a good number of related art docu 

mentaries, audio interviews, and other sound pieces. 

Concrete poet Kenneth Goldsmith began UbuWeb in 

1996 as a repository for "lost" avant-garde poetic and sound 

works. UbuWeb's approach, summed up in the statement "if 

it's out of print, we feel it's fair game," has been largely wel 

comed for these forms. Film and video have been more prob 

lematic: the first UbuWeb film section rapidly disappeared 

after a slew of complaints. It reappeared, but Goldsmith and 

his collaborators took an aggressive approach to those who 

had requested removal of their work, listing them in a "hall of 

shame" for keeping their work out of the public domain. 

UbuWeb has since moderated its stance, and taken a more 

collaborative approach: some distributors, like Re:Voir work 

www.animateprojects.org 

artsonfilm.wmin.ac.uk 

www.canyoncinema.com 

LINKS 

expandedcinema.blogspot.com 

www.luxonline.org.uk 

www.mellart.com 

www.re-voir.com 

www.tank.tv 

www.twitter.com/ubuweb 

www.ubuweb.com 

www.youtube.com/bfifilms 

www.youtube.com/nfb 

with UbuWeb to make clips available. Nevertheless, many 

traditional distributors of artists' film continue to see UbuWeb 

as beyond the pale. One of the issues is what counts as "in 

distribution": for UbuWeb, the absence of an affordable 

DVD or VHS is sufficient license to make the work available 

online; whereas to the film co-ops, 16mm print-distribution 

libraries not only maintain an opportunity to see the films as 

they were intended to be seen, but also offer financial support 

to the artists and filmmakers themselves through a direct 

share of rental profits, an already fragile business model that 

stands to suffer from making artists' work available online. 

In summer 2009 I asked some of the traditional distribu 

tors of avant-garde film what impact online video has had on 

their business. Dominic Angerame, director of long-standing 

Bay Area film co-op Canyon Cinema welcomes the Internet 

as the realization of the 1960s dream of a film projector in 

every home. What failed to happen with 16mm and even 

8mm, is now a reality for digital video: the work of film artists 

now reaches right into the home and classroom. However, 

"the threat of Ubu and YouTube to Canyon becomes when 

teachers of cinema ask their students to view the films being 

taught in the classroom on these sites," says Angerame. "It 

becomes a disservice to both the artist and the experimental 

film distributors both economically and aesthetically." Stu 

dents don't see the work as it should be seen, and the artists 

fail to see any income from the screenings. 

In the U.K., however, the presence of public funding has 

allowed another venerable film co-op to make its work avail 

able on its own terms. Heir to the London Film-makers' Co-op 

(LFMC) and London Video Arts archives, LUX embarked on 

an ambitious digitization project funded by lottery cash. The 

resulting website, Luxonline, provides access to a significant 

amount of digitized video including, but not limited to, the 

FILM QUARTERLY

LFMC archive. Many works are represented by clips, but you 

can also currently see complete works by the Themersons, 

Guv Sherwin, and one of George Barber's Scratch Video 

pieces. Luxonline's ambition has been matched by changing 

attitudes towards making digitized works available in their en- 

tiretv. "[We] started at a time when people were much more 

uncertain about putting work online, and we shared that un 

certainty. Now we don't," LUX director Ben Cook tells me. 

Animate Projects makes the most of online technology to 

accompany the screen-based works it commissions, with pro 

duction blogs and commentaries from artists illuminating 

the filmmaking process. An impressive back catalogue of 

nearly a hundred artists with an international flavor includes 

Young-hae Chang, Elodie Pong, and Joji Koyama. While 

born-digital work presents a challenge for many traditional 

film archives, Animate Projects treats the web as a fully- 

fledged channel of distribution and begins the archiving pro 

cess before the work is even complete. 

LUX and Animate are exceptions; for the most part, 

what's online does not do justice to the source material. 

While the film industry's anti-piracy messages highlight the 

deterioration of quality in unauthorized images, its fear of 

file-sharing comes from the knowledge that for most feature 

films a single viewing in any medium is the deal done. In 

contrast, artists' film has more frequently been understood as 

experiential, and David Lynch's anti-cellphone tirade that 

"it's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your 

fucking telephone" (watch it on YouTube —"David Lynch 

on iPhone") reflects the sentiments of many filmmakers. 

Nevertheless, just as the ubiquity of digital media in 

creases the perceived value of live music and performance, so 

the prevalence of avant-garde moving image online returns 

some of the original films' aura as artistic objects —intended 

to be seen in a certain way, but about which we can learn 

through other media. Cook suggests that an online education 

in avant-garde film and video would be akin to "studying art 

history and only looking at photos of paintings"; but a realiza 

tion of the role of this kind of digital surrogate might be driv 

ing a growing liberality in artists' and rights-holders' approach 

to allowing online versions of their work to be distributed. 

With such wealth to hand, what strategies can be ad 

opted for making sense of the archive? One answer is to 

curate it yourself. YouTube and UbuWeb encourage the re- 

embedding of videos in your own website, and some writers 

and critics are taking advantage. Professional art curator Joao 

Ribas's Expanded Cinema blog emphasizes "an overlooked 

facet of the archival function of new media" in selecting indi 

vidual artists' work for re-presentation and commentary. Poet 

and writer Marco Milone's Mellart blog focuses on anima 

FALL 2009 

tion, presenting experimental abstract works by James 

Whitney and John Latham alongside newer films. Both blogs 

are driven by individual sensibility rather than any kind of 

curriculum or program, but nevertheless offer an informed 

narrative or sequence to follow. 

This combination of diffuse presentation and personal 

curation is the future of the avant-garde archive. The ease of 

access to the Internet as a publication platform means that 

where possible artists, archives, and co-ops will continue to 

make their work available in their own context. As well as 

being decentralized, the avant-garde archive will certainly 

also remain incomplete. Large institutional film archives 

contain lacunae that speak of the discernment and prejudices 

of the collection's selectors; the distributed archive, having 

no remit or limit, will contain the holes of reluctance or sim 

ple forgetting. Artists who are unwilling to see their work dig 

itized or presented through aggregators like UbuWeb may 

find themselves written out of future canons. "Those film 

makers who decide not to proceed in this way will risk the 

fate of not having the work viewed and possibly ignored by 

history," according to Angerame. 

Digital distribution and archiving are likely to be standard 

for funded artists. Artists whose films don't fit this model, or 

who work without funding or through informal organizations, 

may find it harder to find a secure berth for their works. But 

the archive of avant-garde film and video will remain some 

thing different from its exhibition. As moving image continues 

to make inroads into the gallery's white cube, the conditions of 

its reception remain important; even the traditional black- 

cube film program will retain a correspondingly necessary in 

tensity of experience. While traditional archives and co-ops try 

to provide reasonable access at the same time as preserving 

both the works and their own organizational integrity, the on 

line archive may come to look something more like an art li 

brary: a resource for reference rather than the works themselves. 

Through portals like UbuWeb, working without pro 

grams or academic curricula, the public understanding of 

avant-garde film may change. The pleasures of being led give 

way to the pleasures of leading as we share new discoveries 

with each other throughout the spectrum from academic 

blogs to Twitter, pointing out the works we love, and feel are 

important. Profitable opportunities for extra-institutional cu 

ration are no longer so severely limited by lack of access to 

material. Beyond the gallery and the screening room, the 

Internet is where a popular audience for experimental film 

making has at last been found. 

DANNY BIRCHALL lives, works, and writes in London.

BLOCK 1 

DEUTSCHLAND – ABSOLUTER/ABSTRAKTER FILM

DEUTSCHER ABSTRAKTER FILM 

Die Filmmatinee „Der Absolute Film“ 3. und 10. Mai 1925 in Berlin 

Deutscher abstrakter Film 

Filmavantgarde I/WS 2007/G. Jutz 

Literatur: 

– Holger WILMESMEIER: Deutsche Avantgarde und Film. Die Filmmatinee „Der Absolute Film“ 3. nd 10. Mai 1925. 

Münster, Hamburg: LIT Verlag 1994. 

– Thomas MANK: Die Kunst des Absoluten Films. In: Sound & Vision – Musikvideo und Filmkunst. Katalog zur 

gleichnamigen Ausstellung im Deutschen Filmmuseum/Frankfurt/M. 1994, S. 73-87. [R] 

Der Zeitraum der ersten Experimente zum abstrakten Film: April 1921 – Ruttmanns Uraufführung von 

Opus 1 in Frankfurt bis 3. Mai 1925 mit der legendären Matinée „Der absolute Film“ im UFA-Palast 

in Berlin, wo Filme von Richter, Eggeling, Ruttmann u.a. wahrscheinlich mit Musikbegleitung 

vorgeführt wurden. 

Veranstaltet von der „Novembergruppe“ in Gemeinschaft mit der Kulturabteilung der UFA. Dieses 

inzwischen als legendär bezeichnete Ereignis war insofern herausragend, als erstmals, „Werke der 

absoluten Filmkunst einem breiteren Publikum zugänglich gemacht“ wurden. Bei einem Großteil der 

in diesem Programm enthaltenen Filme handelte es sich um Uraufführungen. Die ursprünglich als 

„einmalig“ geplante Veranstaltung wurde eine Woche später wiederholt (10. Mai 1925). Eine dritte 

Vorführung fand am 22. Mai 1925 abends in Hannover auf Einladung der Kestner Gesellschaft statt. 

Dies blieben die einzigen Vorführung abstrakter Filme in den 20er Jahren. Erst die späteren Musik 

Tonfilme von Fischinger wurden von einem breiteren Publikum gesehen. 

Die Vorführungen gewinnen dadurch an Bedeutung, daß sie gleichzeitig den Höhepunkt und das jähe 

Ende der „absoluten Filmkunst“ darstellen. Zwar gab es auch nach 1925 weiterhin einen 

avantgardistischen Film in Deutschland, doch wurden die abstrakten Filmexperimente von Ruttmann, 

Eggeling, Richter u.a. zunächst nicht fortgesetzt. Bis auf wenige Filmkünstler, allen voran Oskar 

Fischinger, wandte man sich von der gegenstandslosen „Augenmusik“ ab und der abgefilmten 

Realität, z.B. dem Dokumentarfilm, zu. 

Für die Matinee in Berlin war folgendes Programm vorgesehen: 

1. Dreiteilige Farbensonatine Hirschfeld-Mack, Bauhaus Dessau 

Reflektorische Farbenspiele 

2. Film ist Rhythmus H ans Richter 

3. Symphonie Diagonale V iking Eggeling 

4. Opus 2, 3 und 4 W alther Ruttmann 

5. Images Mobiles (später: Ballet mécanique) Fernand Leger und Dudley Murphy 

6. Entr’acte Francis Picabia und René Clair 

Das Programm versammelte erstmals die Ergebnisse einer Filmkunst, die nicht literarischen 

Ursprungs war, sondern ihre Wurzeln in der bildenden Kunst hatte. 

Das Lichtspiel von Hirschfeld-Mack als einziger nicht-filmischer Beitrag der Matinee glich am 

ehesten einer musikalischen Darbietung. Die Matinee ist heute nur noch fragmentarisch 

nachzuvollziehen. Das Lichtspiel existiert nicht mehr. Es muß angenommen werden, daß alle Beiträge 

musikalisch begleitet wurden; in jener Zeit vor Einführung des Tonfilms hätte eine stumme 

Vorführung nicht der damaligen Kinopraxis entsprochen. Die Komposition von Paul Hindemith für 

Images Mobiles gilt als verschollen. Für die übrigen Filmbeiträge war vermutlich keine eigene Musik 

vorgesehen, möglicherweise wurden sie von Improvisationen begleitet.

„Das Drängen der expressionistischen Malerei nach Bewegung, die kinohafte Hastim 

rasenden Durcheinander der tausend Anspielungen eines futuristischen Bildes - diese 

ganze Unmöglichkeit, eine zeitliche Reihe von Vorgängen oder Assoziationen im räumli 

chen Nebeneinander zu bannen: Sie findet in der neuen Filmkunst ihre Erfüllung - ihre 

Erlösung aus dem Raum in die Zeit. Die Malerei hat sich mit der Musik vermählt. Es gibt eine 

Augenmusik." 1 

Der Kunstkritiker Bernhard Diebold propagierte in der Ausgabe der Frankfurter 

Zeitung vom 2. April 1921 in seiner Rezension einer Projektion von Walther Ruttmanns 

LICHTSPIEL OPUS l einen neuen Begriff: die „Augenmusik des Films". Was er da auf einer 

Frankfurter Kinoleinwand sah, inspirierte ihn zu der Prophezeiung, daß „neben der 

Dichtung, der Musik, den bildenden Künsten und der Architektur künftig eine neue Kunst 

genannt werden muß."Diebold hat hier mit sicherem Instinkt für das Neue einen zentralen 

Begriff für die konstruktivistische deutsche Filmavantgarde der zwanziger Jahre geprägt. | 

Es gab einmal-zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen-in den zwanziger Jahren, als die 

Filme noch keine Tonspur hatten, eine Gruppe von Künstlern, die, alle von der Malerei 

herkommend, sich eine neueTechnik und ein neues Medium von Grund auf aneigneten und 

mit Hilfe dieser Technik eine neue Kunstform schufen. Die Redeistvon Walther Ruttmann, 

Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger und anderen. Ihr Medium war der Kinofilm, 

ihre Technik die Filmtechnik - präziser: die EinzeLbildaufnahme von grafischen Vorlagen 

oder Gegenständen mit Hilfe der 35-mm-Stummfilmkamera auf dem Tricktisch. Der 

Zeitraum, in dem dies geschah, läßt sich durch zwei historische Daten eingrenzen: den 

April 1921 mit der bereits erwähnten Uraufführung von Ruttmanns OPUS 1 in Frankfurt und 

den 3. Mai 1925 mit der Matinee „Der absolute Film" im UFA-PaLast in Berlin. 

Jene denkwürdige Matinee, in der unter anderem Filme von Richter, Eggeling, 

Ruttmann und in einer „Performance" die Reflektorischen Farbenlichtspiele von Hirsch- 

feld-Mack mit Musikbegleitung aufgeführt wurden, blieb die erste und einzige öffentliche 

Vorführung dieser konstruktivistischen Filme in den zwanziger Jahren. Eine Handvoll 

kurzer Filme, geschaffen von einer Handvoll Malerin einer Handvoll Jahre - die lediglich 

von ein paar Künstlerkollegen und Kritikern in ihrer Bedeutung erfaßt wurden - entfalte 

ten via Zeitungsartikel und theoretischer Aufarbeitung eine nur sekundäre Wirkung. Erst 

die späteren Musik-Tonfilme von Oskar Fischinger aus den dreißiger Jahren, die auf dem 

Ideen- und Formenrepertoire der frühen Zwanziger aufbauten, wurden überhaupt von 

einem breiteren Publikum gesehen. 

Ruttmann und Richter- Eggeling starb bereits 1925 -wandten sich schon bald von 

einer freien künstlerischen Weiterentwicklung ihrer konstruktivistischen Filme ab und dem 

Werbefilm zu. Für den Bruch mit dieser autonomen Kunstform fehlt es nicht an Erklärun 

gen. Da werden die Uraufführung von Eisensteins PANZERKREUZER POTEMKIN 1926 und der 

Einfluß der russischen Montagekunst als Gründe genannt, die französische Avantgarde 

und die „Weiterentwicklung" der am „absoluten Film" beteiligten Künstlerpersönlichkeiten 

ins Feld geführt. Der in meinen Augen ausschlaggebende Grund für die kurze Blüte dieser 

Kunstform war jedoch die Tatsache, daß keiner ihrer Schöpfer von diesen Filmen leben 

konnte, ja daß sie vermutlich nicht einmal einen Bruchteilihrer Kosten wieder eingespielt 

hatten. 

Dabei war der Einfluß dieser brotlosesten alLer Künste a Heine durch die Tatsacheihrer 

Existenz gewaltig. Die radikalen Positionen ihrer Schöpfer wurden überalL diskutiert, und 

die deutsche Filmindustrie begann schon bald damit, sich die Ergebnisse der von ein paar 

experimentierenden Filmemachern kostenlos gelieferten Grundlagenforschung zunutze

zu machen. Es galt ja in den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren noch nicht die erst von Jonas 

Mekas und dem New American Cinema durchgesetzte moralisierende Trennung zwischen 

sogenanntem kommerziellem Kino und sogenanntem Underground. So schuf Ruttmann 

1924 für Fritz Langs NIBELUNGEN die abstrakte Sequenz des „Falkentraums". Bereits ab 

1922 realisierte er für Julius Pinschewer in Berlin kurze Werbefilme mit abstrakten 

Sequenzen für Excelsior-Reifen, für Kantorowicz-Likör, für die AEG und viele mehr. Auch 

Hans Richter produzierte nach eigenen Angaben zwischen 1926 und 1929 Werbefilme, von 

denen die meisten aber als verloren gelten. Erhalten sind ZWEIGROSCHENZAUBER (1928), ein 

Werbefilm für die Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung, und ALLES DREHT SICH, ALLES BEWEGT SICH 

(1929), ein Werbefilm für die Produktions- und Verleihfirma Tobis. Oskar Fischinger 

arbeitete ab 1926 als Spezialist für Trickeffekte an mehreren Filmprojekten mit, unter 

anderem für die UFA. 

Daß der stolze Filmkünstler lediglich die unbezahlte Forschungsarbeit liefert, 

aber an der kommerziellen Nutzung seiner Ideen nicht mehr beteiligt ist, diese merk 

würdige Aufgabenteilung existiert erst seit der erwähnten Trennung in Underground 

und Kommerz in den sechziger Jahren. Sie hat dazu geführt, daß das Millionengeschäft 

der Videoclips zu einem beträchtlichen Teil mit formalen Erfindungen aufgezogen 

wurde, die man aus den Experimentalfilmen der sechziger und siebziger Jahre „kosten 

neutral" herausgetrennt hatte. Die aus dem Arsenal der Filmgeschichte entwendeten 

Fetzen - neben dem Experimentalfilm werden vor allem die frühen fantastischen Filme 

geplündert -hängt man dem jeweiligen Musik-Hit als eine Art maßgeschneiderte Aura 

um. 

Als Eggeling und Richter um 1920 den Plan zu einer „Bewegungskunst" faßten, 

gingen sie davon aus, daß die Techniker in den UFA-Studios die komplizierten Bewegungs 

abläufe mitihrem Knowhow leicht ausführen könnten. Hans Richter berichtet: „Schließlich 

kam der Tag, an dem Major Gray uns die Erlaubnis gab, in der Trickabteilung der UFA bei 

Herrn Noldan zu arbeiten. Das taten wir auch mit durchaus negativem Erfolg. Der 

Techniker, dem wir ein Blatt, einen ,Akkord' in unserer Rolle, vorhielten, um ihn in 

Bewegung zu setzen, zeigte uns nur seine Verachtung. ,Damit ich Ihre Zeichnung in 

Bewegung setze, müssen Sie mir erst einmalzeigen, welche Figur anfängt, wann und wohin 

sie sich bewegt, wann und wohin sich die anderen bewegen, und wie schnell oder wie 

langsam, und dann: wann und wo sie verschwinden soll' Darauf hatten wir keine Antwort. 

Es zeigte sich mir mit brutaler Deutlichkeit, daß wir eben als Maler und nicht als Filmer 

gedacht hatten." 2 

Zum Glück haben Eggeling und Richter auch weiterhin als Maler gedacht und sich - 

wie Ruttmann und Fischinger- die analoge Aufzeichnungstechnik unter der Trickkamera 

selbst angeeignet. Und indem sie sich diese Technik aneigneten, lernten sie, mit ihr 

gestalterisch zu denken. Dieser Kooperation von ästhetischer und technischerlnnovation, 

wie sie auch Moholy-Nagy für die Arbeit am Bauhaus programmatisch gefordert hat 

- „Das traditionelle Bild ist historisch geworden und vorbei" 3 - verdanken wir ihre Filme. 

Viele, die heute mit den sogenannten Neuen Medien arbeiten, verzichten von vornherein 

darauf, sich diese oft sehr komplizierten Techniken selbst zu erarbeiten; sie verlassen sich 

auf die Programme der Techniker. Daß man aber, um in einem neuen Medium etwas 

Persönliches zu schaffen, mit seiner Technik denken lernen muß, diese einfache Grundre 

gel ist auch heute noch in Kraft. Die Fülle von modischem Schnickschnack und die 

Hochstapeleien heutiger Computerkunst beweisen das.

Die Filme, von denen hier die Redeist, sind konstruktivistische Filme, sie glauben an 

eine Formensprache, die nicht mehr den Einzelnen, sondern ein Kollektiv ansprechen soll 

Es bestand in den zwanziger Jahren so etwas wie eineinternationale der Konstruktivsten, 

die sich an sozialistischen Ideen orientierte, ehe sich angesichts des heraufziehenden 

Stalinismus auch diese Utopie verflüchtigte. Die Vorstellung eines konstruktivistischen 

Meta-Raumes beherrschte das Denken der international arbeitenden Konstruktivsten, er 

materialisierte sich in den verschiedensten Werken an den verschiedensten Orten, in seiner 

Zeit-Dimension in den Filmen der Berliner Maler. Dieser konstruktivistische Meta-Raum 

ließ sich mathematisch-geometrisch definieren. In seinem Buch „Expressionismus und 

Film" - es erschien 1926, ein Jahr nach der berühmten Matinee im Berliner UFA-PaLast- 

beschreibt Rudolf Kurtz die Mathematik als Zentrum der neuen „absoluten Filme". Der 

Begriff „Expressionismus" im Titelist von heute aus gesehen irreführend, denn Kurtz de 

finiert den absoluten Film streng konstruktivistisch: „ ... müssen die letzten Anklänge an 

individuelle Naturformen abgestreift werden und nurdie mathematischen Formen bleiben; 

denn die Mathematik ist die anschaulichste Form der Unbedingtheit. Das ist die Einstellung 

der ,absoluten Kunst'. Ihr Subjekt ist nicht mehr der im Atelier schaffende Künstler, 

sondern der kolLektive Mensch... Im Film ist dieses Programm von dem jüngst verstorbenen 

Viking Eggeling und von Hans Richter verwirklicht worden... Die elementaren Formen 

treten in Beziehung zueinander, und in dieser Komposition entfalten sich die Dramen des 

Geistigen... Die Psychologie ist restlos ausgeschaltet, durch bewußte Konstruktion er 

setzt, durch aktive Arbeit des Geistes. Nach hundert Jahren klingt es wie die Neu 

konzeption eines romantischen Satzes des Novalis: Das Leben der Götter ist Mathematik."'' 

Aus heutiger Sicht scheint es so, als hätten sich die Maler Eggeling, Richter, 

Ruttmann, aLs sie sich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg Gedanken über eine Ausweitung ihrer 

MaLerei in die Zeit-Dimension machten, nur notgedrungen des analogen Aufzeichnungs 

verfahrens 35-mm-Kinofilm bedient; denn ihre konstruktivistischen Animationskonzepte 

ließen sich mit den Mitteln des Trickfilms trotz immensen Arbeitsaufwandes nur un 

vollkommen realisieren. Moderne Computeranimationen von Lissitzky-Arbeiten beispiels 

weise zeigen, wie dergleichen Animationskonzepte nach einer solchen Technologie 

verlangen, sie herausfordern. 5 Es handelt sich im Grunde genommen um einen typischen 

Fall von „zu früh/zu spät". Was heute in Archiven und Museen von diesen Filmen noch zu 

besichtigen ist, sind - analoge - Kopien von Kopien von Kopien von Kopien..., die die 

ursprüngliche Qualität der Streifen nur noch ahnen lassen. Es wäre an der Zeit, einige 

dieser Filme einmal mit der Hilfe hochauflösender Computer zu restaurieren. Auch gibt es 

von Hans Richter Notizen und theoretische Überlegungen zu einer Farbgestaltung seiner 

Filme, die ihm damals aus technischen Gründen noch nicht möglich war. 

Mich machtimmer wieder betroffen, in welchem Maße Computerkünstler heute ohne 

filmhistorische Kenntnisse arbeiten. Umso größer ist dann die Verblüffung und die 

Begeisterung, wenn ich bei einem der so beliebten Computer-Symposien diese alten 

zerkratzten Filme aus den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren projiziere, von deren Existenz 

viele der Teilnehmer noch nie gehört haben. Zwischen diesem alten Medium und dem 

neuesten Medium stellt sich ein Arbeitszusammenhang her, der uns sowohl einen neuen 

Blick auf die Filmgeschichte als auch einen vorwiegend kritischen auf moderne Computer 

animation vermittelt. Bei einer solchen Diskussion brachte ein Teilnehmer das Dilemma 

auf die einfache Formel: „Die hatten damals eine große formale und philosophische 

Kompetenz, aber nur eine unvollkommene Technik für die Umsetzung; wir haben eine 

fantastische Technik, aber ganz selten auch die formale und philosophische Kompetenz."

Bei diesen Projektionen erringt jedesmal ein später Film von Oskar Fischinger 

den größten Beifall. Sein Titel ist ALLEGRETTO. Fischinger schuf ihn 1936 in Amerika 

auf eine Musik Ralph Raingers. Er verweist die meisten computeranimierten Filme mit 

seiner Verbindung von Musik und Bild künstlerisch auf die Plätze, und zwar „mit nahe 

zu unermüdlichem Erfindungsreichtum, mit herzlichem Humor und der heiteren Würde 

seines philosophischen Anliegens", wie es Fischingers Biograf William Moritz formuliert 

hat. 6 

Fischingers Filmarbeit begann in den Jahren 1921 bis 1926 mit den sogenannten 

WACHS-EXPERIMENTEN. Diese merkwürdigen Film-Stücke, die den meisten als ein skurriles 

Nebenprodukt in Fischingers Werk erscheinen, lassen sich von heute aus gesehen als eine 

Art systematischer Erforschung chaotisch-dynamischer Systeme interpretieren. Nur, daß 

der gelernte Ingenieur Fischinger dies nicht mit Hilfe der Mathematik unternahm, sondern 

in einer manuell-halbautomatischen, analogen Simulation mit der von ihm konstruierten 

Wachsschneidemaschine. Von diesen filmischen Versuchen sind mehrere hundert Meter 

Filmmaterial erhalten, die zum großen Teil noch nicht veröffentlicht sind. Im November 

1922 verkaufte Fischinger eine Lizenz für die Wachsschneidemaschine an Ruttmann, der 

diese Technik als optischen Effekt bei Lotte Reinigers Film DIE ABENTEUER DES PRINZEN 

ACHMED (1923-1926) einsetzte: In einem weitgehend vom Zufall gesteuerten Prozeß wird 

ein sich frei formendes Objekt aus Kaolin, feine Tonerde, in einen Wachsblock eingeschlos 

sen. Dieses dreidimensionale, erstarrte chaotische Objekt übersetzt dann eine 35-mm- 

Kamera mittels Einzelbildaufnahme in das Zeitkontinuum des Films. Zu diesem Zweck 

schneidet die Maschine hauchdünne Scheiben von dem Wachsblock, wobei ein Kopplungs- 

mechanismusjeweils den Kameraverschluß auslöst. Bei der Projektion des Films entstehen 

Bildfolgen, die eine erstaunliche Ähnlichkeit mit computererzeugten Visualisierungen 

fraktaler Mathematik haben. 

Als der Lichtton um 1930 die Filmproduktion eroberte, ist er das bei weitem 

fortgeschrittenste Reproduktionsverfahren für den Ton. Bereits in den zwanziger Jahren 

hatte sich die Schallplattenindustrie des Tri-Ergon-Verfahrens bedient, um die Qualität 

ihrer Musikaufnahmen zu verbessern. Die Lichttonfilme dienten als AusgangsmateriaLfür 

die Übertragung auf die Schallplatte. Die Filmavantgarde, vor allem aber den Ingenieur 

Fischinger, faszinierte die schmale, neben den Bildern auf dem Filmstreifen aufgezeichne 

te Lichttonspur, auf der sich mit einiger Übung nicht nur die Dynamik der aufgezeichneten 

Musiken, sondern auch einzelne Klangfarben anhand ihrer charakteristischen grafischen 

Merkmale bestimmen ließen. Instrumente und ihre einzelnen Töne ebenso wie Vokale der 

menschlichen Sprache waren damit optisch „lesbar". Hier tat sich für die Verbindung von 

Musik und Film ein neues Arbeitsfeld auf. Jetzt ließ sich der gezeichnete, abstrakte Film 

bis auf den hundertsten Teil einer Sekunde genau - wenn man die vier Perforationslöcher 

beim 35-mm-Film berücksichtigt- mit einer vorher auf einen Lichttonfilm aufgezeichne 

ten Musik synchronisieren. Man mußte lediglich die leeren Bildfelder neben der Lichtton 

spur fortlaufend numerieren, um einen perfekten Fahrplan für die Trickaufnahmen zu 

erhalten. Die Strukturen von Musik und Sprache ließen sich jetzt sehr genau untersuchen, 

ja man konnte auch, wie bereits 1929 der Münchener Trickfilmzeichner Rudolf Pfenniger 

mit seiner „tönenden Handschrift" bewiesen hatte, das Verfahren umkehren: Ein mit Hilfe 

von Schablonen hergestellter grafischer Ton verwandelte sich bei der Projektion des Films 

in ein völlig synthetisch hergestelltes Musikstück, beispielsweise 1932 in Offenbachs 

„Barcarole". Der erste Synthesizer! Auch Fischinger experimentierte 1932 mit syntheti 

schem, gezeichnetem Lichtton.

Auf der Grundlage des als Zahlenfolge in einen Trickfahrplan übertragenen Lichttons 

gelangen Fischinger in den dreißiger Jahren seine schönsten Filme wie KREISE (1933), 

KOMPOSITION IN BLAU (1935) oder ALLEGRETTO (1936). Es waren bereits Farbfilme im 

subtraktiven Drei-Farben-System, die er nach dem von ihm verbesserten Gasparcolor- 

Verfahren mit der Einzelbildkamera aufnahm. Die Choreographie der abstrakten Elemente 

schafft ein Beziehungssystem, in dem visuelle und akustische Bilder sich gegenseitig 

steigern und erhellen. In den vierziger 3ahren wurden Oskar Fischinger und seine Filme 

damit zum wichtigsten Bindeglied zwischen der deutschen Avantgarde und dem damals 

entstehenden amerikanischen Experimentalfilmkino der Westküste. „Eine Augenmusik 

konstruieren", das wollten auch die Brüder Whitney, Jordan Belson und viele andere. Aus 

dieser Tradition stammte das für dieses Kino typische synästhetische Bestreben, Farben, 

Formen und Musik „kosmisch" zu verbinden, bis hin zu seinen Auswirkungen auf Kubricks 

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEE (1968). 

Die Untersuchung der Beziehungen zwischen optischer und akustischer Musik ist 

auch heute noch ein Thema experimenteller Film- und Videoarbeit. So beruhen beispiels 

weise Klaus Wybornys Augenmusik-Konstruktionen auf der musikalischen Organisation 

von Folgen einzeln aufgenommener Bilder. Die Struktur dieser Sequenzen gibt eine 

Klavierkomposition Wybornys vor, die ein Computer in Bezug auf Dynamik und Tonhöhe 

auswertet und in eine Aufnahmepartitur als Fahrplan umwandelt. Bestimmte Tonhöhen 

sind bestimmten Farbfiltern zugeordnet. Eine einfache Elektronik programmiert die Super- 

8-Kamera nach dieser Partitur und erlaubt dem Filmemacher innerhalb der vorgegebenen 

Strukturen eine Reihe von „Improvisationen". Die einzelnen, den Filmstreifen entspre 

chenden, Stimmen werden schließlich auf einer optischen Bank übereinanderkopiert. 

Mir scheint, daß die neuere Computerkunst an der strengen Konstruktion von 

Augenmusik zur Zeit weniger interessiert ist. Vielmehr wendet man alle technische und 

künstlerische Innovation für interaktive Installationen auf, die vorgefundenes oder 

zufälliges Bildmaterial in Töne umsetzen beziehungsweise Töne Bilder generieren lassen. 

Aus der Sicht des Musikers geht es hierbei um die Erfindung von „Musikinstrumenten", aus 

der Sicht des Malers um die Erforschung von „Bildinstrumenten". Die autonome Konstruk 

tion von Augenmusik scheint an die Existenz bestimmter künstlerisch-philosophischer 

Grundüberzeugungen gebunden zu sein, wie sie uns die konstruktivistischen Filme der 

zwanziger Jahre vor Augen führen.

Am Sonntag, dem 3. Mai 1925, fand im UFA-Theater auf dem Berliner Kurfürstendamm 

vormittags um 11.30 Uhr die legendäre Matinee „Der Absolute Film" statt, organisiert von 

der Novembergruppe und der Kulturabteilung der UFA. Die ursprünglich als „einmalig" 

geplante Veranstaltung wurde eine Woche später wiederholt. Eine dritte Vorführung fand 

am 22. Mai 1925 abends in Hannover auf Einladung der Kestner-Gesellschaft statt. Zur 

Aufführung kamen sieben Filme und ein Lichtspiel: 

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack: Dreiteilige Farbensonatine 

Hans Richter: Film ist Rhythmus 

Viking Eggeling: Symphonie Diagonale 

Walther Ruttmann: Opus 2, 3 und 4 

Fernand Leger/Dudley Murphy: Images mobiles 

Francis Picabia/Rene Clair: Entr'Acte 

Das Programm versammelte erstmals die Ergebnisse einer Filmkunst, die nicht 

literarischen Ursprungs war, sondern ihre Wurzeln in der Bildendenden Kunst hatte. Das 

Lichtspiel von Hirschfeld-Mack als einziger nichtfilmischer Beitrag der Matinee glich am 

ehesten einer musikalischen Darbietung. 

Die Matinee ist heute nur noch fragmentarisch nachzuvollziehen. Das Lichtspiel 

existiert nicht mehr, abgesehen von dem Vorderteil des Lichtspielapparates und einiger 

Partiturzeichnungen. Es muß angenommen werden, daß alle Beiträge musikalisch beglei 

tet wurden; in jener Zeit vor der Einführung des Tonfilms hätte eine stumme Vorführung 

nicht der damaligen Kinopraxis entsprochen. Ein Foto von der Vorführung des Lichtspiels 

zeigt Hirschfeld am Klavier, seine Partitur für die Farbensonatine ist in Teilen erhalten 

Die Kunst des Absoluten Films 

73 

Ludwig Hirschfeld- 

Mack, Lichtspiel- 

apparat, Vorderteil, 

1925/63

Teilen erhalten, während die Komposition von Paul Hindemith für BALLET MECANIQUE 

(= IMAGES MOBILES) als verschollen gilt. Für die übrigen Filmbeiträge war vermutlich keine 

eigene Musik vorgesehen, möglicherweise wurden sie von Improvisationen begleitet. Für 

diese Annahme spricht, daß Walther Ruttmann bei späteren Aufführungen beispielsweise 

den Maschinenton des Projektors in den Zuschauerraum übertragen ließ. 

Die Veranstaltung und die Wiederholung waren bereits durch den Vorverkauf voll 

ständig ausverkauft, bei einem Fassungsvermögen von 900 Sitzplätzen. Die Reaktionen 

des Publikums auf die Matinee war teilweise recht heftig, entsprechend reagierte die Kritik 

bisweilen sarkastisch: „Die Leute fielen buchstäblich vom Stuhl- wenn auch nicht gleich." '- 

Im Kunstblatt findet man eine ausführliche Besprechung der Veranstaltung von Willi 

Wolfrad, in der unter anderem zu lesen steht: „Vollends Hans Richters eingebungsloses 

Gestammel ist nur geeignet, die gesamte Bestrebung zu diskreditieren." 2 Zu Ruttmanns 

Film schrieb Rudolf Arn heim: „Die absoluten Formen gebärden sich sehr menschlich, womit 

sie zwar die Absicht ihres Schöpfers stark überschritten, dafür aber aufgekratzte Stimmung 

erzeugten...". 3 Hirschfelds Farbensonatine, die, auch wenn sie ohne Musikbegleitung 

vorgeführt worden wäre, musikalisch wirkt, erweckte bei manchen Kritikern mehr Interes 

se. So wurde die Farbensonatine in den kritischen Rezensionen der Tagespresse zwar als 

„ein gelungenes Experiment, vielleicht eine Spielerei ohne Entwicklung, aber interes 

sant" 4 bezeichnet und man rühmte in der Regel die differenzierten Variationen der 

farbigen Formen und ihre Wirkung auf den Betrachter. 5 

Eine Rede von Dr. Edgar Beyfuß, Dramaturg des Kulturfilmressorts der UFA, eröffnete 

die Berliner Matinee. Die UFA, zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht vom nationalistischen 

Medienzaren Hugenberg übernommen und durchaus liberal gesonnen, was die organisatori 

sche Zusammenarbeit mit der sozialistischen Novembergruppe ermöglichte, förderte

ereits 1921 die ersten Filmexperimente von Richter und Eggeling. Rudolf Kurtz, damaLs 

Leiter des Kulturfilmressorts und Vorgänger von Dr. Beyfuß, veröffentlichte 1926 das erste 

Buch über jene neue Kunst mit dem Titel „Expressionismus und Film". Auch nach 1925 

beauftragte die UFA Künstler wie Ruttmann oder Oskar Fischinger mit der Ausführung von 

Spezialeffekten für Kultur-, Dokumentär- und Spielfilme. Von der Förderung der Künstler 

erwartete sie sich unter anderem auch die Entwicklung neuer Animations- und Trick 

techniken. 

Die Novembergruppe war ein Zusammenschluß bildender Künstler und Architekten 

als Reaktion auf die Novemberrevolution von 1918, in deren Folge der deutsche Kaiser 

abgedankt hatte und die Republik ausgerufen worden war. Gegründet Ende 1918 in Berlin, 

etablierte sich die Novembergruppe rasch. Ihr gehörten zahlreiche in- und ausländische 

Künstler an, darunter Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Hoech und Hans Richter. „Schließlich 

bildeten besonders die Bauhausmeister und einige ihrer Schüler einen festen Bestandteil 

der Novembergruppe. Zu ihnen gehörten Walter Gropius, Oskar Schlemmer, Lyonel 

Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Georg 

Muche, Nicholai Wassilief, Vincent Weber und Werner Graeff. Zwischen Weimar - später 

Dessau - und Berlin bestand ein reges Hin und Her." 5 Die Künstler wollten mit dem Volk 

zusammenarbeiten, an allen öffentlichen und staatlichen Arbeiten beteiligt werden, 

lehnten aber den Staat ab. Die Idee anonymer Werke wurde diskutiert, die Bilder sollten 

nur monogrammiert werden. 6 Kern der Gruppe war das Berliner Aktionskomitee, dem sich 

neben einzelnen Künstlern auch andere Gruppen wie beispielsweise „De Stijl" in Holland 

als sogenannte Ortsgruppen anschlössen. 

Obgleich die Betitelung der Matinee sich offensichtlich am Begriff der Absoluten 

Kunst orientierte, muß bereits hinsichtlich der Auswahl der verschiedenen Beiträge an der 

Eindeutigkeit dieses Begriffes gezweifelt werden. Für die deutschen Beiträge gilt das Wort 

von Rudolf Kurtz: „Das ProbLem des Absoluten ist eine Frage der Metaphysik. Sie ist 

gleichbedeutend mit dem Problem des Gesetzes, als der allgemeinsten Aussage. Die 

absoluten Künstler sind hierdurch in die Zwangslage gebracht, daß sie zu ihren Schöpfun 

gen eine Weltanschauung mit verabreichen müssen." 7 Weltanschauungen gab es zahlrei 

che, so daß die Betitelung der Matinee aus heutiger Sicht eher als Subsumtion der 

unterschiedlichen Tendenzen der zeitgenössischen Avantgarde verstanden werden muß, 

innerhalb derer der Absolute FiLm als Fallbeispielim Diskurs um eine neue kinetische Kunst 

besteht. 

Kandinsky verstand 1910 unter der Verbindung zweier Künste, der Malerei und der 

Musik, den Vorbildcharakter der Musik als einerungegenständlichen, reinen Kunstfüreine 

ebensolche neue Malerei. Die Filmkünstler übernahmen die musikalische Terminologie 

ganz direkt, wenn sie mit dem FiLm ebenso direkt rhythmische Vorgänge in der Malerei auf 

die Zeit ausdehnten. Das Ziel war die auf einfachen Linearen Elementen beruhende 

Formensprache nach den Regeln eines bildnerischen Kontrapunkts. In den frühen Zeich 

nungen Eggelings läßtsich der Weg seiner abstrakten Formen zurückverfolgen: Ursprüng 

lich NaturdarstelLungen, wurden diese immer weiter reduziert zu scheinbar rein ornamen 

talen Elementen, deren eigentliche Funktion die eines universellen Alphabets werden 

sollte. Die Suche nach einem „Generalbaß der Malerei" kündete ebenso vom Bezug zur 

Musik, insbesondere derjenigen Bachs, wie zu Goethes Farbenlehre, worin dieser als 

ÄquivaLent für die Harmonie in der Musiklehre Ähnliches für die Farbenlehre suchte. Die 

Vorstellung von einer universellen Sprache findet sich auch in den Ideen der De-Stijl- 

Gruppe um Theo van Doesburg und Konzepten der Konstruktivsten. 

Die Kunst des Absoluten FiLms 

75

Aus der Synthese unterschiedlicher Prinzipien sollte eine Formsprache entwickelt 

werden, die anwendbar sei auf alle Bereiche der Kunst. So schrieb Hans Richter 1921 in De 

Stijl IV: „Die ästhetischen Prinzipien des Alphabets zeigen den Weg zum Gesamtkunstwerk, 

und zwar deswegen, weil diese Prinzipien, derer man sich undogmatisch synthetisch 

bedient, nicht nur für die Malerei maßgebend sind, sondern in gleichem Maße für Musik, 

Sprache, Tanz, Architektur, Schauspiel." 8 Wie fern dabei aber Richter und Eggeling dem 

Medium Film geblieben waren, wie verhaftet doch der klassischen Malerei, zeigt sich an den 

fehlgeschlagenen Versuchen, ihre grafischen Entwürfe direkt auf das Filmmaterial zu 

übertragen. Ohnejede technische Erfahrung, ohne die Erkenntnis der Gesetzmäßigkeiten 

dieses technischen Mediums, erwies sich die große Zahl einzeln zu zeichnender Bild 

sequenzen als enormes Hindernis.iUm die gewünschte Wirkung auf der Leinwand zu 

entfalten, durften die einzelnen Zeichnungen nur minimal voneinander abweichen, umso 

in der Abfolge eine kontinuierliche Abfolge der Formen zu erreichen. Nach einem Bericht 

Theo van Doesburgs, der Eggeling und Richter Weihnachten 1920 in ihrem gemeinsamen 

Aufenthaltsort Klein-Kölzig besuchte, waren für diese ersten Versuche rund 300 Einzel 

bilder vorhanden. Legt man 16 Bilder pro Sekunde als Frequenz zugrunde, so entspricht 

das einer Vorführdauer von lediglich 18 Sekunden! Ein weiteres Problem stellte die 

Vergrößerung der Zeichnungen dar, die sich in der Projektion zwangsläufig ergab. Auch 

wenn die Zeichnungen exakt angefertigt zu sein schienen, macht die Vergrößerung noch 

die kleinsten Feh leraufder Leinwand sichtbar. Nach mehr als einem Jahr verwarfen Richter 

und Eggeling die Ergebnisseihrergemeinsamen Arbeitais ungenügend. Teile des Materials 

verwendete Richter später in seinem Film RHYTHMUS 21.

Eine Zäsur brachte 1922 die Bekanntschaft Richters mit dem damals zwanzigjährigen 

Bauhausschüler Werner Graeff. Ihm kommt das Verdienst zu, als erster im metrischen 

Charakter des Mediums die Grundlage für die konsequente Entwicklung einer visuellen 

Musik erkannt zu haben. „Im Gegensatz zu Eggeling und Richters Rollen waren meine von 

vornherein als wirkliche Partituren entworfen; daher können sie auch nicht im beliebigen 

Tempo vor- oder rückwärts gerollt werden. Gerade weil diese Kollegen bis 1922/23 

filmtechnisch nicht zurecht kamen, schlug ich ihnen vor, man müsse sich mit dem 

Tricktisch-Operateur über eine eindeutige ,Notenschrift' verständigen; und vor allem: sie 

müßten in ihren Entwürfen radikal einfacher werden, wenn sie technisch zurechtkommen 

wollten. Denn bis dahin hatten sie nur Mißerfolge." 9 

Mit den Partituren für seine Filme KOMPOSITION 1/22 und KOMPOSITION 11/22 demon 

strierte er die Möglichkeit von Film in Form einer quasi-musikalischen Notation, der die 

Gegebenheiten der Projektion zugrunde liegen: Die Maße des querliegenden Bildfensters 

verwendete Graeff als Berechnungsgröße für die Takteinheit, ebenso orientieren sich die 

einfachen Motive - Quadrat, Rechteck, Linie und Punkt - an den Maßen des Projektions 

fensters. Thema ist die Variation des Zeitmaßes, das Ab- und Zunehmen der Formen im 

Dreiviertel-Takt. Damit gelang es Graeff, tatsächlich musikalische Gesetzmäßigkeiten auf 

den Film anzuwenden, indem er dessen Vorgaben in die Konzeption mit einbezog. Wegen 

Geldmangels konnte Graeff die Partituren seinerzeit nichtin Film umsetzen und holte dies 

erst fünfzig Jahre später nach. 

Hans Richter, Studie 

zu „Präludium", 1919

Graeffs Einfluß, insbesondere auf Richter, geht über die bloße technische Hilfestel 

lung hinaus. Vergleicht man die früheren Entwürfe Richters für eine Filmpartitur, ist die 

Ähnlichkeit mit Arbeiten Eggelings unverkennbar; es dominieren die komplizierten 

geschwungenen Linienverläufe, die sich auch in Eggelings Diagonalsinfo nie wiederfinden. 

Die Bearbeitung der Fläche, die für die Richter-Filme typisch ist, tritt hier noch nicht in 

Erscheinung. Anders dagegen die Partiturrolle „Rhythmus 23" von 1923. Hiermit kam er 

nicht nur den Partituren von Graeff näher, sondern es finden sich auch Ähnlichkeiten mit 

dessen freien Arbeiten. Zufällige Synchronitäten einmal ausgeschlossen, verweist das 

Verhältnis beider Künstler auf den Einfluß des Bauhauses, namentlich Laszlo Moholy- 

Nagys und Theo van Doesburgs, beides die wichtigsten Lehrer Werner Graeffs. 

Für Walther Ruttmann, derin Bezug auf theoretische Äußerungen zu seinen Filmen 

eher zurückhaltend war und im Unterschied zu Richter und Eggeling die Filmtechnik 

praktisch beherrschte, „gehört die Kinematographie ... unter das Kapitel der bildenden 

Künste, und ihre Gesetze sind am nächsten denen der MaLerei und des Tanzes verwandt." 10 

Nach den ersten Filmversuchen 1919 gab er die Malerei auf und wurde Filmemacher, das 

heißt, er eignete sich die technischen Voraussetzungen des Filmemachens an, entwarf 

eigene Verfahren zur Herstellung und Kolorierung von Trickfilmen. Zwar galt Ruttmanns 

Hans Richter, 

„Rhythmus 23", 1923

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 

Lichtrequisit einer 

elektrischen Bühne, 

1930 

künstlerisches Interesse weiterhin der Fläche, doch ermöglichte es der Film, diese Fläche 

durch die Zahl der Einzelbilder zu multiplizieren, um ein Motiv in einer zeitlichen Abfolge 

zu gestalten. Das Medium blieb dabei ein Mittelzum Zweck und hatte aus sich heraus keine 

unmittelbare künstlerische Bedeutung. „Es handelt sich gewöhnlich darum, Vorgänge, die 

jenseits des Sichtbaren liegen, denen ein unwirklicher Charakter anhaftet, in eine bildlich 

wirksame, der Tageswelt enthobene Form ausdrücken." ll Ruttmann war neben Oskar 

Fischinger der einzige der Film-Künstler, der tatsächlich auch Filmemacher war. So wie der 

Maler um Farbe und PinseL wissen muß, um seine künstlerischen Ideen optimal umsetzten 

zu können, muß auch der „Filmbildner", wie Ruttmann sich nannte, sein Handwerkszeug 

beherrschen. 

Mit der Matinee und ihren beiden Wiederholungen erlebte der Absolute Film seinen \ 

ersten und letzten Höhepunkt. Allen Beiträgen gemeinsam ist die Weigerung, narrativ 

sein im Sinne des literarischen Films, wie er sich zu dieser Zeit bereits als Kunst-Kino 

allgemein etabliert hatte. Na.ch^l925 wendete die Kritik den Begriff „Absoluter Film"nur 

noch auf die Filme Oskar Fischingers an. Fischinger hatte bis zu seiner Übersiedlung nach 

Hollywood 1936 mit seinen Arbeiten großen Erfolg in Deutschland, wo sie als Inbegriff des 

abstrakten Films galten. Gleichzeitig waren seine Werbefilme, beispielsweise für die 

Zigarettenmarke Muratti, beim Publikum so beliebt, daß Kinobesitzer damit in ihren 

Anzeigen warben. Die konkrete Fortführung im Sinne einer in haltlichen Bearbeitung erfuhr

der Absolute Film im Rahmen der kinetischen Gestaltung durch Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, deren 

Höhepunkte 1930 das Objekt „Licht-Raum-Modulator" und der Film LICHTSPIEL SCHWARZ- 

WEIß-GRAU darstellen. 

Der heute kaum noch gebräuchliche und in seiner vielfachen Deutbarkeit mißver 

ständliche Begriff des Absoluten wurde bereits von den Künstlern der zeitgenössischen 

Avantgarde hinsichtlich der Bedeutung des einfachsten gemeinsamen Merkmals „Gegen 

standslosigkeit" unterschiedlich interpretiert. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy bezeichnete mit der 

absoluten Malerei die „Beziehungs- und Spannungsverhältnisse" von Formen, Farben, 

Helligkeitswerten, Lagen, Richtungen, deren „biologische Funktion allen Menschen grund 

sätzlich zugänglich sei durch den gemeinsamen fysiologischen Apparat". 12 Stilistische 

Unterschiede in der Kunst verschiedener Perioden verbLeiben für Moholy-Nagy letztlich 

„zeitliche Formveränderungen derselben Erscheinung". Ein Bild wirkt „schon durch die 

Harmonie seiner Farben und Hell-Dunkelverhältnisse". Zwar könne in dieser Weise ein 

Kunstwerk, gleich welcher Epoche angehörig, „genügende Werte für die malerische 

Beurteilung bieten". Aber es würden zur Erkenntnis des Wesens eines Kunstwerkes auch 

seine Darstellungsabsichten hinzugehören. „Nur in dem untrennbar waren Zusammen 

hang von Farbigkeit und Darstellungsabsicht dokumentiert sich sein Wesen. Doch ist es 

uns wohl möglich, mit Hilfe des Begriffs: ,absolute Malerei' manche von den Komponenten 

auseinanderzuhalten, welche auf die elementaren Spannungsverhältnisse und die, welche 

auf die zeitbedingte Form zurückzuführen sind." Absolute Malerei als vom Zwang des 

AbbiLdens befreite Kunst bezieht sich hier auf die Auseinandersetzung mit den ursächli-

chen Elementen bildnerischen Komponierens: „Dem Welt-Interesse und Welt-Gefühl 

entsprechend" treten an die Stelle der anachronistischen malerischen Darstellungs 

methoden die „mechanischen Darstellungsverfahren". Beides gemeinsam findet sich 

gleichwertig wieder in der „optischen Gestaltung". 13 

Malerei mit Zeit - so Walther Ruttmann über seine Filme - war auch die Auseinan 

dersetzung mit neuen Technologien und Medien, die nicht nur über die Künstler vehement 

hereinbrachen. Dort, wo mit der absoluten KunstderVersuch gemacht wurde, an die Stelle 

der Narration die Logik der Konstruktion zu setzen, war das Kunstwerk dem tradierten 

Verständnis eines breiten Publikums entzogen, das auf der optischen Wiedererkennung als 

Zugang zum Kunstwerk angewiesen war. Diesem Dilemma setzten die Künstler ihre 

Erwartung einer Bewußtseinsveränderung im Zuge des erhofften politischen Wandels zu 

einer neuen Gesellschaft entgegen und betrachteten ihre Kunst als Teil eines neuen 

Ganzen, in dem die Kunst nicht mehr dem Einzelnen vorbehalten sein würde, sondern als 

Teil des Ganzen gestaltend wirksam wäre. In diesem Sinne wollte der Künstler seLbst nicht 

mehr länger das schöpferisch-geniale Individuum der bürgerlichen Kultur sein, sondern 

sich dem Anspruch hingeben, als Teil das Ganze mitzugestalten. „Darum geben wir den 

Individualismus auf " schrieb Werner Graeff 1922. 

Als am 22. Mai 1925 in Hannover das Programm der Matinee auf Einladung der 

Kestner-Gesellschaft in einer Nachtvorstellung gezeigt wurde, hielt der Künstler Friedrich 

Vordemberge-Gildewart einen einführenden Vortrag. Vordemberge-Gildewart, zu jener 

Zeit 26 Jahre alt, hatte 1924 bereits die „Gruppe K" - das K steht für Konstruktivismus - 

gegründet und eine erste erfolgreiche Ausstellung in der Kestner-Gesellschaft organisiert. 

Er war Mitglied der „Abstrakten Hannover" und stand 1925 am Beginn einer Karriere als 

Maler, Architekt und Designer. „Für eine absolute Kunst", lautete denn auch das Thema. 

Im Mittelpunktder Ausführungen stand die Forderung nach einernotwendigen Erneuerung 

des klassischen Kunstbegriffs im Sinne des „elektrischen Jahrhunderts". Ähnlich wie 

Moholy-Nagy definierte Vordemberge-Gildewart das Kunstwerk primär aus seiner Erschei 

nung heraus; die Form ist zugleich der Inhalt, denn auf das „Was kommt es nicht an, 

sondern auf das Wie". 15 Dabei ist der Anspruch des „AbsoLuten", Gedanke und Material in 

einer „reinen Form" zusammenzubringen, ohne dabei auf einen anderen als den material 

immanenten Zustand hinweisen zu wollen, die Überführung der gegenstandslosen Kunst 

hin zu einer „inhalts-losen" Gestaltung. „Die wirklich absolute Kunst allerdings kennt 

keinen Inhalt." 16 Wo für Kandinsky die abstrakte Kunst eine zeitgemäße Äußerung des 

Subjekts blieb als Ausdruck des schaffenden Geistes, wird das Kunstwerk auf seine 

materielle Ordnung und das physiologische Vermögen seines Betrachters reduziert: „Denn 

hierin gibt es eben nur ein Hören, Betrachten, Sehen und dergleichen." 17 Wo Form und 

Inhalt identisch sind und aus der Kunst zugleich Gestaltung wird, scheint das Prinzip 

allgegenwärtig und anwendbar auf alle Bereiche des Lebens: eine absolute Gestaltung. 

Schon 1922 hatte Werner Graeff geschrieben: „Wir schaffen das Gesamtkunstwerk. Die 

Zusammenarbeit von Architektur und Plastik und Malerei (gemeinsam) mit Industrie und 

Technik, Leben." 18 

Auch das Selbstverständnis des Künstlers paßt sich dem an. Er will nicht mehr das 

Genie im Sinne eines bürgerlichen Ideals sein, dessen Eingebungen letztlich quasi- 

reLigiöser Natur sind, sondern der heutige GestaLter. Theo van Doesburg nennt den neuen 

Künstlertyp in einem Aufsatz aus dem Jahr 1924 den modernen Konstrukteur und Walter 

Gropius forderte 1916 „Architekten, Bildhauer, Maler, wir alle müssen zum Handwerk 

zurück! ... Der Künstler ist eine Steigerung des Handwerkers." 19

Für den „heutigen Gestalter" sind die traditionellen Mittel der Kunst nicht mehr 

ausreichend: „Viel zu gefühlvoll! Zu sehr Valeur!" 20 Um erfolgreich arbeiten zu können, 

muß der Künstler diese Mittel in ihrer Bedeutung neu bewerten. „So ist Farbe zwar ein 

gewaltiges Mittel, aber für den heutigen Gestalter nicht mehr befriedigend." Einzig ab 

Kontrast gestattete Vordefnberge-Gildewart der Farbe eine künstlerische Funktion. „Hier 

zu kommt das Moment der Bewegung." Der fragwürdige Begriff vom Gesamtkunstwerk 

erhieltin einer absoluten Gestaltung eine neue Bedeutung. Wichtigist dieäußere Form des 

Werkes ebenso wie sein Zustand, die Präsentation und die Funktion mit dem Ziel, „den 

Raum endgültig zur dynamischen Spannung zu bringen..." 21 

Diese dynamische Spannung des Raumes ist für eine absolute Gestaltung von 

zentraler Bedeutung; Vordemberge-Gi Idewart differenzierte zwischen einem tatsächlichen 

Raum, dessen Begrenzungen beispielsweise durch Mauern gegeben sind und dem gestalt 

baren Raum, der im Unterschied zum tatsächlichen ein „Raum im Raum" 22 sein kann. Theo 

van Doesburg faßte den Raumbegriff folgendermaßen zusammen: „Für den modernen 

schaffenden Künstler ist Raum nicht meßbare begrenzte Oberfläche, vielmehr der Begriff 

der Ausbreitung, die entsteht durch das Verhältnis eines Gestaltungsmittels (z.B. Linie, 

Farbe) zu einem anderen (z.B. Bildfläche). Dieser Begriff Ausbreitung oder Raum berührt 

die Grundgesetze der bildenden Kunst, weil der Künstler hiervon eine grundsätzliche 

Auffassung haben muß. Außerdem bedeutet ihm Raum eine gewisse Spannung, die im 

Werke durch Verstraffung von Formen, FLächen oder Linien entsteht. Das Wort Gestaltung 

bedeutetihm Sichtbarmachen des Verhältnisses einer Form (oder Farbe) zum Raum und zu 

anderen Formen oder Farben." 23 

Die Gestaltungsmittel zur Errichtung eines solchen „Raumes" sind nicht mehr 

plastischer oder flächiger, sondern rhythmischer Natur. Ton, Geräusch, Lichtstrahl sind als 

Äußerungen eines zeitlichen Ablaufs zu betrachten, weil sie, ähnlich wie ein Musikstück, 

bestimmbar sind durch Anfang, Ende und Intensität. Sie dienen weniger der Beschreibung 

einer begrenzten Oberfläche, sondern vielmehr der Gliederung des Raumes in einer 

zeitlichen AbfoLge. Die klassischen Gestaltungsmittel waren damit zugunsten der Raum- 

Spannung überwunden. Vordemberge-Gildewart nennt es das Intervall, das Wann-etwas- 

geschieht. 24 In einer solchen konkreten Anwendung des Gestaltungsfaktors „Zeit" in der 

künstlerischen Arbeit ist die Perspektive zu einer endgültigen Gestaltung gegeben. Das 

Medium Film ist hier nur von sekundärer Bedeutung; entscheidend ist, daß dieses 

seinerzeit neue Medium anbot, den Faktor Zeit auch außerhalb einer musikalischen 

Struktur, gleichwohl innerhalb der Malerei transportieren zu können. Erst hier wird die 

besondere Bedeutung des Absoluten Fi lms sichtbar; esist„tatsächlich zum ersten MalFi Im. 

Etwas, was ganz den Möglichkeiten des Films entspricht, kühn heran bis zu dem, was dem 

Film charakteristisch ist, ich möchte fast sagen, was dem Film elementar ist." 25 

In mehreren Schriften, erschienen zwischen 1922 und 1932, befaßten sich Laszlo 

Moholy-Nagy und Theo van Doesburg jeweils mit den Problemen eines rein gestalteten 

Films. Dargestellt anhand eines kurzen Abrisses der noch jungen Filmgeschichte, vollzieht 

.sich nach Doesburgs Auffassung das Entstehen einer Kunstgattung in drei Etappen: 

Imitation - Darstellung - Gestaltung. Demzufolge steht am Anfang die Absicht, die 

„Illusion des Natürlichen [zu] steigern." 26 Beweis seiner Theorie einer linearen Entwick 

lung ist ihm die Analogie zeitgleicher Entwicklungen in der modernen Kunst und der 

Fotografie im Vergleich mit den Eigenschaften des Auges: „Die Retina nimmt neue 

Eindrücke auf, und der Geist bereichert sich um neue plastische Gebiete." "

Mit der bloßen Abbildung sind für Doesburg die rein reproduzierenden technischen 

Möglichkeiten aber noch nicht erschöpfend entwickelt. Im Sinne des Nachahmungstriebes 

kann noch mehr gedacht und entworfen werden aLs für die zweidimensionale Leinwand 

notwendig wäre. „Fotografie - Stereoskop -Stereoskopfilm sind aLso die drei prinzipiellen 

Vorgänge, die wirins Auge fassen müssen, wenn wir die Materie des Films, anstattin ihrer 

Verwendung für reproduktive, für rein schöpferische Zwecke verstehen wollen." 28 Nach 

dreißig Jahren Film waren deshalb die technischen Voraussetzungen für eine eigenstän 

dige Filmkunst noch nicht erfüllt, die von Doesburg entworfene Entwicklungslinie in drei 

Schritten nicht zu Ende gebracht. Doesburg kritisierte hier nicht nur die aLs ideal gedachten 

Vorstellungen der Filmkünstler. Die Entwicklung des Films zum künstlerischen Ausdrucks 

mittel hatte das Stadium der Darstellung noch nicht überschritten. „Da man aber in den 

Versuchen für eine authentische Filmkunst notwendigerweise noch beschränktist auf diese 

vorhandenen technischen Möglichkeiten, ist der angestrebte rein gestaltende Film, nur 

mit den Elementen des Films konstruiert, nicht möglich..." 29 

Neben der Filmtechnik, deren ideale Form sowohL nach Moholy-Nagys als auch nach 

Doesburgs Auffassung erst in einer noch nicht absehbaren Zeit realisierbar schien, blieb 

als der entscheidend zu verändernde Faktor die Projektionsebene. Obgleich Doesburg 

nicht zuletzt durch seine Arbeit aLs Herausgeber von De Stijl in den Jahren zuvor 

maßgeblich die Konzeptionen eines Absoluten Films beeinfLußt hatte, stellt er hier 

nunmehr fest, daß der Film als unabhängige, schöpferische Gestaltung in den letzten zehn 

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 

Kinetisch konstrukti 

ves System, 1922

Jahren keine großen Fortschritte gemacht hatte. Die Aussicht, in Bezugnahme auf die 

originären Materialeigenschaften des Films eine entsprechend eigenständige Kunst ent 

wickeln zu können, die letztlich sogar die statische Malerei ersetzen sollte, hatte sich nicht 

erfüLLt. Stattdessen wiederholte die Vorstellung von einer quasi malerischen Funktion der 

Projektionsleinwand lediglich das Motiv des überwunden geglaubten statischen Bildes. Für 

einen rein gestaltenden Film muß nicht nur in seiner formalen Konzeption, sondern auch 

in dertechnischen Umsetzung der Charakter des Bildhaften überwunden werden. „Was uns 

bislang als abstrakter Film geboten wurde, beruhtauf dem Irrtum, die Projektionsfläche 

sei eine Ebene, etwa wie die Bildfläche der konstanten Malerei." 30 

Doesburg verweist auf den Unterschied zwischen realistischen und gestalteten 

Filmen. Die Differenz ist eine qualitative. Der gestalterische Film soll über den Rahmen der 

„Leinwand" hinauswirken, und wo dies nicht gelingt, muß der Versuch einfach wirkungslos 

bleiben, denn der realistische Film ist in diesem Rahmen von stärkerer Wirkung. Die 

Forderung, über die Leinwand hinaus zu einem Lichtraum oder Filmkontinuum zu gelan 

gen, ist daher wörtlich zu verstehen: Aus der Zweidimensionalität der Fläche soll eine Drei 

oder Mehrdimensionalität werden. „Dort und nirgends anders liegt die schöpferische 

Sphäre des gestaltenden Films!" 31 Ähnlich wie Moholy-Nagy fordert Doesburg eine 

vielflächige Leinwand, welche die Erstellung einer Art „Filmplastik" ermöglicht. „Auf der 

zweidimensionalen, flächigen Leinwand eröffnet sich dem Zuschauer lediglich ein winziger 

Teil des Film-Licht-Raumes, und zwar die dem Zuschauer zugewandte Fläche." 32 Doesburgs 

praktische Beschreibungen eines polydirnensionalen Raumes verbleiben mehr auf der 

theoretischen Ebene, wenn er von einem raumzeitlichen Filmkontinuum schreibt, das es 

zu entdecken gilt. 

Moholy-Nagys Entwurf eines „simultanen oder Polykinos" 33 dagegen orientierte sich 

an seinen praktischen Erfahrungen mit bühnentechnischen Versuchen, wie er sie unter y 

anderem mit Schlemmer und Farkas Molnar für die Bühne des Dessauer Bauhauses 

entworfen und realisiert hatte. Wesentliches Element ist der Raum, bei Moholy-Nagy in der 

Betonung einer physikalischen Bedeutung. Die räumliche Tiefe wird ausgenutzt beispiels 

weise durch hintereinander versetzte Leinwände oder eine gewölbte Leinwand, die in 

jeweils entsprechenderweise dramaturgisch und filmgestalterisch anders zu bearbeiten 

wären, als es im herkömmlichen Kino der FaLL ist. Der Raum bei Moholy-Nagy ist also ein 

wirklicher, ein Ereignis räumlicher Tiefe. 

Die Argumentation beziehungsweise Begriffsdefinitionen für die Perspektiven der 

kinetischen Gestaltung sind bei Moholy-Nagy und Doesburg ähnlich, insoweit es die 

Einbeziehung des Films in eine umfassendere Diskussion über eine „absolute", respektive 

„reine" Gestaltung betrifft. So bespricht Moholy-Nagy die Arbeiten Ruttmanns und 

Eggelings sowie die Lichtspiele Hirschfeld-Macks im Rahmen einer Tradition von Bilder 

und Bühnenmaschinen, an deren Anfang die Lichtorgel und das Farbktavier stehen. Jeder 

Bestandteil hat seine Funktion innerhalb dieser Entwicklung, stellt aber jeweils nur einen 

Aspekt eines allumfassenden Konzepts kinetisch-optischer Gestaltung dar. Während der 

Trickfilm noch mit dem Aspekt der direkten zeichnerischen Bearbeitung arbeiten muß und 

ebenso wie der „fotografische" Lichtfilm an das farblose Filmmaterial gebunden ist, kann 

das Lichtspiel unabhängig von einem Trägermaterialfarbliche Elemente benutzen. Moholy- 

Nagy nennt neben den Versuchen von Hirschfeld, Schwerdtfeger und Hartwig am Weimarer 

Bauhaus die Experimente von Thomas Wilfried, der 1920 in Amerika mit dem sogenannten 

Clavilux wechselnde gegenstandslose Bildvariationen vorführte und die Untersuchungen 

von Raoul Hausmann zu seiner Theorie einer „Optophonetik". Gerade Letztere beziehen

sich auf die Arbeit des von Moholy-Nagy gleichfalls genannten Pater Castel, der im 18. 

Jahrhunderts physikalische Untersuchungen über die mögliche Beziehung zwischen Farbe 

und Ton vorgenommen hatte und bereits eine Lichtorgel konstruiert haben soll. 

Seit dem Mittelalter ist die Idee der Entsprechung von optischen und akustischen 

Eindrücken unter dem Begriff der „Synästhetik" bekannt. Nicht zuletzt angeregt durch 

Erlebnisse, wie sie nun das Kino vermitteln konnte, nahm das Interesse an den künstleri 

schen Möglichkeiten von synästhetischen Ereignissen spätestens seit den zwanziger 

Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts zu. Hans Richter schrieb 1929, indem das Interesse des 

Kinozuschauers „für Handlung und das äußere der Gegenstände abnimmt, wächst es für 

etwas, was trotz dieserim Film (selbst im schlechtesten noch faszinierend) vorhanden ist; 

für das, was hinter der Spielhandlung auf der Leinwand vor sich geht." 3< 

Am Bauhaus waren synästhetische Experimente mit Ton und sichtbarer Form nicht 

zuletzt durch die Zwölftonkompositionen des Wiener Komponisten Josef Matthias Hauer 

inspiriert. Hauers Kompositionen basierten bereits vor 1912 - mithin vor Arnold Schön 

bergs Zwölftonmusik - auf einem System aus zwölf Tönen, das von der harmonischen 

Beziehung von Tönen und Farben zueinander ausging und die Grund Lage einer mystisch 

religiösen Weltanschauung bildete. Sein 1920 erschienenes Buch mit dem Titel „Vom 

Wesen des Musikalischen" wurde 1922 von Johannes Itten in Kreisen der Bauhausschüler 

bekannt gemacht, und Hauers Zwölftonmusik spukte in den Köpfen vieler Bauhäusler so 

sehr herum, daß es „an Gesprächsstoff niemals fehlte." 35 

Ein direkter Einfluß Hauersist heute nicht nachzuweisen, und vor allem am Bauhaus 

bLieben die Versuche, synästhetische Ereignisse zu erzeugen, nicht ausschließlich in der 

Erforschung des grundsätzlichen Verhältnisses von Licht und Ton zueinander begründet. 

Vielmehr schienen - ähnlich wie bei Richter und Eggeling - musikalische Strukturen 

geeignetes Vorbild zu sein für eine vergleichbare Ordnung optischer Elemente. Die 

Versuche, eine künstlerisch wie physikalisch gegebene Analogie von Licht und Musik zu 

finden, führten zu Ergebnissen unterschiedlichster Qualität. Die Abkehr von der Idee eines 

Absoluten Films als reine Gestaltung belegt, daß der Film, zumindest in diesem Stadium 

der künstlerischen Entwicklung, nicht wirklich für das ZieL einer universellen Sprache 

taugen konnte. Unabhängig von der Bewertung der jeweiligen Arbeiten jedoch stand die 

sich an der Bildenden Kunst ausrichtende Konzeption des Absoluten Films -jenseits der 

Ordnung, wie sie zu dieser Zeit bereits im Kino festgeschrieben schien - für eine 

notwendige Erweiterung des modernen Kunstbegriffs.

Christine N. BRINCKMANN: „Abstraktion“ und „Einfühlung“ im 

deutschen Avantgarde-Film der 20er Jahre. In: Dies.: Die 

anthropomorphe Kamera und andere Schriften zur filmischen Narration. 

Zürich: Chronos 1997, S. 276–275.

«Abstraktion» und «Einfühlung» im 

deutschen Avantgardefilm der 20er Jahre 

[1997] 

247 

Form spricht nur für sich, ist keine 

Attrappe und hat keinen Kontakt 

mehr mit den Naturerscheinungen.' 

Fast scheint der abstrakte oder «absolute» Film der frühen 20er Jahre aus 

dem filmhistorischen Nichts zu kommen. 2 

Jedenfalls gründet er nicht 

auf den Spielfilmen und dokumentarischen Werken, die im Kino liefen, 

auch wenn die Künstler durchaus mit den Entwicklungen im Medium 

Film vertraut waren. Es ging auch nicht darum, ein Gegenkino zu schaf 

fen. Die kurzen, ungegenständlichen, malerisch-musikalischen Experi- 

mentalfilme der frühen deutschen Avantgarde traten nicht in Konkur 

renz zum kommerziellen Filmschaffen, sondern begriffen sich als bil 

dende Kunst. Sie wurden, wenn überhaupt, in Sondervorstellungen 

gezeigt. 

Ich habe drei dieser Filme ausgewählt, um sie einer näheren Betrach 

tung zu unterziehen: Viking Eggelings Symphonie Diagonale (1921-1924), 

Walther Ruttmanns Opus I (1921) und Opus III (1923/24). Auch die 

frühen Arbeiten Hans Richters oder Oskar Fischingers wären für eine 

1 Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewarts Schlußwort seiner Einführung zum film 

programm «Der absolute Film», Hannover 1925. Abgedruckt in: Uwe M. Schneede 

(Hg.): Die zwanziger Jahre. Manifeste und Dokumente deutscher Künstler. Köln 1979, 

S. 258. 

2 Es gab allerdings gewisse Vorläufer oder Vorstufen - die Maler Hans Stoltenberg 

und Leopold Survage oder die italienischen Futuristen Bruno Corra und Arnaldo 

Ginna. Doch sie stellen individuelle Sonderfälle dar, und ihre Werke waren den 

Künstlern, die hier betrachtet werden, vermutlich nicht zugänglich. Zu den frühen 

experimentellen Filmansätzen vgl. Birgit Hein/Wulf Herzogenrath (Hg.): Film als 

Film, 1910 bis heute. Vom Animationsfilm der zwanziger zum Filmenvironment der 

siebziger Jahre. Stuttgart 1978; das - immer noch unentbehrliche, aber längst vergrif 

fene - Nachschlagewerk von Hans Scheugl/Ernst Schmidt jr.: Eine Subgeschichte des 

Films. Lexikon des Avantgarde- , Experimental- und Undergroundfilms. Frankfurt a. M. 

1974; Monika Zurhake: Filmische Realitätsaneignung. Ein Beitrag zur Filmtheorie, mit 

Analysen von Filmen Viking Eggelings und Hans Richters. Heidelberg 1982; und Hol 

ger Wilmesmeier: Deutsche Avantgarde und Film. Die Filmmatinee «Der Absolute Film» 

(3. und 10. Mai 1925). Münster/Hamburg 1994.

248 

solche Analyse in Frage gekommen; auch sie sind abstrakte Animations 

filme, die allein den sukzessiven synthetischen Arbeitsschritten am Trick 

tisch entspringen, also kein Korrelat in einer vorhandenen profilmischen 

Realität haben, die man fotografisch aufzeichnen könnte. Mit ihnen 

verwandt sind auch die Lichtprojektionen, wie sie zum Beispiel Ludwig 

Hirschfeld-Mack schuf - immaterielle «Farbenspiele», die nach einer Art 

Partitur live an die Wand geworfen wurden, also ohne Kamera und Pro 

jektor auskamen.3 

Die Wahl fiel auf die genannten Filme zum einen, weil sich in ihnen 

der Beginn der Bewegung festmacht: Die beiden Maler Ruttmann und 

Eggeling entdeckten die bildnerischen Möglichkeiten des neuen Medi 

ums etwa zeitgleich, aber unabhängig voneinander zu Beginn der Deka 

de. Zum andern wegen des ästhetischen Rangs der Werke, die außer 

dem, dank ihrer so unterschiedlichen Sensibilität und Ausrichtung, die 

formale Spannbreite des absoluten Films dokumentieren können. Und 

schließlich, im Falle Ruttmanns, weil sich hier im Sprung vom ersten 

zum dritten Opus eine Entwicklung aufzeigen läßt von den frühen male 

risch-grafischen Ansätzen zu einer komplexeren und mehr fotografi 

schen Arbeitsweise - und damit eine Verbindung zum späteren Schaf 

fen der filmischen Avantgarde. Von dem schon 1925 verstorbenen Viking 

Eggeling ist nur der eine Film erhalten geblieben; doch sind seine Vorar 

beiten in Zeichnungen dokumentiert. 

Im folgenden sollen die Filme historisch und biografisch situiert und 

in ihren visuellen und technischen Besonderheiten vorgestellt werden. 

Vor allem aber geht es um eine Reihe von Fragen, die an alle drei 

Beispiele zu richten sind, um ihre ästhetischen Konzepte zu erschließen: 

In welcher Weise, welcher Hinsicht sind sie «abstrakt» oder «absolut», 

welche Vorstellungen und Gestaltungsweisen verbergen sich hinter die 

sen Etiketten? Wie erklärt sich und was bedeutet jeweils der Rekurs auf 

die Musik, der sich - mit «Symphonie» und «Opus» - programmatisch 

in den Titeln ausdrückt? Wie «filmisch» sind diese Werke, wenn sie 

nicht an das Kino, sondern an Malerei und Grafik anknüpfen? Geht es 

ihnen beispielsweise um Tiefenillusion oder betonen sie die komposito 

rische Fläche? Setzen sie das Licht modellierend ein, wie die Fotografie, 

oder ist es nur technisches Mittel zum Zweck? Sind sie zentrifugal oder 

3 Schon vor und parallel zum Aufkommen des abstrakten Films vollzieht sich die 

Entwicklung von bewegten musikalischen Licht- und Farbexperimenten, Projek 

tionen, «Orgeln» und dergleichen. Vgl. Sara Seiwood: «Farblichtmusik und ab 

strakter Film». In: Karin von Maur (Hg.): Vom Klang der Bilder. Die Musik in der 

Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. München 1985, S. 414ff., mit vielen Zitaten, Nachweisen 

und Illustrationen. 

zentripetal angelegt, deuten sie auf ein Off, das jenseits der Leinwand 

imaginär fortzudenken ist, oder beschränken sie sich auf das projizierte, 

geschlossene Rechteck? Und schließlich: In welchem Maße begünstigt 

oder verhindert die filmische Gestaltung die Einfühlung? Kommt es zu 

empathischen Prozessen beim Publikum, zu anthropomorpher Beseelung 

- oder bleibt das Geschehen in der Tat «abstrakt»? 

Das geistige Umfeld, aus dem heraus der abstrakte Film entstand, kann 

hier nur sehr pauschal skizziert werden. - Am Ende der 10er Jahre sind 

die apokalyptischen Erfahrungen des Ersten Weltkriegs und seiner Nach 

beben noch äußerst gegenwärtig und der Schock der Russischen Revo 

lution noch allenthalben spürbar. Visionen des gesellschaftlichen Chaos, 

des Zerfalls der Werte, der Überwältigung durch die Technik gehen teils 

zusammen mit kultureller, konservativer Rückbesinnung, teils mit dem 

Aufbruch in neue Denkmuster und fortschrittliche ästhetische, politi 

sche und soziale Entwürfe. In der europäischen Kunst sind die 10er und 

frühen 20er Jahre die Zeit der Manifeste und «Ismen»: Futurismus, 

Vortizismus, Konstruktivismus, Technizismus, Kubismus, Abstrakti- 

vismus, Suprematismus, Expressionismus, Dada und Merz - um nur 

einige zu nennen. 4 

Manche dieser Zusammenschlüsse sind lokal und kurzlebig, andere 

persistent und international, um die kulturellen Zentren Paris, Amster 

dam, Berlin, München, Zürich, Wien und Budapest gruppiert und in 

regem Austausch begriffen. Allen gemeinsam ist die innere Unruhe und 

die Suche nach innovativen Formen der Darstellung. Vielfach ist der 

Motor, vor allem der bildenden Kunst, die beschleunigte Bewegung des 

technischen Zeitalters, die eine neue Wahrnehmung erfordert.5 Gleich 

zeitig gilt es, sich vom überkommenen Realismus zu lösen. Wo nicht 

Anarchie und Negation das Programm bilden, steht - insbesondere im 

deutschsprachigen Raum - häufig die Überwindung der materiellen 

Welt im Zentrum, sei es durch eine metaphysische Geistigkeit, sei es mit 

den formalen Mitteln der Abstraktion oder Atonalität. Kunst soll Über 

zeitliches ausdrücken, soll Systematiken entwickeln und mentale Ge 

setzmäßigkeiten finden, um Künstler und Rezipienten zu einer höheren 

geistigen Klarheit und Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit zu führen oder, in den 

4 Vgl. das 1925 erschienene, dreisprachige Buch von El Lissitzky und Hans Arp: Die 

Kunstismen/Les Ismes de V art/The Isms of Art. Neudruck Rolandseck 1990. 

5 Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Technizität, beschleunigter Wahrnehmung, bilden 

der Kunst und Avantgardefilm hat Joachim Paech in seinem Aufsatz «Bilder von 

Bewegung - bewegte Bilder. Film, Fotografie und Malerei» dargelegt. In: Monika 

Wagner (Hg.): Moderne Kunst. Das Funkkolleg zum Verständnis der Gegenwartskunst. 

Reinbek 1991. 

249

250 

Worten Kandinskys, «um die menschliche Seele in Vibration zu brin 

gen».6 

Da die innerste Funktion der Kunst so absolut gesetzt wird, öffnen 

sich die Grenzen zwischen den Gattungen. Allenthalben entdeckt man 

übergreifende Affinitäten, Analogien und Synästhesien 7 

, die zur Ver 

schmelzung der Künste im Gesamtkunstwerk herausfordern. Dank die 

ser programmatischen Durchlässigkeit kommt es zu intensiven Kontak 

ten zwischen Malern und Dichtern, Architekten, Designern, Tänzern 

oder Musikern, die oft zu längeren Symbiosen führen. Viele kleine Kunst 

zeitschriften fördern und pflegen die internationale Kommunikation. 

Eine Gruppierung wie der «Blaue Reiter» in München veröffentlicht 

ihren Almanach nicht nur für den eigenen Kreis; die holländische Zeit 

schrift De Stijl oder die ungarische Zeitschrift Ma unterrichten über 

avantgardistische europäische Strömungen. Sie bilden ein Forum für die 

theoretische Selbstdarstellung, die von den Künstlern sehr ernst genom 

men wird. Einerseits konstatieren insbesondere die abstrakten Maler 

eine zunehmende Entfremdung des Publikums, das nach wie vor einen 

gegenständlichen Realismus bevorzugt; die eigenen Werke müssen er 

läutert werden, so daß Kunst und Kommentar plötzlich in einer Hand 

liegen8 Andererseits erwächst bereits aus dem moralisch-didaktischen 

Anspruch der Kunst die Verpflichtung, in den kulturellen Verständnis 

prozeß einzugreifen. Wollen sie der materiellen Welt wirksam begeg 

nen, müssen die Künstler Sorge tragen, daß ihr Potential auch aufgeht, 

ihre Konzepte verstanden werden. Im Bauhaus als der größten und 

einflußreichsten Gruppierung der 20er Jahre fließen diese theoretischen, 

pädagogischen, ästhetischen, praktischen und sozialen Impulse auf ex 

emplarische Weise zusammen. 

Zugleich dienen einige Klassiker als gemeinsame gedankliche Basis 

der abstrakten Künstler. Neben Goethe und Novalis - selbst Grenzgän- 

6 Die Formulierung ist eine Art Leitmotiv in Kandinskys Schrift von 1911: Uber das 

Geistige in der Kunst. Bern 1952, und kommt dort an vielen Stellen vor. 

7 In dem von Karin von Maur herausgegebenen Ausstellungskatalog Vom Klang der 

Bilder (wie Anm. 3) werden die Querbeziehungen der Künste vielfältig herausgear 

beitet und illustriert. Vgl. außerdem Wilmesmeier (wie Anm. 2), Kapitel 3 «Der 

abstrakte Film und die Musik»; Karl Sierek: «Die unterirdischen Kanäle. Zur Bezie 

hung zwischen Musik, Malerei und Film». In: Stefan Gyöngyösi (Hg.): Art of Vision: 

Zeitfluß 93. Katalog zum FilmFestival, Salzburg 1993. Zum Verhältnis von Film und 

Malerei vgl. den Ausstellungskatalog Peintute, cinema, peinture. Marseille 1989/ 

1990. 

8 Vgl. Wolfgang Max Faust: Bilder werden Worte. Zum Verhältnis von bildender Kunst 

und Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert oder vom Anfang der Kunst im Ende der Künste. 

München 1977, insbesondere das Kapitel «Abstrakte Kunst: Konzeption und Er 

scheinung», S. 113ff., mit vielen weiteren Nachweisen. 

ger zwischen Theorie und Praxis -, neben dem Philosophen Henri 

Bergson, dessen Werk L´ evolution creatrice (1907; deutsch 1912) sehr 

intensiv rezipiert wird, und neben den musiktheoretischen Texten von 

Ferruccio Busoni (Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 1907) und 

Arnold Schönberg (Harmonielehre, 1911) sind es vor allem zwei Schriften, 

die für den absoluten Film primäre Bedeutung haben: Wassily Kandin 

skys schmales Buch Über das Geistige in der Kunst von 1911 und Wilhelm 

Worringers Dissertation Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stil 

psychologie, die er 1908 veröffentlicht. 

Auch Kandinsky rekurriert auf Goethe, wenn auch nur am Rande, 

und natürlich auf Schönberg, mit dem er freundschaftlich verbunden 

war. Sein Plädoyer für die abstrakte Malerei behandelt die Musik als 

eine Art Vorreiter, da sie die «heute unmateriellste Kunst»9 sei, und 

begründet damit ein gedankliches Paradigma des Vergleichens, der Ana 

logie zwischen den Gattungen, die voneinander lernen sollen, um zum 

je Eigenen zu finden. Zentrum seiner Ausführungen ist der Gedanke 

von der «inneren Notwendigkeit» aller ästhetischen Formung, welche 

die Kunst von der gegenständlichen Nachahmung der Natur befreit, um 

sie für die Darstellung des Geistigen freizusetzen. Kandinskys Zusam- 

menschau abstrahierender Tendenzen in der Literatur (Maeterlinck), 

Musik (Debussy, Skrjabin, Schönberg), Malerei (Cezanne, Matisse, Pi 

casso) und im Tanz (lsadora Duncan) gipfelt in dem Gedanken, daß eine 

neue «Bühnenkomposition" - aus malerischen, musikalischen, tänzeri 

schen Komponenten -, überhaupt eine «monumentale Kunst» in der 

Verschmelzung der Gattungen zu verwirklichen sei. Über das Geistige in 

der Kunst fasziniert heute durch seine eigenartige Mischung von luzi- 

den, präzisen Beobachtungen mit mystischen und genialischen Tönen. 

Wilhelm Worringers theoretische Arbeit ist, wie er selbst in einem 

Rückblick konstatiert, «zu einem «Sesam öffne dich» [...] für einen gan 

zen Umkreis zeitwichtiger Fragestellungen» geworden. 10 

Daß seine Schrift 

«im tieferen Sinne aktuell» sei, wußte Worringer jedoch schon im Vor 

wort zur ersten Ausgabe. Seine Theorie setzt bei Alois Riegls Stilfragen 

9> Kandinsky (wie Anm. 6), S. 54. «Wie unendlich gut (wenn auch nur verhältnismä 

ßig!) haben es die Musiker in ihrer so weit gekommenen Kunst. Wirklich Kunst, die 

das Glück schon besitzt, auf reinpraktische Zwecke vollkommen zu verzichten. 

Wie lange wird wohl die Malerei darauf warten müssen?», schreibt Kandinsky in 

einem Brief vom 9.4.1911 mit dem für die visuellen Kunstler damals so typischen 

Neid. Vgl. Helena Hahl-Koch: «Kandinsky und der

252 

von 1893 und Theodor Lipps' Grundlegung der Ästhetik von 1903 an, um 

Abstraktions- und Einfühlungsdrang als zwei polare Impulse des Kunst 

wollens zu definieren. 

Wie der Einfühlungsdrang «seine Befriedigung in der Schönheit des 

Organischen findet, so findet der Abstraktionsdrang seine Schönheit im 

lebenverneinenden Anorganischen, im Kristallinischen oder allgemein 

gesprochen in aller abstrakten Gesetzmäßigkeit und Notwendigkeit». 11 

Wenn auch Naturvorbilder abstrahiert werden, dann jedenfalls «mit 

dem Bestreben, das einzelne Objekt der Außenwelt [...] aus seiner Ver 

bindung und Abhängigkeit von den anderen Dingen zu erlösen, es dem 

Lauf des Geschehens zu entreißen, es absolut zu machen». 12 

Worringer 

geht in seiner Arbeit darauf ein, welche Bedingungen innerhalb einer 

Kultur zur Dominanz des Abstraktions- respektive des Einfühlungs 

drangs führen: 

Während der Einfühlungsdrang ein glückliches pantheistisches Vertraulich- 

keitsverhältnis zwischen dem Menschen und den Außenwelterscheinungen 

zur Bedingung hat, ist der Abstraktionsdrang die Folge einer großen 

inneren Beunruhigung des Menschen durch die Erscheinungen der Au 

ßenwelt und korrespondiert in religiöser Beziehung mit einer stark trans 

zendentalen Färbung aller Vorstellungen. Diesen Zustand möchten wir 

eine ungeheure geistige Raumscheu nennen. 13 

Die abstrakte Malerei der 10er und 20er Jahre (sowie der absolute Film) 

scheinen damit, als Reaktion auf die spezifische «Außenwelt» der Zeit, 

prophetisch vorhergesagt. Allerdings darf man nicht übersehen, daß 

Abstraktion - als Loslösung vom Gegenständlichen - nicht pauschal mit 

dem «Abstraktionsdrang» Worringers gleichzusetzen ist, der ja auch 

innerhalb einer grundsätzlich gegenständlichen Darstellung walten kann. 

Und ebenso schließt eine abstrakte Form den Einfühlungsdrang nicht 

aus. Die lebhafte materielle Sinnlichkeit vieler nicht-gegenständlicher 

Kunst widerspricht daher Worringers Theorie nur scheinbar. Auch die 

Tatsache, daß sich viele abstrakte Maler auf sein einflußreiches Buch 

beriefen, hat mit dem eigentlichen Inhalt dieser Theorie oft weniger zu 

tun als mit der Suche nach einem prominenten Gewährsmann. Die 

Nomenclatur ist häufig irreführend oder hat sich verselbständigt. 

Die Anwendbarkeit der Begriffe «Abstraktion» und «Einfühlung» 

auf den abstrakten Film, wie sie der Titel dieses Aufsatzes suggeriert, ist 

11 Worringer (wie Anm. 10), S. 16. 



daher in vieler Hinsicht nur eine bedingte. Außerdem finden sich bei 

Worringer, der statische Kunstwerke vergangener Epochen betrachtet, 

keine Kategorien für die Dynamisierung der Wahrnehmung oder die 

musikalische Prozeßhaftigkeit, wie sie die Filme prägt; gerade die Bewe 

gung bringt aber fast zwangsläufig Raumempfindungen mit sich, so daß 

sich die «Raumscheu» Worringers relativiert. Doch es soll auch nicht 

darum gehen, seine dualistische, spekulative, ideologisch befrachtete 

Betrachtungsweise auf die gegenwärtige Untersuchung zu übertragen. 

Vielmehr bilden die beiden Begriffe - damals wie heute - ein anregen 

des heuristisches Instrumentarium, auch außerhalb des Gedanken 

gebäudes ihres Urhebers, mit dem sich einige zentrale Unterschiede in 

Konzept und ästhetischer Gestaltung der Werke Eggelings und Rutt- 

manns fassen lassen: Unterschiede, die sich allerdings schon darin aus 

drücken, daß Eggeling sich intensiv und direkt mit Worringers Gedan 

kengut auseinandersetzt, während der jüngere Ruttmann ihn wohl eher 

osmotisch, im expressionistischen Kontext des «Blauen Reiter» rezipier 

te, einer Gruppe, die sich schon früh - und nicht ohne «kreative Mißver 

ständnisse» 14 

- über Worringers Schrift zu legitimieren suchte. 

Der Maler Viking Eggeling, 1880 in Schweden geboren, kam 1918 über 

Berlin und Paris in die Schweiz. 15 

253 

In Zürich stieß er zur DADA-Gruppe 

und begann eine mehrjährige Zusammenarbeit mit Hans Richter. Als 

sich die Zürcher Gruppe auflöste, zogen beide nach Berlin, um ihre 

gemeinsamen Studien und Experimente fortzusetzen. Eggeling hatte 

bereits seit längerem abstrakte Zeichnungen entwickelt, mit denen er 

prinzipielle grafische Grundformen, insbesondere Analogien und Pola 

ritäten, zur künstlerischen Anschauung brachte; sie bargen, obwohl sta 

tisch, schon früh dynamische Elemente. Allerdings entsprang diese Ten 

denz etwas anders gelagerten künstlerischen Vorstellungen als den in 

der Malerei der 10er und 20er Jahre vielfach feststellbaren Versuchen, 

auf Bewegungsaspekte des Sujets zu verweisen oder dem Auge der 

14 Vgl. Gregor Wedekind: «Die Verdoppelung der Kultur um ihren Gegensatz: Über 

den Kunsthistoriker Wilhelm Worringer». In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nr. 56, 8./9. 

März 1997, S. 70. Wedekind weist auf tiefliegende Unterschiede zwischen dem 

eigentlich konservativen Worringer und den Künstlern des «Blauen Reitet- hin 

und betont, daß dieser sich jedoch «willig zu den neuen und von ihm durchaus 

nicht angestrebten Ufern» habe ziehen lassen. 

15 Die folgenden Ausführungen sind in vieler Hinsicht Louise O'Konors umfassender 

Monografie: Viking Eggeling 1880-1925. Artist and Film-maker, Life and Work. Stock 

holm 1971, verpflichtet. Vgl. außerdem Peter Wollen: «Lund Celebrates Dada Child. 

The Inaugural Viking Eggeling Lecture». In: Pix, Nr. 2, 1997, der vor allem den 

Künstlerkreis um Eggeling betrachtet.

254 

Betrachter sukzessive Wahrnehmungsprozesse innerhalb des Bildes zu 

vermitteln. 

Mit Richter zusammen erfolgte der erste Schritt in Richtung Film, 

die Entwicklung von Rollenbildern in Anlehnung an ostasiatische Mo 

delle, in denen sich Bewegungsphasen abstrakter Figuren aneinander 

reihten. An diese Vorarbeit schloß sich organisch eine - leider verlorene 

- filmische Umsetzung solcher Abläufe an, das Horizontal-Vertikale Or 

chester (1920), das auf Rollenbild-Entwürfen basierte. 16 

Die frühe pionier 

hafte Arbeit an diesem abstrakten Film war von einem theoretischen 

Manifest begleitet, das aus der Feder Eggelings (unter Beteiligung Rich 

ters) stammte und von mehreren europäischen Zeitschriften der Avant 

garde, in nur leicht variierten Versionen, abgedruckt wurde: «Prinzipiel 

les zur Bewegungskunst». 17 

Darin war eine Kunst gefordert, die einem äußerst hochgesteckten 

ethischen Anspruch dienen sollte, «der Vollendung des Individuums in 

einer höheren Organisationsform». Und weiter heißt es programma 

tisch: «Kunst ist nicht subjektive Explosion eines Individuums, sondern 

organische Sprache des Menschen von allerernstester Bedeutung und 

muß deshalb in [ihren] Grundlagen so irrtumsfrei und so lapidar sein, 

daß [sie] als solche: als Sprache der Menschheit, wirklich benutzt wer 

den kann.» 18 

Dies sei zu leisten durch eine «Form-Sprache», die aus einer 

Art Alphabet bestehen sollte - oder, wie Eggeling in Anlehnung an 

Goethe später sagte, einem «Generalbaß». Damit sollten «gestaltende 

Evolutionen und Revolutionen in der Sphäre des rein Künstlerischen» 

geschaffen werden - «analog etwa den unserem Ohr geläufigen Ge 

schehnissen der Musik». Und der Artikel endet mit dem visionären 

Hinweis: 

Es ist zweifellos, daß das Kino als neues Arbeitsfeld der bildenden Künst 

ler, von Produktionen der bildenden Kunst schnell und stark beansprucht 

werden wird. [...] Für diese neue Kunst ist es absolut erforderlich, eindeu 

tige Elemente zu haben. Ohne diese kann zwar ein (noch so verführeri 

sches) Spiel entstehen, aber niemals eine Sprache. 19 

l6 Beschreibungen dieses verlorenen Werks durch Zeitgenossen sowie Abbildungen 

vieler Zeichnungen finden sich in O'Konor (wie Anm. 15), S. 46-51 und S. 208-217. 

17 So unter Eggelings Namen in der ungarischen Zeitschrift Ma, unter Richters Na 

men (mit Zusatztext) in der holländischen Zeitschrift De Stijl, beide 1921. 

18 O' Konor (wie Anm. 15), S. 90. 

Kl O´Konnor (wie Anm. 15) S 91 

Es ist charakteristisch für Eggeling - anders als für Richter - daß er diese 

absoluten, utopistischen Forderungen bis zur letzten Konsequenz in die 

Tat umzusetzen suchte. Sein filmisches Werk, das mit der Gefälligkeit 

vieler späterer Animationsfilme nichts zu tun hat, entspringt einem 

zutiefst philosophisch-transzendentalen Geist. Die ästhetische Verwirk 

lichung der Theoreme mag zwar andere Prozesse im Publikum auslö 

sen, als die Visionen Eggelings voraussahen; doch das Werk gewinnt in 

jedem Falle an Transparenz, wenn seine geistigen Grundlagen mitgedacht 

werden. 

Eggeling und Richter trennten sich nach einem Zerwürfnis im Jahre 

1921. So ist Eggelings Hauptwerk und einzig erhaltener Film Symphonie 

Diagonale ohne Zutun Richters entstanden, auch wenn er auf gemeinsam 

entwickelte Arbeitsmethoden zurückgeht. Diese Methoden waren von 

eher simpler handwerklicher Natur, 20 

255 

stellten Eggeling aber gleichwohl 

vor technische Probleme, weil sie sehr präzis ausgeführt werden muß 

ten, um dem Wesen seiner komplexen absoluten Kunst gerecht zu wer 

den; allzu leicht konnte der Eindruck kunstgewerblicher Bastelei entste 

hen. Außerdem erforderten die etwa acht Minuten, die das Werk wäh 

ren sollte, eine zähe Ausdauer, weil der Film Kader für Kader erstellt 

werden mußte. Die Arbeitsmittel waren: eine 35mm-Kamera mit Einzel 

bildschaltung, die es außerdem erlaubte, auf- und abzublenden sowie 

den Filmstreifen zurücklaufen zu lassen, um ihn ein zweites Mal zu 

belichten; ein rudimentärer Tricktisch, bestehend aus einem Kasten mit 

höhenverstellbarer mattierter Glasplatte, über der die Kamera fix mon 

tiert war; ein einfaches Beleuchtungssystem (ein Rechteck aus Glühbir 

nen, unter der Glasplatte); Stanniolfolie, die stark genug war, um plan 

auf einer Fläche aufzuliegen, aber so fein, daß man filigranhafte Formen 

aus ihr herausschneiden konnte. 21 

Eggelings Figuren selbst sind komplexe zeichenhafte, teilgeo 

metrische, zweidimensionale Gebilde (die fast identisch in seinen Zeich 

nungen vorkommen und an deren Verfeinerung er seit Jahren arbeitete). 

Sie bestehen aus zarten Strichen und Bändern verschiedener Stärke, 

gekrümmten Bögen mit sprossenartigem Innen- oder Anbau, einseitig 

20 Eggeling und Richter hatten in der Trickabteilung der Ufa diverse Versuche unter 

nommen, sich mit dem Stand der Technik vertraut zu machen und Animations- 

verlahren zu entwickeln. Die Ergebnisse wie die Kosten hielten sie jedoch davon 

ab, diesen Weg weiterzuverfolgen. 

21 Vgl. «Erinnerungen an Viking Eggeling» (l977) von Re Soupault (vormals Erna 

Niemeyer), der Mitarbeiterin Eggelings, die über die technischen Schwierigkeiten 

der Animation berichtet. In: Hein/Herzogenrath (wie Anm. 2), S. 24ff.

256 

geöffneten Rechtecken, denen sich Wellenlinien anlagern, Dreiecken mit 

gerundetem Seitenbuckel aus parallelen Streifen, gezackten und ge 

schwungenen Kleinelementen, großen S-förmigen Linienkonglomeraten, 

die sich mit kammartigen Klammern vereinen, und dergleichen mehr. 

Eggeling schnitt die Figuren zunächst - als Schlitze - in die Folien ein, 

legte eine Folie auf die Glasplatte und erhellte sie von unten, so daß es so 

aussah, als ob die Schlitze lichte, selbstleuchtende Gebilde auf dunklem 

Grund seien. Durch Ab- und Aufblenden der Kamera konnte der An 

schein vermittelt werden, als entstünden sie aus dem Nichts oder lösten 

sich ins Nichts auf. Durch teilweises Zu- und Aufdecken, eine Art Lege- 

trick, entstand der Eindruck von Wachsen und Vergehen, von selbsttäti 

gem Ab- und Aufbau der Elemente. Durch Verschiebung schienen die 

Figuren über die Fläche zu wandern. Und durch Doppelbelichtung war 

es möglich, gleichzeitig mehrere Gebilde in je verschiedenem Rhythmus 

sich verwandeln, wandern oder gegenläufig kommen und gehen zu 

lassen. 

Der Film wirkt minimalistisch in seiner Beschränkung auf sparsa 

mes kontrastives Schwarzweiß, dessen Polarität einzig durch gelegent 

lich schwächer leuchtendes oder verglimmendes Grau gemildert ist (we 

gen der punktuellen Helligkeit der Glühbirnen und als Ergebnis VON 

Doppelbelichtungen und Abblenden). Die Figuren, eher klein, fragil, 

schwerelos und ein wenig karg, behaupten sich nicht bildfüllend, son 

dern beanspruchen jeweils nur einen Teil der schwarzen Grundfläche. 

Kaum jemals erwecken sie die Illusion von Tiefe, obwohl sie sich bewe 

gen und begegnen. Denn Eggeling vermeidet Überlappungen, die 

Dreidimensionalität suggerieren könnten, und inszeniert nur wenig 

(Schein)Bewegung aus der Bildtiefe heraus oder in sie hinein. Und eben 

so vermeidet er es, das Leinwand-Rechteck als Ausschnitt aus einem 

größeren Raum erscheinen zu lassen. Indem alle Formen im Bild entste 

hen und zergehen, nur innerhalb der Bildfläche wandern und sie nie 

über die Ränder verlassen, konstituiert sich kein filmisches Off, keine 

Illusion eines unbegrenzten Raumes, in dem die Bewegungen und Figu 

ren sich fortsetzen, unabhängig von ihrer temporären Sichtbarkeit wei 

terexistieren könnten. 22 

Auch die Fläche selbst bleibt immateriell, ein 

schwarzes Nirgendwo, das keinen Halt gibt und kein Hindernis bietet. 

Im Grunde ist nicht einmal festgelegt, ob wir sozusagen von vorn oder 

von oben auf das Geschehen blicken. Worringers Beobachtung von der 

«Raumscheu» der Abstraktion ist hier ein Denkmal gesetzt - bewußt, 

22 Vgl. Siereck (wie Anm. 7), S. 92, der darüber hinaus bemerkt, daß Eggelings For 

men bereits die Nähe zum Bildrand meiden und daher «keine Verbindungsglie 

der» zu einem «Bereich des Abseits» darstellen. 

wie Eggelings dokumentierte Auseinandersetzung mit dessen Theorie 

nahelegt. 23 

Nicht ein Mangel an filmischer Imagination, sondern der 

Wille zur konsequenten absoluten Abstraktion liegt der räumlichen und 

gegenständlichen Askese der Symphonie Diagonale zugrunde. 24 

Eggelings Abstraktionswille äußert sich auf einer weiteren Ebene. 

Anders als ein Gemälde, eine Zeichnung - oder, wie noch zu zeigen ist, 

die Filme Ruttmanns - verweist die Symphonie Diagonale nicht auf die 

Person ihres Schöpfers oder den Prozeß, dem sie ihre Entstehung ver 

dankt. Nichts, das einem Pinselstrich vergleichbar wäre oder auf die 

Arbeit der Kamera und die verwendeten Materialien verwiese; im Ge 

genteil, die Figuren scheinen «absolut» aus dem Leeren zu kommen und 

in ihrer anorganischen Abstraktion nur immateriell zu existieren. Damit 

dürfte eine besondere Qualität dieser Figuren zusammenhängen: Bei 

anderen abstrakten Animationsfilmen - beispielsweise von Oskar 

Fischinger - stellt sich ja rasch und unwillkürlich im Publikum das 

Gefühl ein, die Formen seien beseelt (eben animiert), eine Art Lebewe 

sen mit eigenem Willen und individueller Persönlichkeit. Sobald sie als 

diskrete Einheiten identifizierbar sind und sich selbsttätig zu bewegen 

scheinen, schreibt man ihnen Intentionen und Interaktionen zu - Kon 

flikte, Vereinigungswünsche, Wettläufe, Fluchtversuche -, als seien sie 

fiktionale Protagonisten. 

Doch die Figuren der Symphonie Diagonale widersetzen sich solcher 

Einfühlung. Dies wohl deshalb, weil sie in ständiger Verwandlung ihrer 

Kontur begriffen sind, so daß keine hinreichend stabilen Gestalten ent 

stehen, welche als Einzelwesen in Erscheinung treten könnten. Selbst 

wenn mehrere Formen zugleich auf einer Fläche aktiv sind, löst sich jede 

vermeintliche Beziehung sogleich wieder auf, da die Figuren sich in sich 

selbst auf- oder abbauen, statt aufeinander zu reagieren. Fast wäre es 

richtiger, hier gar nicht von «Figuren» zu sprechen, die sich bilden und 

regen, sondern von einem Etwas, das sich an verschiedenen Orten zu 

immer neuen Zeichen ausformt, ohne zu Ruhe oder Stabilität zu kom 

men. Eine «Zauberschrift», ein magisches Entstehen und Vergehen, das 

sich in schwebender Balance hält zwischen Metamorphose und figürli 

cher Gestaltwerdung. 

23 Louise O'Konor hat aus allen erhaltenen Manuskripten und Notizen Eggelings eine 

Kunsttheorie extrahiert, in der der Einfluß Worringers - wie der Kandinskys und 

Bergsons - allenthalben faßbar ist. O'Konor (wie Anm. 15), S. 73fl. 

24 Natürlich ist mitzubedenken, wie Wilmesmeier (wie Anm. 2, S. 126) überlegt, in 

wieweit die gewählte Tricktechnik Eggelings filmische Ästhetik einschränkte und 

bestimmte. Doch scheint mir unwahrscheinlich, daß Eggeling etwas wesentlich 

anderes intendiert hätte, als sich in der Symphonic Diagonale ausdrückt. 

257

258 

Nicht daß ein diffuses Pulsieren entstünde - Eggelings Film ist 

äußerst klar, diszipliniert und gebändigt. Doch dies nicht dank vor 

hersehbarer, einfühlbarer Interaktion der Elemente, sondern durch 

formale Variation, durchgezogene, erneut auftretende Motive und 

rhythmische Entsprechungen. Von der Vorstellung Eggelings war ja 

bereits die Rede, daß seine - und möglichst jede - Kunst universelle 

Polaritäten zur Anschauung bringen solle. Entsprechend lebt die Sym- 

phonie Diagonale von binären formalen Kontrasten wie: offen/geschlos 

sen, voll/entleert, schwer/leicht, groß/klein, heftig/schwach, gera 

de/ gekrümmt, symmetrisch/asymmetrisch, vollendet/fragmenta 

risch, einfach/mehrfach und, nicht zuletzt, horizontal/vertikal, dia 

gonal/rechtwinklig. Diese Polaritäten bieten ein reiches Potential, 

nach dem die Formen sich konstituieren können, ohne auf Wiederho 

lungen angewiesen zu sein. Und außerdem herrscht neben dem Prin 

zip der Polarität das der Analogie, das Verwandtschaften auslotet 

und mit Ähnlichkeiten operiert. So kommt es nie zu einer formalen 

Dürre, vielmehr spielen die Formen sehr graziös in unerschöpflicher 

Metamorphose. 

Es gehört zur Besonderheit der Symphonie Diagonale, daß man Mühe 

hat, die Gesamtstruktur zu erfassen oder zu memorieren. Nicht nur fehlt 

jegliche «narrative» Entwicklung, die Anhaltspunkt für ein kausales 

Nacheinander oder eine nicht umkehrbare Abfolge gäbe. Die Bewegun 

gen scheinen auch keinen definierbaren Spannungsablauf, kein drama 

turgisches Konzept zu berücksichtigen, keine konflikthafte Auseinan 

dersetzung von Elementen zu liefern, die durchgespielt würde, um sich 

schließlich zu erschöpfen. In nervöser, schwebender Gleichzeitigkeit 

laufen kleine Prozesse an verschiedenen Stellen des Bildes ab, die zwar 

synchron verfolgt, aber nicht auf einen Begriff gebracht werden können. 

Fast scheint der Film auf der Stelle zu treten - aber er hält die Wahrneh 

mung in Bann, setzt sich über die bestehenden acht Minuten ohne Bruch 

geläufig fort, in einer zeitverschlingenden Zeitlosigkeit, wie Bergson sie 

in seiner Theorie der Durchdringung von Gegenwart und Vergangen 

heit postuliert hat. Die kleinen Figuren sind jeweils im Moment des 

Werdens und Vergehens gefaßt, beinhalten beides auf ungewohnte, 

radikale Weise. 

Obwohl dieser Eindruck in sich ruhender Prozeßhaftigkeit auch 

nach mehrfachem Sehen nicht schwindet, lassen sich doch Strukturen 

einer Entwicklung in der Zeit herausarbeiten. So hat Louise O'Konor 

einen dialektischen Prozeß erkannt - von Bewegung und Gegenbewe 

gung, These, Antithese und Synthese -, der sich vor allem im Bereich der 

dominanten Diagonalen im Verbund mit horizontalen und vertikalen 

Motiven ereignet. 25 

minütigen Fragment ausgeht) 26 

259 

Monika Zurhake (die leider nur von einem zwei 

hat die filmischen Segmente nach musi 

kalischen Prinzipien aufgeschlüsselt: nach Halb-, Viertel- und Achtel- 

werten, nach Triolen und Quartolen, Synkopen und Pausen, und ein 

komplexes Geflecht verschiedener Bewegungen konstatiert. Doch diese 

Form unhörbarer, in eine grafische Sprache transponierter musikali 

scher Strukturierung ist ungewohnt und schwer faßbar, auch wenn ihre 

Wirkung sich unterschwellig mitteilt. Sie bleibt zunächst fremd wie das 

System der Tonstufen im Chinesischen oder der Längen und Kürzen in 

der antiken Metrik. 

Es versteht sich, daß die Symphonie Diagonale stumm projiziert wur 

de. Eine musikalische Begleitung war nicht vorgesehen, hätte auch 

Eggelings Konzept der absoluten Kunst widersprochen. Denn diese Kunst 

erhebt den Anspruch auf totale und essentielle Geltung, da sie das 

geistige Universum in all seinen Polaritäten und Analogien zu repräsen 

tieren sucht. Unterlegt man den Film dennoch versuchsweise mit Musik, 

so zeigt sich, daß keine Ergänzung oder Bereicherung, sondern eine 

Störung seines subtilen visuellen Rhythmus entsteht. 27 

Das Verhältnis 

zur Musik ist eines der inneren Verwandtschaft, nicht der Ergänzung 

oder Kooperation. Eggeling ging es nicht um das Gesamtkunstwerk im 

Sinne einer Verschmelzung der Künste, sondern im Sinne eines Rück 

griffs auf ihre gemeinsamen geistigen Prinzipien. 

Walt(h)er Ruttmann, 28 

geboren 1887 in Frankfurt am Main, ist fast acht 

Jahre jünger als Viking Eggeling. Er besuchte die Malklasse der Münch 

ner Kunstakademie, befreundete sich mit Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger 

und dem Komponisten Max Butting und hatte sich schon vor Ausbruch 

des ersten Weltkriegs als Maler und Grafiker einen Namen gemacht." 

25 O'Konor (wie Anm. 15), S. 133. 

26 Zurhake (wie Anm. 2), S. l08f. Offenbar ist Zurhake einer gekürzten Version auf 

gesessen, möglicherweise verführt von der Kompilation «Forty Years of Experi 

ment. Hans Richter 1921-1961», in der Richter seinen eigenen Werken ein Bruch 

stück der Symphonie Diagonale voranstellt, ohne auf die Unvollständigkeil dieser 

Fassung hinzuweisen. 

27 Ich möchte behaupten, daß die Symphonie Diagonale in dieser Hinsicht eine Beson 

derheit darstellt; denn die meisten Filme, gleich welcher Gattung, lassen sich mit 

Musik kombinieren. Natürlich ist die Wahl der Begleitmusik nicht beliebig, doch 

fast jedes Musikstück wird am gegebenen Film etwas ausrichten, Synergien mit 

ihm eingehen, ihn auf die eine oder andere Weise intensivieren. 

28 Ruttmann strich das «h» in seinem Vornamen Ende der 20er Jahre, im Zuge der 

Neuen Sachlichkeit. 

29 Die biografischen Angaben zu Ruttmann, aber auch viele Gedanken und Zitate der 

folgenden Seiten sind vor allem |eanpaul Goergens materialreichem Band Walter 

Ruttmann: Eine Dokumentation Berlin 1989 verpflichtet

260 

Die Kriegsjahre, die er zum Teil als Soldat erlebte, führten zu einer 

tiefgreifenden Krise und einer künstlerischen Neuorientierung 

Ruttmanns. Über Vorstufen in expressionistischen Bildern, bei denen 

die Bewegung fast bis zur Explosion getrieben wird, kommt er schon 

früh auf den Film. In dem Manuskript «Malerei mit Zeit» (um 1919/20) 

entwirft er die Vision einer kinematografisch beflügelten Malerei, die 

sich rhythmisch-dynamisch - und abstrakt - entfalten soll.30 «Es wird 

sich [...] ein ganz neuer, bisher nur latent vorhandener Typus von Künst 

ler herausstellen, der etwa in der Mitte von Malerei und Musik steht». 

Und er schildert fiktive (expressionistische) Beispiele einer solchen Kunst, 

in der «die unendlich vielen Verwendungsmöglichkeiten von Licht und 

Finsternis, Ruhe und Bewegtheit, Geradheit und Rundung, Masse und 

Feingliedrigkeit und deren unzählige Zwischenstufen und Kombinatio 

nen» zur Geltung kommen sollen. 

Ruttmann denkt, ähnlich Eggeling, in Polaritäten und Nuancen, wenn 

auch weniger «absolut», weniger philosophisch-metaphysisch als die 

ser. So leitet er seine Vision aus der Analyse und Anschauung der 

Gegenwart und den verspürten Defiziten der gegenwärtigen Kunst ab, 

deren «starren, reduzierten zeitlosen Formen» er das «Tempo» entge 

gensetzt, das die technische Revolution dem Individuum abfordert. Da 

mit werde der «Zeit-Rhythmus des optischen Geschehens» zu einem der 

wichtigsten Elemente einer neuen Kunst. Insgesamt stellt der Text eine 

Mischung eher essayistisch hingeworfener Gedanken mit sensuellen 

ästhetischen Vorstellungen dar, die zu großer Konkretion gelangen. Er 

schließt mit pragmatischen Überlegungen zur Zielgruppe und einer 

autobiografischen Erklärung: 

Seit fast zehn Jahren bin ich von der Notwendigkeit dieser Kunst über 

zeugt. Erst jetzt bin ich der technischen Schwierigkeiten Herr geworden, 

die sich der Ausführung entgegenstellten, und heute weiß ich, daß die 

neue Kunst sein und leben wird - denn sie ist wurzelfestes Gewächs und 

nicht Konstruktion. 31 

In der Tat gelingt es Ruttmann schneller als Eggeling, der sich mit der 

Technik schwer tat und viele Rückschläge in Kauf nehmen mußte, sich 

das filmische Rüstzeug zu verschaffen. Er experimentiert mit der Kame 

ra, und er erfindet einen eigenen Tricktisch zum «Herstellen kinemato- 

30 Das Manuskript, das sich undatiert im Nachlaß fand, ist bei Goergen (wie Anm. 

29), S. 73f, abgedruckt. 

graphischer Bilder», der 1920 so ausgereift ist, daß er patentiert wird. 32 

Der Tisch besteht aus drei übereinander montierten, zum Teil verschieb 

baren Glasplatten, die von unten beleuchtet sind. Damit wird die Kom 

bination verschiedener Bildebenen möglich, wobei je nach Bedarf auf 

allen oder nur auf einer Ebene Veränderungen der aufzunehmenden 

Motive erfolgen können. Die über dem Tricktisch angebrachte Einzel 

bild-Kamera ist zwar festgeschraubt, aber durch Verstellen der Platten 

höhe läßt sich die Distanz zwischen Objekt und Objektiv kleinschrittig 

verändern; so kann im projizierten Film der Eindruck von Heran- oder 

Hinwegbewegung simuliert werden. Als malerisches Material ist viskö 

se Farbe vorgesehen, die lange feucht bleibt, so daß sie von Aufnahme 

zu Aufnahme weiterbearbeitet werden kann. Natürlich lassen sich auch 

ausgeschnittene Formen verwenden oder mit der Farbe kombinieren - 

einer Farbe, die allerdings vom Schwarzweiß-Material nur in ihren Hell/ 

Dunkelwerten registriert wird. 

Doch ähnlich wie die Kinoregisseure der Zeit sah Ruttmann keinen 

Grund, auf die Farbe zu verzichten. Als farbgebende Techniken standen 

damals mehrere Verfahren zur Verfügung: die Tonung (monochrome 

Einfärbung der dunklen Bildteile bei der Entwicklung); die Virage (mo 

nochrome Farbbäder der fertigen Kopie, wobei die hellen Bild teile die 

Farbe annehmen); die Schablonenkolorierung (bei der einzelne Partien 

des Bildes nacheinander mit verschiedenen Farbtönen überzogen wer 

den können) oder auch der manuelle Farbauftrag. Auch konnten die 

einzelnen Verfahren kombiniert werden, um eine Fülle von Effekten zu 

erzielen.33 Nachteile waren jedoch, daß jede Kopie individuell bearbeitet 

werden mußte und daß die Schablonen- und vor allem die Handkolorie- 

rung viel Aufwand erforderten. Dennoch scheint Ruttmann von Anfang 

an in Farbe gedacht zu haben, während Eggeling sie zwar als eigentliche 

Vollendung seiner filmischen Kunst vor Augen hatte, sich aber in der 

Praxis mit Schwarzweiß begnügte - als einer Vorstufe, über die er durch 

seinen frühen Tod nicht hinausgelangen sollte. 

Lichtspiel Opus I entstand 1921, ist etwa neuneinhalb Minuten lang und 

koloriert. 34 

Verglichen mit Eggelings zarten Linien und abstraktem, for- 

32 Der Antrag an das Patentamt, eine Beschreibung des Geräts und eine schematische 

Zeichnung sind bei Goergen (wie Anm. 29) S. 75ff., abgedruckt. 

33 Zu den verschiedenen Farbverfahren des Stummfilms vgl. Gerd Koshofer: Color. 

Die Farben des Films. Berlin 1988. 

34 Opus I galt lange als verloren, das Negativ ist bis heute unauffindbar. Doch es 

gelang Enno Patalas 1977, den Film in einer sowjetischen Kopie zu identifizieren 

Material, das Ruttmann wohl in den 20er Jahren anläßlich einer Filmreise nach Ruß- 

261

malen Vokabular wirken Ruttmanns Figuren sehr viel malerischer, pla 

stischer und taktiler. Sie sind hauptsächlich durch von der Glasplatte 

fortgewischte dunkle Farbe entstanden, bestehen also, technisch gespro 

chen, aus transparenten Flächen, durch die von unten das Licht dringt. 

Meist tragen sie noch die sinnlichen Spuren ihrer Genese: ungleichmä 

ßig harte Ränder sowie gelegentliche Reste der viskosen Farbe und ihrer 

263 

manuellen Verwischung in Form einer weichen, wolkigen Maserung. 

Außerdem lagern sich hin und wieder (wohl eher unbeabsichtigte) 

Übermalungshöfe um die Figuren. Zwar sind auch Ruttmanns Kreatio 

nen abstrakt, jedoch mehr im Sinne von «ungegenständlich» als im 

Sinne einer immateriellen Geistigkeit. Teils dem geometrisch-stereome 

trischen Inventar entlehnt - Kreise oder Kugeln, Dreiecke, Kegel, Rauten 

- , teils eher von organischer, biomorpher Gestalt und Textur, erschei 

nen sie bereits durch Maßstab und Ausdehnung substanzhafter, neh 

men mehr Platz in Anspruch und entwickeln mehr Energie als die 

kleinen ätherischen Gebilde der Symphonie Diagonale. 

Auch Ruttmanns Figuren schweben in Undefinierter Schwärze, die 

ebensogut als Hintergrund wie als dunkle Tiefe gedacht werden könnte 

- ein «Behälter ohne Dimensionen», wie Malewitsch es formulierte. 35 

Doch sie erfüllen ihn mit dreidimensionalem Leben. Schon die modellie 

rende Maserung der Oberflächen verleiht ihnen eine gewisse Prallheit 

oder sphärische Krümmung, und auch die Farbe trägt zu diesem Ein 

druck bei. 36 

Ruttmann hat seinen Film offenbar zunächst im Ent 

wicklungsbad bläulich getont, wobei das Blau nur an den Rändern der 

Figuren und in den weniger lichtdurchlässigen Zonen durchschlägt; wo 

die Formen fest umrissen und klargewischt sind, heben sie sich weiß 

vom schwarzen Hintergrund ab. Dort, aber auch neben der bläulichen 

Tonung, wurde gelegentlich von Hand nachkoloriert. 37 

Daher erstrahlen 

land zurückgelassen hatte (vgl. Goergen, wie Anm. 24, S. 97f.). Diese Kopie war 

koloriert und vermutlich von integraler Länge. 

35 Zitiert nach Rudolf Kurtz: Expressionismus und Film. Zürich 1965 (1926), S. 88. 

36 Uber die Farbe kann ich nur anhand der mir zugänglichen Kopie (aus dem Verleih 

LightCone, Paris) berichten, die eine Annäherung an die von Patalas gefundene 

darstellt. Dabei ist jedoch zu bedenken, daß für die Farbgebung kein eigentliches 

Original existiert, da jede Kopie individuell bearbeitet werden mußte und damit 

auch verschieden koloriert werden konnte. Diskrepanzen in der Beschreibung 

zeitgenössischer Kritiker - zum Beispiel dem weiter unten zitierten Text von Alfred 

Kerr - können der individuellen Wahrnehmung, dem fehlerhaften Gedächtnis oder 

auch tatsächlichen Unterschieden des gezeigten Werks entspringen. 

37 Möglicherweise hat Ruttmann bereits für Opus I statt der Handkolorierung eine 

Methode verwendet, wie sie Lore Leudesdorff für spätere Arbeiten beschreibt: 

Abdecken bestimmter Bildzonen (mit entfernbarem Lack), so daß sie bei Farbbädern 

der Kopie unbehandelt bleiben - eine Art Batik. (Vgl. Goergen, wie Anm. 29 , S. 25.)

264 

einzelne Formen in sattem Rotorange, während andere in zartes Rosa, 

Lila oder Blaugrün getaucht sind oder aber sich weiß behaupten. Da sich 

die Blauschattierung, die meist das «hintere», stumpfere Ende der Figu 

ren kennzeichnet, als Distanzierung auswirkt, die rote Farbe dagegen 

größere Nähe suggeriert, kommt die Spannung zwischen beiden Tönen 

der räumlichen Illusion zugute. 

Hauptfaktor der Tiefenillusion ist jedoch die Bewegung. Ruttmanns 

Figuren kommen und gehen in stetiger, den Blick bannender Aktion, 

und ihr musikalischer Rhythmus akzentuiert das Tempo. Sie wölben 

sich, beugen sich nach innen, gleiten in leichter Drehung durchs Bild, 

stechen aus den Ecken diagonal hervor, fallen von beiden Seiten symme 

trisch zur Mitte oder pendeln hin und her, wobei sie sich wie organische 

Gebilde leicht deformieren, stauchen oder strecken. Auch der Kontrast 

zwischen weichen und harten Umrissen trägt zur Illusion der Bewegung 

bei; denn die harten Ränder schärfen sich sozusagen in Fahrtrichtung, 

während die weichen die Figuren am hinteren Ende (wie ein Kometen 

schweif) ausklingen lassen.38 Auch Bewegung aus oder in die Tiefe - 

Größer- oder Kleinerwerden - kommt gelegentlich vor. Außerdem ein 

Spiel mit dem Rahmen: Oft gewinnt man den Eindruck, als zögen sich 

die Figuren zurück in ein Gelände außerhalb der Bildgrenzen, ein Off 

von unbekannter Ausdehnung, dessen Existenz das Bild als Ausschnitt 

definiert (in den man wie durch ein Fenster blickt). Oder sie scheinen an 

die Bildgrenzen wie an imaginäre Wände zu stoßen, von ihnen abzu 

prallen. Damit erfolgt eine gewisse Verortung oder Anerkennung räum 

licher, materieller Gegebenheiten, eine tentative Auseinandersetzung 

mit der dritten Dimension. 

Die Figuren bewegen sich rasch oder getragen, aber jeweils zielsi 

cher und gleichsam selbstbewußt, auch wenn sie gelegentlichen Meta 

morphosen und Instabilitäten unterworfen sind. Allerdings finden sie 

immer wieder zurück zu faßbaren, mehr oder weniger bekannten und 

suggestiven Formen. Meist scheinen sozusagen zwei Parteien, von je 

unterschiedlicher Gestalt, zum Zuge zu kommen: Zacken gegen Zungen 

zum Beispiel, oder Kreise gegen Strahlen. Aber auch aus der Farbge 

bung erwachsen Allianzen. Vielfach existieren auch mehrere Exemplare 

derselben Art, die im Verbund agieren. Die Figuren umspielen sich in 

Choreografischer Präzision, weichen einander in eleganten Kurven aus 

oder ducken sich, so daß es selten zu Berührungen kommt. Knappe 

Vermeidung, spielerisches Risiko der Kollision kennzeichnet dieses 

38 Ein Brief an Oskar Fischinger vom 17. Juli 1922 dokumentiert, daß Ruttmann 

größten Wert auf die Bewegungskonturen legte. Abgedruckt in Hein/Herzogenrath 

(wie Anm. 2), S. 22. 

Schauspiel. Nur ganz selten ereignen sich Aggressionen, die Figuren 

überfahren einander oder reißen sich in den Abgrund. 

Angesichts solcher filmischen Vorgänge ist die Versuchung groß, 

die agierenden Formen sowohl gegenständlich zu identifizieren wie mit 

Eigenschaften und Intentionen zu beseelen. In der Beschreibung erge 

ben sich solche Attributierungen fast zwangsläufig, denn jedes sprachli 

che Erfassen arbeitet mit Vergleichen, Ähnlichkeiten, Assoziationen. Doch 

das Beispiel Symphonie Diagonale zeigt, daß nicht jeder abstrakte Film in 

gleichem Maße konkrete Äquivalenzen evoziert; Eggelings und Rutt 

manns Werke unterscheiden sich hier wesentlich. 

Dies kommt bereits in den zeitgenössischen Texten zu beiden Künst 

lern zum Ausdruck, die bei Ruttmann regelrecht in Beseelung schwel 

gen 39 

, während bei Eggeling vor allem die strenge Abstraktion betont 

wird: «Wie in der Musik ist auch hier jede Assoziation an Gegenstände 

oder Vorgänge der Natur ausgeschlossen.» 40 

265 

Texte über die Symphonie 

Diagonale sind typischerweise eher theoretisch gefaßt und von seriöser 

Zurückhaltung. Dagegen liest sich die Kritik zu Opus I, die Alfred Kerr 

im Berliner Tageblatt vom 16.6.1921 veröffentlichte, fast wie ein kulinari 

sches kleines Kunstwerk: 

[...] Was Ruttmann flimmern läßt, ist nur ein Gemeng von schwebend- 

huschend-schrumpfend-zuckenden Kringeln, Ringeln, Kugeln, Spitzheiten, 

Rundheiten; von erglühtem Umriß, schwindsamer Füllung, bunten Er 

gänzungen; von Tauchendem und Sinkendem. 

Irgendeine violette Raupe wächst zum gekrümmten Kolben; rollt sich zu 

einem Edamer; zu einem Mond; zu einem immer kleineren Edamer; zu 

einem Apfelsinchen. Fischähnlich wie ein unbekanntes Zaubertier gleitet 

allerhand leuchtendes Gebild' in holden Windungen schleifensanft über 

das Flimmerlaken ... Ein Sonnenstreif, zitronig, fegt wie ein Besen von 

links nach rechts, erblaßt, verklingt. Ein gelbliches Dreieck schießt in die 

Höh' ... entwimmelt und zerduftet. Etwas Grünglitzerndes schwillt, 

schwimmt, schwindet. (Es ist nicht genau so - doch die Sprache muß das 

nachsingen.) 

Man denkt an Expressionistenbilder. Die sind aber unbewegsam. Chagalls 

Leuchtparadiese bleiben doch starr. Die Funkelfuturismen der neuesten 

39 Offenbar wirkten die Ruttmannschen Formen auf die Zeitgenossen auch suggestiv 

im sexuellen Sinne. Jedenfalls wird der erotische Charakter der Opus-Filme immer 

wieder, und oft mißbilligend, herausgehoben. Opus II wurde sogar unter Jugend- 

verbot gestellt-ob aus erotischen Gründen oder weil man hypnotische Reaktionen 

des Publikums befürchtete, ist unklar. Vgl. Wilmesmeier (wie Anm. 2), S. 51 ff., mit 

einschlägigen Zitaten. 

40 B. G. Kawan. In: Film Kurier, Nr. 276, 27. November 1924.

266 

Pariser versteinern reglos - im Rahmen. Hier aber flitzen Dinge, rudern, 

brennen, steigen, stoßen, quellen, gleiten, schreiten, welken, fließen, schwel 

len, dämmern; entfalten sich, wölben sich, breiten sich, verringern sich, 

kugeln sich, engen sich, schärfen sich, teilen sich, krümmen sich, heben 

sich, füllen sich, leeren sich, blähen sich, ducken sich; blümein und ver 

krümeln sich. 

Kurz: Expressionismus in Bewegtheit. Ein Rausch für die Pupille ... Aber 

kein Menschenfilm. 

Alfred Kerrs einfühlsame Akzentuierung biomorpher Prozesse wird 

durch viele Eigenschaften des Films gestützt. Schon die Gestalt und 

Gestik mancher der Figuren gibt ihm recht, insbesondere das Körper 

verhalten der «fischähnlichen» Gebilde, die auf- und niedergleiten, als 

tummelten sie sich im Wasser, sich zur Schmalseite hin verkürzen, leich 

te Drehungen vollziehen und sich wieder zur Breitseite strecken. Solche 

Augenblicke evozieren in der Tat ein Aquarium. Ähnlich wirkt sich 

Ruttmanns Nutzung physikalischer Gegebenheiten aus, wie die feste 

vordere und weiche hintere Kontur, dank derer er ein natürliches stoffli 

ches Phänomen imitiert. Und das Hauptmotiv des Films, das Sich-Aus- 

weichen der Figuren, schließt wie von selbst eine Beseelung ein, denn sie 

scheinen einander wahrzunehmen, aufeinander zu reagieren. 

Doch Kerr läßt sich hinreißen. Schon die Wortwahl - «Edamer» oder 

«Apfelsinchen» - schießt über das gerechtfertigte Maß hinaus, denn 

Ruttmanns Film enthält wenig Niedliches, obschon er streckenweise 

sehr gefällig ist. Der Vorbehalt Bernhard Diebolds (der den Film bewun 

derte) ist nicht ganz ungerechtfertigt: «Dieser Versuch hat noch kunstge 

werblichen Anstrich trotz innerlichem Willen.» 11 

Allerdings fängt 

Ruttmann die Anlehnung an die Natur und ans Narrative vielfach durch 

Abstraktionen und formale Spannungen wieder auf. Einerseits lädt er 

zwar immer wieder zur Einfühlung ein und gewinnt dabei an emotiona 

ler Wärme; aber andererseits bildet diese Tendenz nur ein Element 

innerhalb eines wesentlich größeren Registers, in dem es zugleich um 

grundsätzliche visuelle Polaritäten wie Licht/Dunkelheit, Farbe/ 

Schwarzweiß, Kantigkeit/Rundung, Linie/Fläche geht und um musika 

lische Grundstrukturen wie Kontrast und Interaktion der Motive, Varia 

tion, Wechsel der Instrumentierung, Wechsel der Tempi. Daß diese for 

male Auseinandersetzung bei der Rezeption leicht ins Hintertreffen ge 

rät, weil der empathische Sog der Figuren so stark ist, könnte Ruttmanns 

41 Bernhard Diebold: «Eine neue Kunst. Augenmusik des Films». In: Frankfurter Zei 

tung, 2. April 1921. 

Unerfahrenheit zuzuschreiben sein. Als Maler war er mit dem Phäno 

men nicht konfrontiert, daß sich auch ungegenständliche Formen durch 

Bewegung «animieren» und verselbständigen können. 

Ruttmann, dem es darum ging, möglichst viele Künste in einem 

sensuell möglichst reichen Film zu vereinen, hatte den Komponisten 

(und Freund) Max Butting gebeten, eine Begleitmusik zu schreiben 

Butting selbst leuchtete ein solches Zusammenspiel der Künste nicht 

unbedingt ein. 42 

In der Tat besteht auch die Gefahr, daß die musikalische 

Grundstruktur des Films - der zudem in einer Art Sonatenform drei 

Sätze umfaßt, die durch kurze Schwarzfilm-Pausen voneinander ge 

trennt sind - in Konkurrenz zur Musik tritt. Oder die Musik muß sich, 

umgekehrt, «hüten, zu selbstherrlich zu werden, sonst wird die Augen 

kunst zur Illustration». 43 

267 

Doch das Streichquartett, das Butting, wohl aus 

Gefälligkeit, komponierte, rechtfertigt diese Befürchtung nicht;44 ohne 

redundante Parallelisierung, ohne Mickey-Mouse-Effekte und ohne Süße 

erfüllt sie den Film mit Schmelz und Tiefe. 

Opus III, der 1923/24 unter Mitarbeit der Bauhaus-Schülerin Lore 

Leudesdorff entstand, war, wie Berndt Heller anhand der Begleitmusik 

42 Vgl. die Zitate aus einem Brief Buttings (vom 5. September 1950 an die Filmhistoriska 

Samlingarna) bei Goergen (wie Anm. 29), S. 22f. Anläßlich einer Besprechung der 

Farblichtmusik Alexander Laszlos formulierte Butting seine grundsätzliche Skepsis 

gegenüber den synästhetischen Euphorien seiner Zeitgenossen:

268 269 

Hanns Eislers nachweist 45 

, ursprünglich dreieinhalb Minuten lang. Über 

lieferte längere Kopien enthalten noch Motive aus Opus I und II, die dem 

Werk seine Geschlossenheit nehmen und seinen Rhythmus stören. Die 

mir zugängliche Kopie ist (inklusive dieser Zusätze) 46 

segmentweise in 

verschiedenen gedämpften Farben getont. Diese Kolorierung erscheint 

dem Film angemessen und dürfte authentisch sein; denn hier treten, 

ungleich Opus 1, keine Formen auf, die sich zur handkolorierten Akzen 

tuierung geeignet hätten, und die meisten Oberflächen sind bereits in 

sich strukturiert oder silhouettenhaft schwarz. Ruttmann verfügte zu 

nächst über keine Begleitkomposition, sondern wählte musikalisch-aku 

stische Ad-hoc-Lösungen (zum Beispiel Trommeln bei einer Londoner 

Aufführung, 1925). Hanns Eislers «Präludium in Form einer Passacaglia», 

ein Werk für Kammerorchester, das später mit dem Film aufgeführt 

wurde, entstand erst 1926. 47 

Opus III greift - wie auch Opus 11 oder der letzte Film der Reihe, Opus 

IV - manche Formen und Strukturprinzipien von Opus I wieder auf. Es 

ist interessant zu beobachten, wie Ruttmann hier zugleich Früheres 

weiterentwickelt und zu Neuem vorstößt. Vieles ist prägnant geklärt, 

das im ersten und zweiten Film noch unentschieden geblieben oder 

noch wenig ausgearbeitet war, und in deutlicher Richtung weitergetrie 

ben - manchmal bis zu einer neuen, prinzipielleren Ambiguität. Opus IV 

wird dann zwar seinerseits formale Gedanken dieses Films fortsetzen, 

gibt sich aber insgesamt harmonischer und bietet weniger Vielfalt. Opus 

III soll daher diese Untersuchung beschließen. 

Zu betrachten ist zunächst der Hintergrund, Untergrund oder Raum 

des Geschehens. Schon in Opus II zeigen sich neue Auffassungen, schon 

hier ist die durchgehend schwarze Tiefe des Bildraums, die Opus I und 

die Symphonie Diagonale kennzeichnet, streckenweise einer strukturier 

ten (und damit auch farbigen) Bearbeitung gewichen. Maserung, 

flickerndes, flimmerndes Licht, Veränderung und Bewegung kommen 

45 Vgl. Berndt Hellers Ausführungen zur Rekonstruktion des Films in Kinemathek 

Berlin, 20. Jg., Heft 62: «Film in den Niederlanden gestern und heute», Juni 1983, 

S. 21f. 

46 Die Kopie wird von LightCone, Paris, stumm verliehen; beigelegt ist eine Ton 

kassette mit Eislers Musik, die jedoch wegen abweichender Läng schwer plazierbar 

ist. 

47 Eislers Komposition wurde 1927 an den Baden-Badener Kammermusiktagen in 

doppelter Form aufgeführt: sowohl live mit Orchester wie als integrierte Tonfilm 

kopie nach dem Tri-Ergon-Verfahren. Leider ist diese Kopie verloren. Eislers Mu 

sikstück ist in seine «1. Orchestersuite op. 23» als erster Satz eingegangen. Vgl. 

Heller (wie Aura. 45) und in: Christian Kuntze (Hg.): Hanns Eisler - Komposition für 

den Film. Dokumente und Materialien zu den Filmkompositionen Hanns Eislers. 

Materialienheft Nr 12 der Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek Berlin 1982 S 43ff

270 

nun in Opus III allenthalben vor und heben den Unterschied zwischen 

agierender Form und sie umgebendem freien Raum auf. Nur noch gele 

gentlich bewegen sich Figuren in einer immateriellen Arena, und auch 

diese ist oft hell gehalten, so daß sich die Wertigkeit von Figur und 

Grund immer wieder umkehrt. Meist behauptet sich gar kein durchge 

haltenes figürliches Eigenleben - und es gibt, wie erwähnt, auch keine 

farbliche Sonderbehandlung einzelner Formen mehr -, sondern das Bild 

verwandelt sich in einem Prozeß, der alle Zonen erfassen kann. Damit 

ist der Eindruck einer klaren dreidimensionalen Leere aufgegeben zu 

gunsten eines ambivalenten Raumgeschehens, in dem Fläche und Tiefe 

stufenlos ineinander übergehen können und räumliche Verhältnisse zwar 

immer wieder angedeutet sind, sich aber nicht zu einer zentral 

perspektivischen Tiefenillusion verfestigen. Einerseits ist Opus III daher 

weniger räumlich als Opus 1, doch gibt es andererseits keinerlei «Raum 

scheu» mehr, keine Isolation der Figuren im Absoluten. Eine taktile 

Materialität kennzeichnet das ganze Bild. Es ist konkreter geworden, 

aber auch instabiler, metamorphotischer, kühler, abstrakter. «Abstrakt» 

jedoch wiederum nicht im geistigen Sinne Eggelings, sondern im Sinne 

ungegenständlicher Sinnlichkeit oder abstrahierter Wirklichkeit. 

Diesem Befund entspricht auch der Charakter der Formen. Nur 

ausnahmsweise tragen sie organische, an Lebewesen erinnernde Gestalt 

oder bewegen sich in biomorphem Gestus. Statt der züngelnden, gerun 

deten Gebilde und fischähnlichen Scheiben von Opus I beherrschen eher 

tektonische Konstruktionen die Leinwand. Stäbe, die die Komposition 

teilen, kontrastieren mit Flecken und Schlieren ohne eindeutige Kontur; 

Rechtecke, die aufeinander aufbauen, sich verschieben, ersetzen, über 

lappen, bilden Subkadragen oder Podeste, auf denen sich ein weiteres 

Geschehen ereignet, liegen auf einem Grund amorpher Texturen oder 

werden von ihnen überzogen. Kommt es gelegentlich zu konkreteren 

Formen und Bewegungen, so folgen sie eher maschinellen Mustern und 

erinnern an die Dynamik von Pleuelstangen, das Stampfen von Kolben 

oder die Windung von Transportbändern - doch ohne daß etwas Be 

stimmtes identifizierbar würde. Vielmehr geht es um die Essenz maschi 

nellen Verhaltens, das, ähnlich den Windkanal-Phänomenen von Opus I, 

manchmal auch in seinen physikalischen Eigenschaften evoziert wird. 

Die zeitgenössische Faszination an der Technik ist unverkennbar. 

Empathie oder beseelende Projektion kommen angesichts solchen 

Geschehens nicht oder nur noch in minimalen Ansätzen, etwa bei Mo 

menten der Schwerkraft, auf. Das Interesse am Verhalten der Figuren ist 

durch ein reiches Angebot komplexer Vorgänge ersetzt. Es gibt viel und 

vieles gleichzeitig zu beobachten. Die Technik ist differenzierter und 

perfekter geworden, der Formenkatalog erweitert und verfeinert. Die 

Kompositionen wechseln oder wandeln sich rasch und oft radikal, rhyth 

mische Spannungen und Kontrapunkte bauen'sich auf und zergehen, 

Übergänge und Umschwünge vollziehen sich elegant und überraschend. 

Vor allem aber ist eine Dimension hinzugetreten, die in Opus I noch 

kaum zu ahnen war, sich in Opus II allerdings schon deutlich ankündigt: 

das Wirken von Licht und Schatten, zentrales Prinzip der Fotografie. 

Natürlich spielt das Licht auch im ersten Film eine Rolle, wenn es 

von unten durch Glasplatten und Farbverwischungen dringt, wurde 

dort aber - ähnlich wie bei Eggeling - nicht als aktive Größe eingesetzt, 

sondern nur zur technischen Erzeugung von Hlelligkeit. Lediglich in den 

wolkigen Maserungen von Opus I ist ein gewisses Flimmern aufgeho 

ben, das aber gegenüber der Farbbehandlung in den Hintergrund (ritt. 

In Opus II ist diesem Phänomen schon mehr Beachtung geschenkt, die 

Oberflächen oszillieren, trotz Einfärbung, als erstrahlten sie von innen 

mit pulsierendem Licht, und gewinnen dadurch eine eigenartig lebendi 

ge Tiefe. Eine Modellierung durch Licht und Schatten, wie sie durch 

einfallende Strahlen entsteht, kommt aber erst in Opus III wirklich auf. 

Hier tritt neben die malerisch-grafische Behandlung von Hell- und 

Dunkelheit oder den stationären pulsierenden Lichteffekt der Eindruck 

von Lichthöfen um manche Objekte oder Lichtflecken in bestimmten 

Bildzonen, von grell erleuchteten Formen oder aber Silhouetten, die sich 

vor gegensätzlichen Hintergründen abheben, oder sogar von gelegentli 

chen Schatten, welche die Figuren auf den Untergrund werfen. Damit ist 

Opus III zwar nicht zum Abbild eines künstlich beleuchteten Raumes 

oder einer Landschaft geworden, auf die das Mondlicht fällt; viel zu 

sporadisch oder auch widersprüchlich verhalten sich die Effekte, um 

eine illusionäre Konstanz zu behaupten. Doch der Reichtum potentieller 

Wahrnehmungsweisen und Suggestionen, das Spannimgsfeld zwischen 

Abstraktionen und Konkretisierungen ist immens und um spezifisch 

fotografische Parameter gewachsen. 

Eher verborgen im üppigen Gefüge der Formen enthält Opus III 

schließlich einen grundsätzlichen Bruch mit der bisherigen Arbeitswei 

se. 48 

Zwar herrscht auch in den früheren Filmen kein Purismus der 

Methoden, der Tricktisch erlaubte neben der Wischtechnik jederzeit 

auch Legeprozesse oder die Arbeit mit Schablonen, die scherenschnitt 

artig in Erscheinung treten, sich staffeln oder überschneiden; darüber 

48 Vgl. den Bericht über die Arbeit Ruttmanns mit Lotte Reiniger von Guido Seeber: 

Der Trickfilm in seinen grundsätzlichen Möglichkeiten. Berlin 1927 (Nachdruck Frank 

furt a. M. 1979), S. 190f. 

271

272 

hinaus hat Ruttmann auch mit Sand oder Wachs experimentiert. Doch in 

Opus 111 manifestiert sich plötzlich ein abgefilmtes dreidimensionales 

Objekt: eine schwarze, silhouettenhafte Spiralstange (möglicherweise 

ein Bohrer), die in langsamer Drehung aufgenommen ist und deren 

Ausbuchtungen am Schaft fast nur in der Kontur sichtbar werden. Doch 

leichte Glanzlichter verraten die Rundungen des Objekts. Die Stange 

reiht sich zwar wie selbstverständlich in die übrigen Formen ein oder 

wird von ihnen vorbereitet, nimmt aber durch ihre Verweildauer und 

den klaren weißen Hintergrund eine gewisse Sonderstellung ein. Offen 

bar fasziniert vom optischen Potential des realen Objekts ließ Ruttmann 

sich hier auf ein heterogenes fotografisches Register ein - wenn auch 

diskret eingebunden in den übrigen Film und nicht mit dem Effekt der 

Collage. Andeutungsweise sind die Maschinen-Abstraktionen seiner spä 

teren Werke vorweggenommen. 

Ruttmann ist, in den Worten von Rudolf Kurtz, «nicht darauf aus, die 

Kräfte des Lebens in mathematisch bestimmte, zeitlose Formen auszudrü 

cken, er stellt die Einfühlung, den dekorativen Reiz, die psychologische 

Wirkung in seine Rechnung ein». 49 

Während Eggeling sich auf radikale 

Weise enthält, die Einfühlung zu ermutigen oder ein verbindendes Raum 

gefühl aufkommen zu lassen, und daher «absolut» im wesentlichen Sinne 

des Wortes bleibt, sucht Ruttmann den schwelgerischen Reiz auch in der 

Abstraktion. Zwar entwickelt er sich deutlich weg von beseelten, schein 

bar intentional handelnden Figuren hin zu strengerem formalem Ernst, 

doch seine Formen gewinnen zugleich an lebendiger Sensualität und 

Taktilität und verschmelzen mit einem ebenfalls taktilen Grund. Damit 

ist Ruttmann von Worringers Charakterisierung des Abstraktionsdranges, 

bei dem «das Leben als solches [...] als Störung des ästhetischen Genusses 

empfunden» werde, denkbar weit entfernt; es geht ihm nicht darum, «in 

der Betrachtung eines Notwendigen und Unverrückbaren erlöst zu wer 

den vom Zufälligen des Menschseins überhaupt, von der scheinbaren 

Willkür der allgemeinen organischen Existenz». 50 

Auch in der Auffassung ihrer Rolle als Künstler unterscheiden sich 

Ruttmann und Eggeling sehr nachdrücklich. Während Eggeling jede 

Subjektivierung ablehnt, sich gleichsam aus dem eigenen Werk heraus 

hält, da er sich nur als Vermittler der Vergeistigung auffaßt, ist in 

Ruttmanns abstrakten Filmen ein prozeßhafter, impulsiver, genießeri 

scher Gestus spürbar, der auf den Künstler, seine emotionalen Spannun 

gen und seinen Umgang mit dem Material verweist. 

49 Kurtz (wie Anm. 35), S. 102. 

Die Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in Eggelings und Ruttmanns 

Formensprache und abstraktem Ansatz wurden den Zeitgenossen 1925 

in der legendären Filmmatinee «Der absolute Film» vor Augen gestellt, 

die am 3. Mai von der Novembergruppe in Zusammenarbeit mit der 

Kulturabteilung der Ufa veranstaltet wurde: im Berliner Ufa-Theater, 

das immerhin 900 Plätze bot. Eggelings Symphonie Diagonale kam unmit 

telbar vor Ruttmanns Opus 11 - IV zur Aufführung (Opus I fehlte) 51 

. Als 

weiterer abstrakter Film wurde Hans Richters Film ist Rhythmus (ca. 

1921-24) gezeigt. Eingeleitet war das Programm durch Ludwig Hirsch- 

feld-Macks Lichtreflexionen Dreiteilige Farbensonatine und Reflektorische 

Farbenspiele. Und als Gegengewicht zum abstrakten deutschen Film dien 

ten zwei französische, eher dadaistisch-surreale Werke: Fernand Leger/ 

Dudley Murphys Images Mobiles von 1924 (das unter dem Titel Ballet 

Mecanique in die Filmgeschichte eingegangen ist) und Rene Clair/ Francis 

Picabias Entr' acte, ebenfalls von 1924. 

Die Matinee erwies sich als Erfolg und Skandalon zugleich. Einer 

seits stieß sie auf so große Nachfrage, daß man sie eine Woche später 

wiederholte (und auch anderweitig, in Hannover, aufführte). Doch an 

dererseits reagierte ein Großteil des Publikums mit unverhohlener Ag 

gression, Gehässigkeit, Verständnislosigkeit. Auch die meisten Kritiken 

spiegelten eine solche Haltung. Sie strotzten von «Mißfallensfloskeln»; 

aber sie belegen auch eine «unübersehbare Niveaulosigkeit», die einem 

«psycho-physiologischen Wahrnehmungsdefekt' der weitgehend lach 

fremden Kritiker entsprang, wie Wilmesmeier ausführt. 52 

273 

Obwohl die 

mangelnde Qualifikation von Publikum und Presse auch den Filmema 

chern nicht entgangen sein dürfte, mag sie dennoch ihre Wirkung entfal 

tet und sie darin bestärkt haben, von der mühevollen Arbeit am I rick 

tisch Abstand zu nehmen. 53 

Dennoch überrascht die Kürze der Blüte, die dem absoluten abstrak 

ten Film beschieden war. Angesichts der vielen Hoffnungen, die in ihn 

gesetzt wurden, der Manifeste, die ihn heraufbeschworen, und der Eil 

st Möglicherweise erschien der Film durch seine noch unausgereifte Technik und 

insbesondere die beseelten Formen überholt; möglicherweise war er auch den 

inzwischen sehr erfolgreichen - Werbefilmen zu ähnlich, die Ruttmann parallel 

zum Opus-Zvklus schuf. 

52 Wilmesmeier (wie Anm. 2) hat die Rezeption der Filmmatinee einer eingehenden 

Analyse unterzogen. 

53 Ruttmann, an Erfolge gewöhnt und auf sie bedacht, ahnte auch, daß dem abstrak 

ten Avantgardefilm ein ähnliches Schicksal beschieden sein möge wie der atonalen 

Musik: «Soll er in schlecht besuchte Konzertsäle abwandern, sich klösterlich destillieren 

für eine kleine Gemeinde ästhetisch Anspruchsvoller, die über die Reinheit 

seiner Struktur wachen?» Zitiert nach Goergen (wie Anm. 29), S. 37.

274 

phorie jener Künstler und Kritiker, die ihn als neue Kunst und notwen 

dige Entwicklung gefeiert hatten, wäre eine größere Vitalität dieser 

Kunstform zu erwarten gewesen - von der überzeugenden ästhetischen 

Qualität der Filme ganz zu schweigen. Allerdings ist zu berücksichtigen, 

daß viele Grundsätze und Theorien, auf die sich der deutsche abstrakte 

Film bezog, in der Vergangenheit wurzelten. Der Entschluß, sich als 

Maler des Mediums Film zu bedienen, war zwar radikal und modern 

und schien eine neue Ästhetik zu versprechen; doch er bildete eher eine 

Art Kulmination malerischer Bewegungstendenzen und künstlerischer 

Grenzüberschreitung, wie sie die ersten beiden Dekaden des Jahrhun 

derts geprägt hatten. Im Medium Film lagen dagegen Möglichkeiten der 

Fotografie und der Montage beschlossen, die in ganz anderer Weise, auf 

einer ganz anderen Ebene die zeitgenössische Ästhetik herausforderten. 

So basiert der französische Film Ballet Mecanique, der in der Matinee 

enthalten war, auf einer lebendigen Collage heterogener Elemente. Er 

integriert malerisch-grafische Bilder mit fotografischen Abstraktionen, 

kaleidoskopisch verfremdeten Alltagsutensilien oder Maschinenteilen, 

mit Straßenaufnahmen, inszenierten Personen, fragmentarischen Ge 

sichtern oder auch gestalteter Schrift. Die zentralperspektivisch-fotogra 

fische Illusion wechselt mit geometrischen Kompositionen, blitzende 

Lichtreflexe kontrastieren mit flächiger Farbe. Auch das «Cinema pur», 

ein anderer Ansatz der französischen Avantgarde, versucht sich ganz 

auf die medienspezifischen Eigenschaften des Films zu besinnen, die in 

lyrischer Weise ausgelotet werden. In den Filmen von Henri Chomette - 

Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse von 1923-25 oder Cinq minutes de cinema pur 

von 1925 - gibt es beispielsweise fließende Übergänge von abstrahieren 

der Fotografie zu gegenständlichen Realaufnahmen, technische Verfrem 

dungen durch Geschwindigkeitsmanipulation, Mehrfachbelichtung oder 

Wechsel zum Negativ neben stimmungsvollen Naturmotiven oder tech 

nischer Dynamik. 

Gleichzeitig propagierte Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, der ab 1923 am Bau 

haus tätig war, die künstlerische, «produktive» Nutzung von Fotografie 

und Film, die er ihrem reproduktiven Gebrauch entgegensetzte. «Der 

fotografische Apparat hat uns überraschende Möglichkeiten geliefert, 

mit deren Auswertung wir eben erst beginnen», schreibt er 1925 in 

seinem Buch Malerei, Fotografie, Film. Und zwei Jahre später zählt er die 

filmischen Funktionen des Lichts auf: 

Wechselnde Lichtintensitäten und Lichttempi. Bewegungsvariationen des 

Raumes durch Licht. Erlöschen und Aufblitzen des ganzen Bewegungs 

organismus, unseres Gehirns. Lichtgreifbarkeit. Lichtbewegung. Lichtferne 

und Lichtnähe. Durchdringende und aulbauende Strahlung: stärkste opti 

sche Erlebnisse, die den Menschen zuteil werden können.54 

Schon 1921/22 hatte Moholy-Nagy die «Skizze zu einem Film 

manuskript» Dynamik der Großstadt entworfen - ein Projekt, das jedoch 

nicht zur Ausführung kam. Vorgesehen waren vor allem Aufnahmen 

technischer Prozesse, wie Hausbau, Rangierbahnhof, Straßenverkehr, 

die in Bewegungskontrasten, formalen Analogien, Wechsel visueller 

Abstraktionen zu konkreten Bildern montiert werden sollten.55 Hier wa 

ren Möglichkeiten einer Verklammerung von fotografischem Realfilm 

und abstrakter Kunst ausgelotet, die in eine ganz andere Richtung wie 

sen als die «absolute» Animation. 

Nach 1925 setzte nur Oskar Fischinger die Arbeit am abstrakten 

animierten Film fort - allerdings in einem beschwingt-gefälligen, be 

kannte Werke der Musikgeschichte illustrierenden Stil. Viking Eggeling 

war verstorben; Hans Richter wandte sich mit Filmstudie (1926) einer 

Mischform zu, die nach französischer Art abstrahierende und gegen 

ständliche Fotografie kombiniert, und drehte teildokumentarische expe 

rimentelle Kurzfilme, die vor allem mit virtuosen Montage-Effekten 

spielen. Walter Ruttman nutzte seine Animationstechnik nur noch im 

Werbefilm. Seine berühmte formalistische Studie von 1927, Berlin. Die 

Sinfonie einer Großstadt, erinnert in vielem an Moholy-Nagys Berlin- 

Projekt und bezeugt, in welchem Maße die Faszination des Realfilms 

auch Ruttmann erfaßt hatte. 

54 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: «Die beispiellose Fotografie». In: i 10, Jg. 1, Nr. 3. Amsterdam 

1927. Zitiert nach Schneede (wie Anm. 1), S. 245. 

55 Moholy-Nagys «Skizze., ist in seinem Buch Malerei, Fotografie, Film abgedruckt 

(Mainz 1967, Faksimile der Ausgabe von 1927, S. 122ff.). 

275

BLOCK 2 

FRANKREICH – SURREALISMUS UND DADAISMUS

Hans RICHTER: Le coeur à barbe. In: Ders.: Dada – Kunst und 

Antikunst. Köln: DuMont 1964, S. 194-196. 

Le coeur á barbe (Das bärtige Herz) 

Die Reaktion auf diesen unverzeihlichen Mißgriff war zunächst das Gegenteil 

von dem, was Breton beabsichtig hatte. Spontan schlossen sich die 'alten Dadakämpfer' 

gegen Breton zusammen und stellten sich für das Gegen-Manifest 

Tzaras >Le coeur á barbe< zur Verfügung. Das Pamphlet war geschrieben 

von Huidobro, Peret, Satie, Serner, Rrose Selavy (Duchamp), Soupault etc.: 

»Die Unterzeichneten ziehen ihr Vertrauen und ihre Mitarbeit an dem Kongreß 

zurück: Satie, Tzara, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Man Ray, Eluard, Zadkine, 

Huidobro, Metzinger, Charchoune, Radiguet, Emmanuel Fay, M. Herrand, 

l?erat, Roch Gray, Raval, Nie. Bauduin, Zborowsky, van Doesburg, Zdanevitch, 

Voirol, Pansaers, Survage, Mondzain, Marcelle Meyer, Arp, Dermée, Celine, 

Romoff, Peret, Sauvage, Arlan, Cocteau.« 

Der Riß in der Dadafront zeigte sich öffentlich zuerst in einem Frontalangriff 

Picabias auf Dada und Tzara. In >Comedia< wurde unter dem Titel 

>Picabia trennt sich von DadaLe PILHAOU-THIBAOU391391< vertiefte den Riß mit jener diabolischen Konsequenz, 

die Picabia zur Verfügung stand. Darauf verließ die Mehrzahl von 

Picabias Mitarbeitern den 'Verräter'. Selbst sein treuester Freund Ribemont- 

Dessaignes wechselte zu Tzara über. Picabia lud eine neue Equipe zur Mitarbeit 

an >391< ein, unter denen für die Dadaisten Cocteau ein spezieller Dorn 

im Fleische war. Aber auch Ezra Pound und der Belgier Clément Pansaers 

zählten zu den neuen Mitarbeitern. Picabia selbst änderte indessen weder 

seinen Stil noch seine Angriffe. Mit einem speziellen Pamphlet >La pomme de 

pinns< gegen Tzara nahm er Bretons Partei gegen all die Unterzeichner, die mit 

Tzara die Angriffe des >Le coeur á barbe< unterstützten. 

Die entscheidende Wende kam am 6. Juli 1923 im Théatre Michel mit 

einer großen Abendvorstellung Dadas. Der Katalog versprach Erstaufführungen 

von Werken Aurics, Milhauds, Saties, Strawinskys, dazu Tänze in Kostümen 

von Sonja Delaunay vor Dekorationen von van Doesburg, verschiedene 

Filme von Sheeler, Hans Richter und Man Ray, >Mouchez vous< von Ribemont- 

Dessaignes, Lautgedichte von Iliazde und Gedicht-Rezitationen von Marcel 

Herrand (Cocteau, Soupault und Tzara). . . der Clou des Abends war ein Stück 

von Tzara: >Les coeur ä gaz

PARIS-DADA 1919-1922 

von >Le coeur á gaz< gekommen war, wurden die Darsteller in ihrem Spiel 

abrupt unterbrochen. Heftige Proteste ertönten aus dem Publikumsraum. 

Dann ein unerwartetes Zwischenspiel; - Breton kletterte auf die Bühne, und 

fing an, auf die Darsteller einzuschlagen. Diese, eingezwängt in Sonja Delaunays 

Kostüme aus steifem Karton, konnten sich gegen die Schläge nicht verteidigen 

und versuchten, mit kleinen Schrittchen zu entfliehen. Ohne Rücksicht 

ohrfeigte Breton Crevel, und mit einem Schlag seines Stockes brach er 

Pierre de Massot den Ann. Das überraschte Publikum fing nun auch an zu 

reagieren. Der erbarmungslose Angreifer wurde zu Boden geworfen. Aragon 

und Peret kamen ihm zu Hilfe. Alle drei wurden überwältigt und gewaltsam 

und mit zerrissenen Jacken hinausgeworfen. Die Ruhe im Raum war 

wiederhergestellt, als nun Eluard seinerseits auf die Bühne stieg. Bei einem 

Freunde von Tzara überraschte diese Geste. Aber die Zuschauer befaßten sich 

nicht mit solchen Feinheiten, und der Autor von >Répétitions< wurde sofort 

von einem ganzen Trupp angegriffen, der durch die vorhergehende Keilerei 

schon in Schwung gekommen war. Eluard unterlag der Übermacht und rollte 

über die Rampe in einige Scheinwerferlampen, die explodierten. Die Freunde 

versuchten, den zarten Dichter vor weiteren Repressalien zu schützen, während 

im Saal nach der Polizei gerufen wurde. Nachdem sich der Krach allmählich 

gelegt hatte, erschien die Ruhe anormal. Ich höre noch die Stimme 

des Direktors des Theétre Michel, der sich über die heruntergerissenen Vorhänge, 

die zerbrochenen Polstersessel und die verwüstete Bühne die Haare raufte: 

»Ma bonbonniere, ma bonbonniere!« (Georges Hugnet. in >L'aventure DadaDas bärtige Herz — Le cceur á barbe< und >Le cceur á gaz< — waren Dadas 

Schwanengesang. Es ging nicht mehr, weil niemand mehr wußte, worum es 

ging. So kam es zu Verdächtigungen, Beleidigungen, Verleumdungen einer 

Gruppe gegen die andere, ja einer Zeitschrift (>391Merz< ab. 

Aus der > Conference sur la fin de Dada< Weimar 1922: 

» D e a d a m a r c h e e 

lui-mdme. De tous ces dgoüts il ne tire d'ailleurs aucun parti, aucun orgueil 

et aucun profit. Il ne combat méme plus, car il sait que cela ne sert ä rien, que 

tout cela n'a pas d'importance. Ce qui interesse un dadaiste, c'est sa propre 

facon de vivre. Mais ici nous entrons dans le grand secret. 

Dada est un etat d'esprit. C'est pour cela qu'il transforme suivant les races 

et les événements. Dada s'applique á tout, et pourtant il n'est rien, il est le 

point oü le oui et le non et tous les contraires se recontrent non pas solennellement 

dans les chateaux des philosophies humaines, mais tout simplement aux 

coins des rues, commes les chiens et les sauterelles. 

Dada est inutile comme tout dans la vie. 

Dada n'a aueune prétention, comme la vie devrait etre. 

Peut-etre me comprendrez-vous mieux quand je vous dirai que dada est un 

microbe vierge qui s'introduit avec l'insistance de l'air dans tous les espaces 

que la raison n'a pu combler de mots ou de Conventions.« Tristan Tzara 

Noch einmal bewies Dada eine gewisse Solidarität im Widerstand und in der 

Negation. Marinetti und Russolo veranstalteten ein bruitistisches Konzert und 

wurden von ihren früheren Freunden ausgepfiffen. Beide waren Vorläufer 

und Wegbereiter für Dada. Der Krach endete damit, daß Dada buchstäblich 

'ä l'instant' aus dem Theater Champs Elyseé, wo die Veranstaltung stattfand, 

herausgeworfen wurde. 

Picabia, vorsichtshalber abwesend, hatte sich völlig auf sein eigenes Dada- 

Schloß zurückgezogen, als der letzte Sturm begann. 

Breton hatte inzwischen 1923 seine Kräfte organisiert und in Barcelona zur 

Eröffnung einer Picabia-Ausstellung einen programmatischen Vortrag über den 

Charakter (und die Charaktere) der Entwicklung in der modernen Kunst gehalten. 

Es versteht sich von selbst, daß Tzara und seine Freunde darin nicht 

mehr vorkamen. 

Picabia fuhr fort, seine Unabhängigkeit ständig wieder unter Beweis zu 

stellen. In der Malerei war seine Maschinen-Periode vorbei. Jetzt zeichnete er 

197

Wieland HERZFELDE: Zur Einführung (1920). In: Uwe M. Schneede 

(Hg.): Die zwanziger Jahre. Köln: DuMont 1979, S. 31-34. 

Wieland Herzfelde 

Zur Einführung 

1920 

Die größte Dada-Manifestation ist die Erste Internationale Dada-Messe 1920 in der Berliner Galerie 

Dr. Otto Burchard. Gezeigt werden nach Auskunft des Faltblattes, das zur Ausstellung erschien, 174 

Werke, nicht nur von Berliner Dadaisten; auch Arp, Baargeld, Dix, Max Ernst, Picabia, Schlichter, 

G. Scholz sind vertreten. Für die Berliner Dada-Gruppe ist dies das letzte gemeinsame Auftreten. 

Ausstellungsbeiträge von George Grosz und Rudolf Schlichter führen zu einem Prozeß wegen angeblicher 

Beleidigung der Reichswehr. Grosz und sein Verleger Wieland Herzfelde werden zu Geldstrafen 

verurteilt. 

In seiner Einführung zum Faltblatt äußert sich Wieland Herzfelde zur Methode des Dadaismus, vor 

allem zum Prinzip der Normenzersetzung und zum Prinzip des fruchtbaren Dilettantismus. 

Dem wiedergegebenen Text folgen Erläuterungen zu einzelnen Ausstellungsstücken - hier weggelassen, 

weil sie keine grundlegende Bedeutung haben. 

Dereinst wird die Photographie die gesamte 

Malkunst verdrängen und ersetzen. 

Wiertz. 

Wenn sich ein Künstler der Photographie 

bediente, wie man sich ihrer bedienen muß, 

dann würde er sich zu einer Höhe aufschwingen, 

von der wir keine Ahnung haben. 

Delacroix. 

Sonne, Mond und Sterne bestehen noch - 

obwohl wir sie nicht mehr anbeten. Gibt es 

unsterbliche Kunst, so kann sie nicht daran 

sterben, daß der Kunstkult gestürzt wird. 

Wieland Herzfelde. 

Die Malerei hatte einst den ausgesprochenen 

Zweck, den Menschen die Anschauung 

von Dingen, Landschaften, Tieren, Bauten 

usw., die sie selbst nicht mit eigenen Augen 

kennenlernen konnten, zu vermitteln. Diese 

Aufgabe haben heute Photographie und 

Film übernommen und lösen sie unvergleichlich 

viel vollkommener als die Maler 

aller Zeiten. 

Doch starb die Malerei mit dem Verlust ihres 

Zweckes nicht ab, sondern suchte neue 

Zwecke. Seitdem lassen sich alle Kunstbestrebungen 

dahin zusammenfassen, daß 

sie, so verschieden sie auch sind, gemein 

sam die Tendenz haben, sich von der Wirklichkeit 

zu emanzipieren. 

Der Dadaismus ist die Reaktion auf alle 

diese Verleugnungsversuche des Tatsächlichen, 

die die Triebkraft der Impressionisten, 

Expressionisten, Kubisten und auch 

der Futuristen (indem sie nicht vorm Film 

kapitulieren wollten) gewesen sind; aber 

der Dadaist unternimmt es nicht etwa wieder, 

mit dem Photographenapparat zu konkurrieren, 

oder ihm gar eine Seele einzuhauchen, 

indem er (wie die Impressionisten) 

der schlechtesten Linse: dem menschlichen 

Auge den Vorzug gibt, oder (wie die 

Expressionisten) den Apparat umdreht und 

dauernd bloß die Welt im eigenen Busen 

darstellt. 

Die Dadaisten sagen: Wenn früher Unmengen 

von Zeit, Liebe und Anstrengung auf 

das Malen eines Körpers, einer Blume, eines 

Hutes, eines Schlagschattens usw. verwandt 

wurden, so brauchen wir nur die 

Schere nehmen und uns unter den Malereien, 

photographischen Darstellungen all dieser 

Dinge auszuschneiden, was wir brauchen; 

handelt es sich um Dinge geringeren 

Umfangs, so brauchen wir auch gar nicht 

Darstellungen, sondern nehmen die Gegen- 

31

Erste Internationale Dada-Messe, Kunsthandlung Dr. Otto Burchard, Berlin 1920 (v. 1. n. r.: Raoul 

Hausmann, Dr. Otto Burchard, Hannah Hoch, Johannes Baader, Wieland Herzfelde, Margarete 

Herzfelde, Otto Schmalhausen, George Grosz, John Heartfield). An der linken Wand ein Gemälde 

von Dix, rechts eines von Grosz (beide seit dem Dritten Reich verschollen), an der Decke eine Puppe 

von Schlichter 

stände selbst, z. B. Taschenmesser, Aschenbecher, 

Bücher etc., lauter Sachen, die in 

den Museen alter Kunst recht schön gemalt 

sind, aber eben doch gemalt. 

Nun die berühmte Frage: Ja, aber der Inhalt, 

das Geistige? 

Im Laufe der Jahrhunderte hat wie auf allen 

Gebieten die ungleiche Verteilung der 

Lebens- und Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten 

auch auf dem Gebiete der Kunst unerhörte 

Verhältnisse gezeitigt: auf der einen Seite 

eine Clique sogenannter Könner und Talente, 

die teils durch jahrzehntelanges Training, 

teils durch Protektion, Sesselkleben, 

teils auch durch ererbte Spezialveranlagungen 

das Monopol in bezug auf alle Frage 

der Kunstwertung an sich gerissen hat - 

32 

während auf der anderen Seite die Menge 

von Menschen, deren anspruchsloses und 

naives Bedürfnis: die Vorstellung in sich 

und die Vorgänge in der Umwelt darzustellen, 

mitzuteilen und bauend zu verarbeiten, 

von jener Clique Tonangebender niedergehalten 

wird. Heute muß der junge Mensch, 

wenn er nicht auf jegliche Ausbildung und 

Verbreiterung seiner ursprünglichen Anlagen 

verzichten will, sich dem durch und 

durch autoritativ aufgebauten System der 

künstlerischen Erziehung und des künstlerischen 

öffentlichen Urteils unterwerfen. 

Die Dadaisten hingegen sagen, Bilder herstellen 

ist keine Wichtigkeit, wenn es aber 

geschieht, so soll wenigstens kein Machtstandpunkt 

aufgezogen werden, so soll den

eiten Massen die Lust an gestaltender Beschäftigung 

nicht durch die fachmännische 

Arroganz einer hochmütigen Gilde verdorben 

werden. Aus diesem Grunde können 

die Inhalte dadaistischer Bilder und Erzeugnisse 

außerordentlich verschieden sein 

und desgleichen die Mittel. An sich ist jedes 

Erzeugnis dadaistisch, das unbeeinflußt, 

unbekümmert um öffentliche Instanzen 

und Wertbegriffe hergestellt wird, sofern 

das darstellende illusionsfeindlich, aus dem 

Bedürfnis heraus arbeitet, die gegenwärtige 

Welt, die sich offenbar in Auflösung, in einer 

Metamorphose befindet, zersetzend 

weiterzutreiben. Die Vergangenheit ist nur 

noch insofern wichtig und maßgebend, als 

ihr Kult bekämpft werden muß. Insofern 

sind die Dadaisten einig, sie sagen, was die 

Antike, die Klassik, all die >großen Geister< 

geschaffen haben, darf nicht (es sei denn 

wissenschaftlich historisch) gewertet werden 

in bezug auf die Zeit, da es geschaffen 

wurde, sondern so, als ob heute jemand 

34 

diese Dinge herstellt, und niemand wird bezweifeln, 

daß heute kein Mensch, und sei er 

auch, um mit der Kunstsprache zu reden, 

ein Genie, Werke herstellen kann, deren 

Voraussetzungen Jahrhunderte und Jahrtausende 

zurückliegen. 

Die Dadaisten rechnen es sich als Verdienst 

an, Vorkämpfer des Dilettantismus zu sein, 

denn der Kunst-Dilettant ist nichts anderes 

wie das Opfer einer Vorurteils vollen, hochmütigen, 

aristokratischen Weltanschauung. 

Die Dadaisten anerkennen als einziges 

Programm die Pflicht, zeitlich und örtlich 

das gegenwärtige Geschehen zum Inhalt ihrer 

Bilder zu machen, weswegen sie auch 

nicht >Tausend und eine Nacht< oder 

>Bilder aus Hinterindien

Thomas ELSAESSER: Dada/Cinema? In: Rudolf E. Kuenzli (Hg.): Dada 

and Surrealist Film. Cambridge, London: MIT Press 1996, S. 13-27. 

I. ESSAYS 

Cinema-An Invention without Origin or Use? 

Dada/Cinema? 

Thomas Elsaesser 

There is something altogether appropriate about the fact, noted by film historians, 

1 that the cinema has no origin other than the multiplicity of chemical, 

technical, optical, and scientific discoveries and devices which made 

possible the first public showings around 1896. It cautions anyone looking at 

cinema history not to imbue it with an ontology or to ascribe to its development 

a particularly stringent logic. 

We tend to forget, for instance, how many of the decisive discoveries or 

applications were, in fact, "by product[s] of other more urgent concerns" 2 and 

the workings of "objective chance." Such is the case of Marey's chronophotography, 

which its inventor hoped would facilitate medical research 

into cardiac and vascular diseases. The desire of analyzing movement needs 

to be distinguished from the ability of reproducing it mechanically. The development 

of mechanical aids for drawing, for portraiture, and for achieving 

likeness can be shown to antedate photography and the cinema, but they are 

clearly crucial to an understanding of the ideology of self-representation 

which has marked the cinema as a social institution. On the other hand, the 

will to record, classify, collect, describe, observe, and analyze, which Michel 

Foucault sees as characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 

has left its mark on many of the early uses of photography and the 

cinema with its tributary inventions benefited from the need for precision 

instruments to satisfy the scientific rage for order. "Physiology applied to the 

field of optics" 3 is one way of designating the probing, investigative urge 

underpinning the cinema, but it does not fully explain why and how the desire 

for the di-visible became the fascination for the visible. If we owe the 

cinema to certain advances in the applied technologies- the same, it has 

been remarked, that produced the sewing machine and the telegraph tapeit 

is nonetheless true that the desire for the cinema, for the perfect reproduction 

of appearance and vision, existed well before the machinery of its 

realization had been assembled. 

Dada and the Cinema 

The cinema, displaying a flagrant (and ironic) discrepancy between the 

bricolage of its mechanical, optical, chemical processes on the one hand, and 

the homogeneity, unity, illusory cohesion of its effects on the other, would 

seem to be a quintessentially Dada artifact-a contention which conversely 

13

might suggest that Dada artifacts are quintessentially nineteenth-century 

technological fantasies. 

The combination Dada/cinema is thus interlaced with the more general 

history of inventions and apparati, and with the crises provoked in the arts 

when it became impossible to separate technology from technique or scientific 

from artistic experiment. The explosive development of new means of 

representation and reproduction towards the end of the nineteenth century, 

indicating for the first time that aesthetic effects can be attributed to 

machine-made objects or images, had profoundly ruptured a traditional relation 

between art and mimesis. It had also cruelly exposed the delicate relationship 

between crafted object and art object in respect to labor, skill, and 

value. 

Two aspects are worth singling out. One is to look, especially in the context 

of Germany and Berlin Dada, at the forms of spectatorship and pleasure 

that might be associated not so much with watching Dada films but watching 

films as Dada. The second point concerns the kinds of reflection which 

the cinema as total apparatus—psychic, economic, erotic — occasioned 

among the avant-garde and Dadaists in particular, as a model or metaphor 

for representing the relation of body to social environment, or even for conceptualizing 

the art-work as event, rather than as object, no longer as products 

but as circuits of exchange for different energies and intensities, for the 

different aggregate states matter can be subjected to between substance and 

sign through an act of transposition, assemblage, division, and intermittence. 

The cinema, in other words, between photo-montage and metamechanics. 

Unlike "Surrealism and Cinema," on which one can consult volumes, the 

subject "Dada and Film" has not entered into the histories of the movement, 

nor into film history as a distinct entity. Apart from a short, mainly autobiographical 

essay by Hans Richter in Willy Verkaufs monograph, 4 references 

to Dada films have until a few years ago only turned up in histories of avantgarde 

cinema, experimental or abstract him. 5 The focus of these accounts 

tends to sever the examples from their Dada connections and to annex them 

as the precursors of a tradition either of graphic or structuralist cinema. 

Dada films thus appear briefly in the prehistory of the New American 

Cinema, but the connections seem rather tenuous compared, again, to the 

profound influence of Surrealism on the American him avant-garde. 

The problems of talking about Dada him are twofold. Firstly, the question 

of attribution and contribution. Should one resist calling Ballet mecanique a 

Dada film, because Leger is usually considered a Cubist? Hans Richter did 

not think so: 

Though Leger was never a Dadaist, his Ballet mecanique is 100% Dada. 6 

Do Francis Picabia's disagreements with the Paris Dadaists disqualify 

Entr'acte? We know that the ballet Reldche, for which Picabia and Rene Clair 

conceived Entr'acte, was in part a protest against Breton's takeover of the 

Surrealist movement. 7 By a reverse logic, should Hans Richter's Rhythm 21 

and Rhythm 23 be discussed as Dada films because Richter makes a case for 

Dada art as abstract art? Candidly, he himself admitted: 

14 

After I have stated this fact "Dada equals abstract art" I happily wish to insist on the 

other point, "Dada equals non-abstract art." And this is also true if not truer. 8 

Ambiguity of one form or another surrounds most other potential candidates. 

Duchamp's Anemic cinema is usually called a Dada film, with which 

Duchamp would presumably not have quarreled, if he had not baulked at 

calling it a film at all, preferring to see it as part of his "precision optics." 9 In 

Man Ray's case, we have Retour a la raison, first performed at the famous 

"Soiree du Coeur a barbe" in July 1923, an occasion which signaled the breakup 

of Paris Dada. Man Ray considered his subsequent two films Emak Bakia 

and L'Etoile de mer to be Surrealist films. Hans Richter calls his own Filmstudie 

"rather more surrealist." 10 This only leaves two or three short films by 

Richter: Ghosts before Breakfast and Two-Penny Magic as uncontested Dada 

films. 

The second problem is chronology. If one takes a generous view, one can 

start with 1920, the year Richter and Eggeling applied for facilities and funds 

to the UFA Film Company in order to carry out work which resulted in 

Rhythm 21, Rhythm 23, and Diagonal Symphony. In the same year Duchamp 

and Man Ray conducted the first and almost lethal experiments with revolving 

glass discs and 3-D stereotypes, out of which grew Rotating Demisphere 

and Anemic cinema. It is not until 1923 that Retour a la raison appears, and in 

1924, Entr'acte. Ballet mecanique follows in 1925, and in 1926 comes Hans 

Richter's Filmstudie, Man Ray's Emak Bakia, and Duchamp's Anemic cinema. 

Finally, in 1927 Richter completes Ghosts before Breakfast and Two-Penny 

Magic, and in 1928 Man Ray's L'Etoile de mer is shown. No chronology of 

Dada stretches that far. 

The reasons for the sparse and late appearance of Dada films are in part financial 

and in part geographical. There was little commercial interest in 

either Richter's or Eggeling's work, even though it was sponsored by the 

powerful UFA Studio, which successfully marketed other types of animation 

film (Walther Ruttmann's or Lotte Reiniger's). Entr'acte was specifically 

commissioned, and Man Ray's films were made with money from a wealthy 

expatriate, Arthur Wheeler, who had tried to persuade Man Ray at one stage 

to become a professional film-maker, with his backing. During the 1920s, 

France was more receptive to experiments in the cinema, not least because 

the flourishing cine-club movement gave film-makers an outlet and a form of 

distribution, however marginal in relation to the commercial cinema. 11 In 

Germany, by contrast, the artistic avant-gardes were quite hostile to the 

cinema during most of the 1910s and early 1920s mainly for political reasons: 

Germany had a very powerful and successful commercial film industry, and 

only the arrival of the "Russenfilme" sparked off practical interest in an "alternative 

cinema." 12 There was, in consequence, less of a viable exhibition 

system for experimental shorts produced outside the film industry. 

One of the few times that one can talk of a Dada film soiree occurred in 

May, 1925, in Berlin, when Eggeling's Diagonal Symphony, Richter's Film is 

Rhythm (the two Rhythm films spliced together) Ruttmann's Opus I, II and 

TV, Leger's and Murphy's Ballet mecanique, Picabia's and Clair's Entr'acte, as 

well as three films by Moholy-Nagy (made at the Bauhaus) were screened together. 

13 

15

More recent literature has in contrast stressed the ways in which Dada 

techniques or practices were inherently "cinematic." Anton Kaes, in an article 

on "Verfremdung als Verfahren: Film und Dada," 14 argues that the 

cinema suggested to the Dadaists the need to represent "the hectic acceleration 

of life," and in particular, he compares Hans Richter's work with the 

"Cinematism" in painting (Balla's famous Dog on a Leash), with "Fotodinamismo" 

and the multiple-exposure studies popular among not only avantgarde 

photographers in the early teens. 15 But more important for Kaes is the 

fact that a revolutionary conception of cinema has in common with Dada the 

principle of montage "because it problematizes the relationship between object 

of perception and the subject of perception. Montage does not allow for 

a coherent perspective in which the subject is in control." 16 Kaes quotes 

Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann to indicate that even the commercial cinema 

caused an experience of shock to its earliest spectators. 

This approach goes beyond the more traditional histories of avant-garde 

movements, where Dada or Surrealist films are simply searched for examples 

of techniques already familiar from the literary or visual productions. 

Kaes can point to a potential area of research, where historical investigations 

of Dada converge with questions of current film theory, once more 

interested in the ideas about spectatorship first formulated by Siegfried 

Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, and recently given a more explicitly psychoanalytical 

turn. 17 

The Tyranny of the Eye 

The general shift from an environment experienced through all the senses 

to one increasingly dominated by the eye and obeying its control undoubtedly 

forms part of both the history of the cinema and of Dada. The confusion 

of active and passive roles under the rule of spectacle is well caught in a 

poem by George Grosz: "I am like a film-strip and like a child in a thousand 

luna parks . . . someone is always cranking the handle." 18 

In this sense, the cinema is indeed that "phenomenon par exellence which 

has to be traced along the minute cracks and fault-lines that run through late 

Victorian society in Europe." 19 It is the expression of a sensibility excited by 

motion, by the means of locomotion, relishing dioramas and panoramas, 

flocking to world fairs, crowding into the Crystal Palace and climbing the 

Eiffel Tower. The need for physical mobility, spatial displacement, for the 

bird's eye view and for being driven or carried along precede the cinema at 

the same time as these pleasures were significantly transformed, realized, 

and interpreted by the cinema. Their social dimension leads one inevitably 

to demographic facts: for the cinema is unthinkable without the big cities. 

Perhaps the best guide through its prehistory is Benjamin's Baudelaire. In 

order to understand the changes in perception forced upon people living in 

the cities as well as for intimating the implications of those changes, Benjamin 

constructed a Baudelaire who serves him as a poetic "precision instrument" 

to trace those very fault-lines. The poem about wandering the suburbs 

at daybreak like a fencer thrusting and parrying imaginary blows suggests to 

Benjamin that Baudelaire reacted to "ennui," the spectre of specular fascina- 

16 

tion and voyeuristic control, by a new involvement of the body in the very 

act of writing, modeled on the experience of fighting one's way through 

crowded streets and public places: 

The meaning of the hidden configuration (which reveals the beauty of that stanza to 

its very depth) probably is this: it is the phantom crowd of the words, the fragments, 

the beginnings of lines from which the poet, in the deserted streets, wrests the poetic 

booty. 20 

However fanciful this reading may be to a Baudelaire scholar, Benjamin 

isolates an important aspect of Dada technique: a reaction to, as well as an 

exploitation of the tyranny of total vision which invaded the early decades of 

the century. When characterizing the (to him ambiguous) contribution made 

by Dada to avant-garde art, in his essay on the "Work of Art in the Age of 

Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin sees Dada objects replacing one kind 

of spectatorship (contemplation) with what he calls "a new tactility": 

In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; 

it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct.... From an alluring 

appearance . . . the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. 

It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. 

21 

One might compare this negation of contemplation to Duchamp's categorical 

demand to destroy the "retinal" aspect of painting, and thus to counteract 

the supremacy of the eye. Whereas the Russian post-revolutionary avantgarde 

abandoned painting and turned to film and photography, Duchamp 

and other Dadaists on the whole rejected the cinema, not least because, even 

in its avant-garde forms, it seemed too close to the synesthesia of the Impressionists 

and the advocates of the Gesamtkunstwerk. That the difference in 

political situation between East and West played its part is accurately 

perceived by Benjamin: 

Dadaism . . . sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the cinema in 

favor of higher ambitions. . . . The Dadaists attached much less importance to the 

sales value of their work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion. The 

studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this 

uselessness. 22 

Dadaism in many of its manifestations was reactive, seeking ways of radically 

short-circuiting the means by which art objects acquire financial, social, 

and spiritual values. Thus, while from the point of view of the material 

base, the cinema seemed an art of waste-products, and its conditions of 

reception were anything but auratic, the very popularity of films meant that 

the cinema soon represented tremendous financial, and with it, social value. 

This paradox marked the Dadaists' involvement from the start: the cinema 

seemed initially anti-contemplative as an entertainment, and at least Benjamin 

saw in its visual forms an element of tactility; but it soon acquired its 

own aura: that of glamor and total specular entrancement. It is therefore perhaps 

not surprising that interest of some Dadaists focused in the first instance 

on the behavior of the crowds, the character of a happening, and the 

"degraded" nature of film spectacle, parodying subversively the theater and 

17

the concert hall. A certain physicality and body-presence of the first cinema 

audiences is what might be called the Dada element in film. 

"Das Kino" 

While few theorists today would be very satisfied with drawing a dividing 

line between Melies and Lumiere when it comes to establishing an opposition 

between "realism" and "fiction" or documentary and fantasy, there has 

recently been a great deal of interest and controversy around the possibility 

of distinguishing between so-called "primitive cinema" (up to 1917) and 

"classical narrative cinema" on the basis of different types of spectator ship. 

Alongside oppositions such as commercial versus avant-garde cinema, illusionist 

versus materialist film, historians have speculated on the kind of involvement 

and participation elicited by early cinema. In one of the most interesting 

formulations, Noel Burch contrasts two kinds of Imaginary underpinning 

different practices: the "Edisonian" (a fascination with the apparatus 

of cinema in view of a total simulacrum of life, and the "analytical" one, aiming 

to break down movement into smaller and smaller particles. 23 Both seem 

relevant to Dada, whose interest in the cinema was in some sense a nostalgic 

one, attached to the him performance of the 1910s and the figure of the inventor-bricoleur. 

What remains problematic about both the generic distinction 

and the definition of a filmic avant-garde in the context of early cinema 

is that we still know very little about the actual viewing experience during 

the period in question. 

In a typical program, say in Berlin in 1913 (but surviving in the suburbs 

well into the early 1920s), non-narrative films would be mixed with sketches 

and fantasies. The Kaiser (or Hindenburg) would be shown on parade right 

after a filmed variety number. The items would be introduced, a lecturer 

would stand at the back of the room or hall and comment sarcastically or 

pathetically on the action, explain, or provide the kind of epic distance that 

Brecht, copying from the cinema, tried to create in his theater. There was 

little sense of "illusionism" or any suspension of disbelief. 

Skepticism and sarcasm mingled freely with wonder and amazement. The 

viewing experience seemed, as it were, embedded in drinking and furtive 

sex, and if it was "structured," it derived this structure from the ambience of 

the event as much as from the films. "Das Kino" or "Kintopp" was characterized 

by its communality of reception on the one hand, and its discontinuous 

flow on the other. Here is an early testimony of a film-show in Berlin: 

The room is darkened. Suddenly the Ganges floats into view, palms, the temple of the 

Brahmins appears. A silent family drama rages with bon vivants, a masquerade-a 

gun is pulled. Jealousy inflamed. Mr. Piefke duels headlessly and they show us, step 

by step, mountaineers climbing the steep, demanding paths. The paths lead down 

through forests, they twist and climb the threatening cliff. The view into the depths is 

enlivened by cows and potatoes. And into the darkened room-into my very eyeflutters 

that, that... oh, dreadful! One after the other! Then the arc lamp hissingly announces 

the end, lights! And we push ourselves into the open . . . horny and 

yawning. 24 

18 

Van Hoddis's response is to the total environment, of which the film is only 

one part. The interest in early cinema on the part of today's theorists like 

Noel Burch resides in the fact that the so-called "codes of representation" 

have not yet become hierarchized and subjected to certain "laws" whose ideology 

a later (film-)avant-garde was to deconstruct. This hierarchy is above 

all one organized around the dominance of the look; it becomes the distinguishing 

mark of the cinematic watershed between "primitive" and "Grifnthian" 

film-making. To quote from an article by Pascal Bonitzer: 

The look in Griffith was not something that had been there since the beginning of the 

cinema. There was, first of all, the 20 years during which the cinema was content 

merely to be the object of viewing, recording phenomena and movements and the 

sights of the world. When today we see these early films ... we are seeing the varied 

fruits of a cinematic Eden where the coldness and sophistication of the look had not 

yet penetrated. ... A cinema where the only currency was that of gesture, where the 

viewers' eyes are functioning but not looking. According to Edgar Morin ... it wasn't 

until 1915-1920 that the gesticulation typical of actors gave way to a degree of immobility. 

This is the turning point represented by Griffith. . . . What we have here is a 

cinematic revolution. With the arrival of montage, the close-up, immobile actors, the 

look (and its corollary - the banishment of histrionics) an entire facade of the cinema 

seemed to disappear and be lost forever, in a word, all the excrement of vaudeville. 

. . . The cinema was innocent and dirty, it was to become obsessional and fetishistic. 

The obscenity did not disappear ... it passed into the register of desire. 25 

As Bonitzer goes on to show, it is the look circulating within the fiction that, 

inducing desire, produces narratives, which are in turn based on subjecting 

to a more or less rigid logic the articulation of cinematic space and sequence. 

And as Bonitzer also remarks, it is the German Expressionist cinema which 

for the first time systematically exploited the look as the cinematic signifier 

par exellence. The introduction of the look into the film diegesis thus constitutes 

the end point of a development, the final cornerstone of the edifice of 

control and containment which has governed the development of mainstream 

cinema. If I claimed that Dada spectatorship is nostalgic, it is perhaps 

because the presence or absence of the charged look as the agent and 

motivator of both continuity and discontinuity, of sequence and cut distinguishes 

Surrealist interest in film (consider the importance of the eye and of 

point of view in Un Chien andalou) from Dada interest in cinema. 

Not the Film, But the Performance Is Dada 

What was Dada in regard to cinema was not a specific film, but the performance, 

not a specific set of techniques or textual organization, but the spectacle. 

One might argue that in order for a film to have been Dada it need not 

be made by a Dadaist, or conversely, that there were no Dada films outside 

the events in which they figured. "What is a Dada film?" would resolve itself 

into the question "When was a film Dada?" This gives a special place to the 

screening of Entr'acte as part of Relache (as opposed to its cinema premiere a 

year later at the Studio des Ursulines), and to the Soiree du Coeur a barbe. At 

a time when the cinema had become itself a thoroughly respectable (and "in- 

19

stitutionalized") form of entertainment, both film text and viewing context 

had to combine in order to defamiliarize the occasion, in order to recapture 

the cinema's "excremental" age of scandalously guilty innocence. 

Entr'acte works hard at "deconstructing" what had already become set as the 

conventions of the feature film and the cinema experience. It mocks the solemnity 

of state-occasions as they might have been presented in contemporary 

newsreel. By its satirical look at funerals, parades, and photo features from 

the world of arts, entertainment and leisure, Entr'acte explodes the conventions 

of the newsreel in forms themselves borrowed from the cinema (American 

slapstick, the Keystone Cops, for instance), and thus could be considered 

as being in turn part of a filmic genre - that of parody, were it not for the event 

for which it was conceived. 

Picabia and Satie had wanted the audience to whom Entr'acte was shown 

during the intermission of the ballet Relache to provide their own "musical" 

accompaniment by the mumbling, scraping, protesting, guffawing and general 

noise to be expected during an intermission. To their disappointment 

the spectators remained respectfully in their seats, silent, staring at the 

screen. The projection failed to ignite into a Dada performance. 26 

This incident, I think, is symptomatic of a problem that made film a less 

than perfect medium at Dada events. For the conditions of a reception in the 

cinema-the dark room, the stable rectangle of the screen, the fixed voyeuristic 

position of the spectator-all counteract not only the sense of provocation, 

but they also compensate for the absence of a coherent diegesis and for 

the non-narrative organization in the filmed material. Under normal viewing 

conditions, that is, in a movie theatre and not as part of a performance 

aspiring to the condition of the happening, Dada films such as Entr'acte, 

Ballet mecanique, or Hans Richter's works are almost inescapably contained, 

unified and finally recuperated in a way that the classic examples of Surrealist 

cinema are less vulnerable to, for reasons which have mainly to do with 

the fact that Surrealist films so closely mimic the figurative operations of narrative 

cinema, and compensate for the ruptures of their time-space continuum 

by a massive investment in the on-screen and off-screen look, which 

lures the spectator into the play of projection, fetish, and identification 

described by Bonitzer as typical for illusionist cinema. 

"Geist" and "Stoff" 

Film technology confers on even the most banal object the aura of erotic 

presence. The scandal resides in the cinema bypassing aesthetics while at 

the same time providing a source of aesthetic appeal. It opened an old 

wound in German literary culture-the debate about "form" and "material" 

("Geist" and "Stoff"). The very achievement of classical literature (no less than 

of Romantic art) had been the suppression of materiality, its total transfiguration 

into "form." What for some writers categorically excluded the 

cinema from being art ("in the cinema, the material substance is preserved in 

its crude factuality, whereas in drama the material is wholly consumed and 

transformed by form, of which the main agent is language" 27 ), was for others 

the cinema's chief claim to attention: that it could produce emotion of an 

20 

aesthetic kind out of pure materiality. Thomas Mann recognized the same 

dilemma when in 1928, after seeing the first film version of his novel Die 

Buddenbrooks, he wrote: 

A pair of lovers, both young and beautiful, who in a real garden with billowing grass 

say goodbye "forever"... who could resist, who would not enjoy letting it all pour out. 

This is pure material, not transformed by anything. 28 

Mann concluded from this that it was pointless to try to apply to cinema 

the criteria developed by classical aesthetics. Sixteen years earlier, Georg 

Lukacs had already warned against solving the problem in this fashion: 

.. . something new and beautiful has developed in recent times, but instead of taking 

it as it is, people are attempting to classify it. . . . The cinema is regarded either as an 

instrument of education or as a cheap substitute for the theater; either didactic or economic. 

Few people if any remember that something beautiful belongs first and foremost 

to the realm of beauty and its definition and evaluation is properly a task for aesthetics. 

Lukacs, in other words, recognized clearly that the cinema posed a challenge 

to classical aesthetics which had to be answered, and not as Mann was 

to suggest, by merely relegating it to the side of "life" as opposed to "art." 

Lukacs goes on: 

The images of the cinema ... possess a life of a completely different kind [from those on 

the stage]; in one word, they become-fantastic. But the fantastic is not the opposite to 

living, it is another aspect of life: life without presence, without fate, without causality, 

without motivation; a life with which the core of our being will never be identical, nor 

can it be; and even if it - often- yearns for this kind of life, this yearning is merely after 

a strange precipice, something a long way off, inwardly distanced. The world of the 

cinema is a life without background or perspective, without difference of properties or 

qualities. [The cinema] is a life without measure or order, without being or value, a life 

without soul, mere surface ... the individual moments, whose temporal sequence 

brings about the filmed scenes, are only joined with each other insofar as they follow 

each other without transition and mediation. There is no causality which could join 

them, or more precisely, its causality is free from and unimpeded by any notion of content. 

"Everything is possible": this is the credo of the cinema, and because its technique 

expresses at every moment the absolute (even if only empirical) reality of this moment, 

"virtuality" no longer functions as a category opposed to "reality": both categories become 

equivalent, identical. Everything is true and real, everything is equally true and 

real; this is what a sequence of images in the cinema teaches us. 29 

What Lukacs here analyzes with a certain lugubrious melancholy is nothing 

other than what Raoul Hausmann or Kurt Schwitters celebrate: "Everything is 

true and real, everything is equally true and real." The fundamental Dada 

paradox, namely that the real is the material, but that this irreducible materiality 

has no reality other than as a sign or a representation, finds its implicit 

resolution, if Luckacs is right, in the cinema-except in a cinema equated 

philosophically if not empirically with life itself. It is in this theoretical impasse 

that Dadaists remained caught when thinking about the cinema, and it 

gives some justification to Benjamin's assertion that the Dadaists' attitude to 

the new technologies of visual reproduction and imaging was retrograde, but 

necessarily so, given their radical aspirations: 

21

The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires 

to effects which could be fu!iy obtained only with a changed technical standard, that 

is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear 

. . . actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies . . . : Dadaism attempted 

to create by pictorial-and literary-means the effects which the public today 

seeks in the cinema. 30 

From Benjamin's perspective and vantage point this estimation of Dada 

technique as anachronistic in relation to a revolutionizing technology seems 

at least strategically plausible. But it may also (perhaps deliberately) misread 

Dada activities and their main thrust. The Berlin Dadaists, for instance, 

were finally only interested in two kinds of cultural objects: live performance 

and the newspaper, prototypes of an interventionist use of the massmedia. 

In both cases, by utilizing already existing forms and formats, maximum 

effect could be achieved through a minimum of effort—a reversal of 

bourgeois value-creation which the labor-intensive and time-consuming 

process of filmmaking does not exemplify particularly well. The principle of 

the ready-made (the spectacular ratio of effort to effect of an upturned urinal 

labeled "Fountain" and exhibited in a gallery) was generally of cardinal importance 

to the Dadaists, not only because it suited the movement's libidinal 

economy (the excremental against the obsessional): it demonstrated Dada's 

anti-mimetic concept of realism (preferring material literalism over metaphoric 

constructions of the materials of art), while at the same time undercutting 

the traditional equation of skill, effort or inspiration with art, value, 

status and morality. Wieland Herzfelde wrote: 

The tasks [of painting] have been taken over by photography and film, and they solve 

them infinitely more perfectly than painting ever could. . . . [Since their invention] all 

art movements can be characterized as having, despite their differences, a common 

tendency to emancipate themselves from reality. Dada is the reaction to all these attempts 

at disavowing the factual, which has been the driving force of impressionists, 

expressionists, cubists and even futurists (in that they refused to capitulate to film); 

however, the Dadaist doesn't try to compete with the camera, or to breathe soul into it 

(as did the impressionists) by giving the worst lens-the human eye—priority, or (like 

the expressionists) turn the apparatus round and simply depict the world inside their 

own bosom. 

The Dadaists say: Whereas once inordinate amounts of time, love and exertion were 

expended on the depiction of a body, a flower, a hat, the shadow cast by a figure, etc., 

today all we have to do is take a pair of scissors and cut whatever we need out of the 

paintings, the photographic reproductions of these things; if the objects are small, we 

don't even need the representations, but take the objects themselves, e.g. pocket 

knives, ash trays, books, etc.-things which in the museums of old art are wonderfully 

painted, but only painted. 31 

This passage from Wieland Herzfelde's "Zur Einfiihrung in die Erste Internationale 

Dada Messe" seems to illustrate Benjamin's point even as it tries to 

embrace the cinema, only to reject film as not material enough. Herzfelde, 

despite his bold polemics, does not fully rise to the challenge of the problem 

already posed by Lukacs: how does the apparently unmediated reality conveyed 

by the photographic image constitute itself as a sign? 

In practice, Dada products were often far from subscribing to Herzfelde's 

22 

naive literalism of taking the objects themselves and putting them on display. 

The typical Dada artifact, the photomontage, indicated that the materials 

were not primary materials, but already formed by mechanical processes, 

which meant that what in one context constitutes the end-product is 

treated by Dada as raw material. Likewise, the point about Duchamp's 

ready-mades is that a semantic transformation has taken place, and not only 

a transgression of space, status, and use. The shift from end to means in the 

case of Duchamp especially is always doubled by what might be called a 

process of semiotization, where an object of little or no value is transformed 

not into a value but into an (ironic) signifier of value. Raoul Hausmann, in 

looking back at Berlin Dada, makes a similar point: 

Anti-art withdraws from things and materials their utility, but also their concrete and 

civil meaning; it reverses classical values and makes them half-abstract. However, 

this process was only partially understood and only by some of the Dadaists. 32 

Hausmann's notion of "half-abstract" would be worth following up further, if 

one wanted to situate more precisely the Dadaists' use of images and the 

critical status of photographic or filmic illusionism in the early practice of 

photomontage. 33 From the vantage point of an interest in non-linguistic sign 

systems and visual sign production, the work of Grosz, Hausmann, and 

Heart&eld has yet to be fully explored, because-and here Benjamin is undoubtedly 

right-Dada "anti-art" contributed less to the overturning of contemporary 

value systems than it participated in the transformation of a perceptual 

apparatus which the cinema changed so drastically and rapidly that 

it seemed to put the intellectual avant-gardes on the defensive. 

Meta-Mechanics and the Perceptual Apparatus 

The pre-history of the cinema, as mentioned earlier, comprises two quite 

distinct strands: that of the spaces and places where the new mass-public 

gathered for entertainment-fairgrounds, traveling circuses, vaudeville and 

nickelodeons —, and that of the optical or scientific toys, such as the zoetrope 

or the phenakistoscope, where images-painted, printed, or photographeddeceived 

the eye into perceiving movement and continuity where there was 

merely intermittence. If the Dadaists took an interest in the phenomenon of 

the masses eroticized by cinematic spectacles, they were equally alert to the 

fact that here was a machine organized in a peculiarly contradictory way: the 

cinematic apparatus is devised to function so as to disguise the actual movement 

ofthe image (passing through the projector gate) in order to create a nonexistent 

movement in the image. Energy in the cinema appears not as in productive 

machines, to transmit, transfer, or transform movement, but in order 

to nullify, disguise, and revalue movement: mechanics has become the metamechanics 

of imaginary motion. This gives the cinema, in terms of its apparatus, 

the status not of an optical toy, but rather, it makes it available as a 

philosophical toy, a machine transforming the useful energy of cogs and 

transmission belts into a useless energy of illusionist simulation. It is this 

aspect of the cinema-the devaluation of matter through its perfect reproduction, 

as in the photograph, but coupled with the transformation of mechanical 

23

movement from one aggregate state to another-which is explored and 

elaborated in Duchamp's Anemic cinema. The film grew out of lengthy and 

dangerous experimentations with glass discs on which geometrical segments 

and lines were painted in such a way as to produce particular illusionist effects 

when put in revoking motion. 

The rotoreliefs by themselves were illusionist devices, where motorization 

created a sense of depth and of spatial extension, a movement from inward to 

outward and vice versa. As such, Duchamp's work is comparable to that of 

Richter and Eggeling, only that Anemic cinema plays with more overtly anthropomorphic 

sensations of heaving or breathing, and thus focuses on the 

eroticizing effect of animating the inanimate by a cunning arrangement of 

geometrical lines. But what decisively distinguishes Duchamp's film from 

other work is that the painted discs are intercut with other discs on which a 

series of ingeniously punning sentences are inscribed, whose semantics and 

syntactics exploit the mirror effect of syllabic division ("L'aspirant habite Javel, 

et moi, j'avais l'habite en spirale"). The two types of discs taken together create 

contrasts between flatness and depth, between negative and positive space, 

between reading and illusion, between literal and metaphoric. 34 Furthermore, 

the puns themselves, which are almost all erotic, interact by a sort of metaphoric 

contagion with the shapes and movements of the discs, to create the 

impression of seeing male and female protruberances in endless motion, 

whose consummation is frustrated through the intervention of the machine, a 

typically Duchamp topos. 

Indeed it is not simply the intervention of one machine, but rather the synchronization 

of two machines: the recording camera and the revolving 

motor that spins the discs—two circular motions, distinct from each other, 

synchronized and dephased to produce endlessly closed circuits. Useless 

energy has been transformed into semiotic energy, via punning and mirroring 

effects, and the film —referring the spectator to the apparatus that makes 

its effect possible —reveals itself as peculiarly auto-erotic. The cinemamachine 

has become a bachelor-machine. 35 

Manipulating Materials of Expression or Reproduction 

The insertion of art into the sphere of technological, capitalist modes of production 

becomes, according to Benjamin, the only position from which a critique 

of that mode of production is possible. In this respect, the idea of 

cinema, viewed from the perspective of its particular apparatus, could serve 

as a sort of model for the representation of the relation between body and 

matter, "Geist" and "Stoff," which goes beyond the disavowal of Thomas 

Mann as well as the polemical-sadistic materialism of the Berlin Dadaists. 

When Hausmann compares the soul of the Berlin bourgeois to a "libretto 

machine with a reprogrammable morality disc," 36 the metaphor brutally 

substitutes the spiritual connotations of soul with the image of a gramophone. 

Hausmann's Tatlin at Home or Grosz's The Engineer Heartfield, on the 

other hand, depict precision machines carefully inserted in the place of 

brains and heart respectively. Clearly there is a difference, both actual and 

intended, between these two uses, and it highlights the ambiguity of the 

24 

machine metaphor in much Dada work, poised between futurist machines, 

which were, invariably, mimetic representations of machines in the conventional 

media of bourgeois art (oil paint, bronze, etc.), and constructivist 

machines which were, in a fundamental sense, real machines. 

In Picabia's Portrait of Marie Laurencin, however, the machine parts 

neither propose a likeness, nor a polemical statement. The work suggests a 

coalescence of heterogeneous attributes whose perfection, harmony, or 

subtle interaction is signaled by machine elements. Similarly, in Man Ray's 

famous Dancer/Danger, the cogs are interlocking so tightly that, as a 

machine, it cannot function. The picture needs a dancer, a human element 

with the precision and dexterity of a machine, to make the mechanism turn. 

But it also remains blocked as long as it is viewed as the representation of a 

real machine. Only when we notice and thereby activate the energy of the 

pun (doubled by the fact that it works in two languages) does the cog of the 

letter G "make the connection": the Dada machine is not so much a metaphoric 

machine, as it is a metonymic machine which solicits the imaginary 

participation by an act of dis-placement, requiring the viewer to look and 

think in several dimensions at once. Secondly, as the examples from 

Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picabia make apparent, Dada machines are word 

machines; they explicitly semiotize the relations that exist between the 

parts. 

Dada practice, like the cinematic apparatus, redefines the relation of part 

to whole, the relation of part to part. It is the cut, the montage principle that 

makes the energy in the system visible and active. However, unlike the cinematic 

apparatus, where heterogeneity at the level of the material components 

and technologies becomes "retinal" and fantasmatic, Dada machines, 

whether drawn on paper or printed, enacted in front of a public or built out 

of glass and wire, use the contradictions and frictions in the system to remain 

non-mimetic. A Duchamp ready-made invites both tactile and conceptual 

viewing, but never contemplative attention. The bicycle wheel 

mounted on a stool is only complete as a "work" when it arouses the desire to 

make it revolve, and it apparently was installed in a place where, to Duchamp's 

quiet satisfaction, no-one passed without at least attempting to give 

it a furtive spin. 

Where the Dada machine thus differs from the cinematic apparatus is that 

at the level of the representations it remains intentionally anti-psychological. 

The obsessional, projective-intrqjective functions of the cinema contrast 

with Duchamp's lifelong exploration of natural processes, of mechanics and 

optics in search of material supports for the play of ideas which are antiintentional 

and non-expressive, but articulate themselves as traces of a 

presence figured in metonymies. Duchamp's representational systems and 

constructs - even those which most obviously parody the cinema by figuring 

it as "nature morte," such as Etant donnes—eschew the kinds of closure and 

homogeneity which typify the developments of him form. 

Thus, the complex combination of mechanics, optics, chemistry and timelag 

which makes cinematic reproduction possible was an invention very 

rnuch in the Dada spirit, for the Dada object always manipulates the materials 

of technical reproduction (and not those of expression). The few Dada 

25

experiments in him pushed in this direction, as did Dada interest in spectatorship, 

since it recognized the cinema as a machine not only in view of the 

recording/screening apparatus of camera, film-strip and projector, but also 

as a social machine, in which the spectator had a programmed place, physically, 

physiologically and economically. 

Yet that which made cinema so powerful a social institution-its ability to 

simulate in its textual effects the psychic apparatus as a desiring machine (the 

cinema as the most efficient simulacrum of the psychic apparatus when 

mapped onto the perceptual system, as has consistently happened since 

Freud-by and large ran counter to Dada: it was the Surrealists who saw in 

filmic processes a way of representing the relation of psychoanalysis to matter, 

mediated through rhetoric and figuration. 37 If, as Benjamin suggested, 

there is something anachronistic about Dada and cinema, the difference between 

Dada and Surrealism in this respect parallels and repeats the development 

of the cinema generally: the first focus of attraction for a paying public 

was the machinery itself, its novelty, its intricacy, its basic effects. Only 

subsequently was this fascination displaced to the stories, the stars, the spectacular 

and the specular. Recent film theory, however, seems to indicate that 

interest in the apparatus has staged its own return. 38 Perhaps the contradictions 

and frictions of Dada/cinema may yet become productive. 

Notes 

1. Eric Rhode, A History of the Cinema (Harmondsworth, 1978), 3-29. 

2. Ibid., 15. 

3. Ibid., 5. 

4. Willy Verkauf, ed., Dada: Monographic einer Bewegung (Teufen, 1957), 66. 

5. See, for instance, Stephen Dwoskin, Film Is.. . (London, 1975), or Sheldon Renan, 

An Introduction to the American Underground Film (New York, 1967). Perhaps the best 

study of European avant-garde cinema as part of a tradition of non-narrative, noncommercial 

cinema is David Curtis, Experimental Cinema (New York, 1971). 

6. Verkauf, 68. 

7. Mimi White, "Two French Dada Films: Entr'acte and Emak Bakia," Dada/ Surrealism 

13(1984): 37. 

8. Verkauf, 68. 

9. "I would regret it if anyone saw in this . . . anything other than 'optics.'" M. Duchamp, 

Marchand du Sel, ed. Michel Sanouillet (Paris, 1958), 185. 

10. Quoted in Curtis, 36. 

11. White, 37. 

12. Toni Stooss, "Erobert den Film! oder 'Prometheus' gegen 'Ufa' & Co.," in Wemgehort 

die Welt (NGBK Berlin, 1977), 482-524. 

13. This Dada film screening may have occurred to commemorate Eggeling, who 

died that month. 

14. Anton Kaes, "Verfremdung als Verfahren: Film und Dada," in W. Paulsen, ed., 

Sinn aus Unsinn-Dada International (Berne, 1982), 72-73. 

26 

15. See for instance Pontus Hulten, ed.,FuturismoeFuturismi (Milan, 1986), 479-480. 

16. Kaes, 73. 

17. See the forthcoming issue of New German Critique on "Early German Film 

Theory." 

18. Quoted in Hanne Bergius, "Zur Wahrnehmung und Wahrnehmungskritik im 

Berliner Dadaismus," Sprache im Technischen Zeitalter 55 (June-Sept., 1975):244. 

19. Rhode, p. 24. 

20. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1969), 165. 

21. Ibid., 238. 

22. Ibid., 237. 

23. Noel Burch, To the Distant Observer (London, 1979), 61-67. 

24. Jakob van Hoddis, "Variete," Der Sturm 47 (1911):374. 

25. Pascal Bonitzer, "It's Only a Movie," Framework (England) 14:23. 

26. Richter, 198. 

27. Moritz Heimann, "Der Kinomatographen-Unfug," in Kino-Debatte, ed. Anton 

Kaes (Tubingen, 1978), 37. 

28. Thomas Mann, "Uber den Film," in Kino-Debatte, 165. 

29. Georg Lukacs, "Gedanken zu einer Aesthetik des Kinos," in Kino-Debatte, 

113-115. 

30. Benjamin, 237. 

31. Wieland Herzfelde, "Zur Einfuhrung in die Erste Internationale Dada-Messe," in 

Dada Berlin,ed. Karl Riha and Hanne Bergius (Stuttgart, 1977), 117-118. 

32. Raoul Hausmann, "Dada emport sich, regt sich und stirbt in Berlin," in Dada 

Berlin, 10-11. 

33. See Bergius, 242-44. 

34. "Glyphes et graphes s'engendrent indefmiment du meme mouvement, dans un 

espace en quelque sorte sans realite, espace tropologique du jeu de mots, espace illusoire 

de 1'effet optique." Jean Clair, MarcelDuchamp. Catalogue raisonne (Paris, 1977), 

119. 

35. See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari: "A genuine consummation is achieved by the 

new machine, a pleasure that can rightly be called auto-erotic, or rather automatic: 

the nuptial celebration of a new alliance ... as though the eroticism of the machine 

liberated other unlimited forces." Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, 

1983), 18. 

36. Raoul Hausmann, "Pamphlet gegen die Weimarische Lebensauffassung," xnDada 

Berlin, 50. 

37. See, for instance, Linda Williams, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis ofSurrealist 

Film (Urbana, 1981). 

38. Among the recent literature on the "Cinematic Apparatus," one could single out 

Jean Louis Baudry, L'Effet Cinema (Paris, 1979], S. Heath, T. de Lauretis, eds., The 

Cinematic Apparatus (London, 1979), and Constance Penley, "Feminism, Film Theory 

and the Bachelor Machines," m/f 10 (1985). 

27

Judi FREEMAN: Bridging Purism and Surrealism: The Origins and 

Production of Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique. In: Rudolf E. Kuenzli 

(Hg.): Dada and Surrealist Film. Cambridge, London: MIT Press 1996, 

S. 28-45. 

Bridging Purism and Surrealism: 

The Origins and Production of 

Fernand Leger's Ballet Mecanique 

Judi Freeman 

Completed and first presented publicly in late September 1924, Fernand 

Leger's film Ballet Mecanique was created at the moment when the artist's 

painted output shifted from the exploration of diverse images of machine 

age life to the study of relatively abstract, closeup views of objects. In a 

sense his painted work stood at the crossroads between Purism and Surrealism, 

two endeavors seemingly without overlap but in fact-and this is certainly 

evident from Leger's particular position between them —possessing 

considerable interconnections. His films, like his other collaborative, noneasel 

painting projects, generally have been considered apart from the dialogue 

about the traditional fine arts in the early twentieth century. 1 When 

critically examined, however, it is clear that his films and other activities 

are integrally tied to these movements as well. Curiously, although Ballet 

Mecanique, along with Viking Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale (1921), Marcel 

Duchamp's Anemic Cinema (1926), and Man Ray's Emak Bakia (1926-27), 

most often are presented together in series devoted to Dada and Surrealist 

films or to avant-garde cinema, Ballet Mecanique always seems to be uncomfortably 

situated in this context. 

The peculiar nature of Ballet Mecanique, both in the context of Leger's 

career and within a notion of Dada and Surrealist him, is testimony to its 

significance within Leger's oeuvre as well as to the particular contributions 

of Leger's collaborators. The him was of such importance to the artist that in 

the final years of his career, he planned to remake it, in collaboration with 

Henri Langlois, in a version to be called Ballet des couleurs. 2 It is worthwhile, 

then, to reconstruct the genesis and development of the Ballet Mecanique 

project and to resolve how Leger made the film and how it fits into the 

painting he produced in the 1920s. 3 

Among the earliest French avant-garde artists to recognize the potential of 

cinema within the fine arts, Leger enthusiastically embraced the medium in 

numerous writings. As an active member of Ricciotto Canudo's Club des 

amis du septieme art (Club of the friends of the 7th art), he attended regular 

screenings and dinners with directors, film editors, and other realisateurs in 

the burgeoning French film industry. Clearly, though, Leger did not possess 

sufficient technical know-how to realize a film. But by 1923, when he embarked 

on the making of Ballet Mecanique, he had amassed considerable ex- 

28 

perience of the filmmaking industry. His first hands-on participation was in 

the making of Abel Gance's La Roue [The Wheel), in 1922. Although Gance's 

film was highly narrative, it contained notable passages of rapid montage 

that led later to his more sophisticated use of this technique in Napoleon 

(1927). In his admiring essay devoted to these montage sequences, Leger 

highlighted the portion of the film where the "machine becomes the leading 

character, the leading actor": 

This new element is presented to us through an infinite variety of methods, from 

every aspect: close-ups, fixed or moving mechanical fragments, projected at a heightened 

speed that approaches the state of simultaneity and that crushes and eliminates 

the human object, reduces its interest, pulverizes it . . . The plastic event is no less 

there because of it, it's nowhere else; it is planned, fitted in with care, appropriate, 

and seems to me to be laden with implications in itself and for the future. 

The advent of this film is additionally interesting in that it is going to determine a 

place in the plastic order for an art that has until now remained almost completely descriptive, 

sentimental, and documentary. The fragmentation of the object, the intrinsic 

plastic value of the object, its pictorial equivalence, have long been the domain of 

the modern arts. With The Wheel Abel Gance has elevated the art of film to the plane 

of the plastic arts. 4 

Not only was Leger present at the film's debut at the Gaumont-Palace in 

Paris in December 1922, but he also witnessed the film's shooting in Nice 

and the French Alps. Leger joined his old friend, the poet Blaise Cendrars, 

who at this time served as Gance's key assistant and troubleshooter on the 

film, involved with every aspect of the production-from arranging for 

props to paying bills. 5 Also present was Jean Epstein, then a young writer 

on film and the arts in Lyon, who was observing portions of the shooting. 6 

Leger discussed his impressions of the film and his general ideas on 

cinema's potential with Gance, who, in turn, encouraged him and commissioned 

him to write on the film as part of the carefully orchestrated publicity 

campaign surrounding La Roue's release in December 1922 (Fig. I). 7 

Following the film's premiere, Leger supplied Gance with his view of the 

audience's response to the film, telling the director that the "simultaneous 

passage" was the most successful but that other parts of the film had considerable 

problems. 8 

It is interesting to note how Leger initially asked Gance to describe him in 

the biographical note to be attached to Leger's promotional article on the 

film which appeared in Comoedia: 

Fernand Leger is the modern French painter that first considered the mechanical element 

as a possible plastic element; he has incorporated the concept of equivalence 

into numerous pictures. Abel Gance has asked him to offer his view of the plastic 

value of his film La Roue. 9 

Leger's paintings of 1922 were not devoted to mechanical elements seen in 

close-up. In 1918-19 Leger had produced several canvases on themes of 

mechanical elements or disks but his paintings of 1922 and 1923 continued 

themes begun in 1920-women, still lives of ordinary household objects 

situated in an interior, figures at work in the city or country-with equiva- 

29

Figure 1 

lences established between seemingly unrelated forms. For the artist, the 

link between his earlier works and his current pursuits was the exploration 

of plastic values. Ballet Mecanique served as an opportunity to test his ideas 

on these values in another medium by selecting aspects of that medium that 

permitted their expression. 

30 

The actual making of Ballet Mecanique is complicated by several conflicting 

accounts. Leger is known to have collaborated with four Americans 

resident in Europe: aspiring cameraman Dudley Murphy, fledgling composer 

George Antheil, the poet Ezra Pound, and the artist-photographer 

Man Ray. Their precise contributions to the film, however, are clouded by 

the contradictions present in their individual written accounts. Dudley 

Murphy, for example, recounted his perceptions of how the film was made: 

One day, when I was visiting Ezra Pound and talking about my work, he told me 

that a friend of his, Ferdinand [sic] Leger, wanted to make a movie. Also George Anteil 

[sic], the young protege of Stravinsky would like to make a movie. So he brought 

the three of us together and we decided to make one. I had met an attractive American 

divorcee who had a beautiful house in Paris and who was intrigued with me, 

Gladys Barbour. I told her of my plans and she lent me the money to buy a movie 

camera. 

The tools of a film-maker can be very simple. It is really a camera and film. So, having 

the camera, we only needed film, so Leger and I financed our film equally with 

the understanding that he would have the European rights of the finished film and I 

would have the American rights. We talked over ideas and I set out with my camera 

and the film, executing the ideas we had talked over and photographing things that 

stimulated my imagination around Paris. The premise on which we decided to make 

the film was based on a belief that surprise of image and rhythm would make a pure 

film without drawing on any of the other arts, such as writing, acting, painting. In 

other words, we were going to make a pure film. Our project was called Ballet Mecanique. 

I saw an old washerwoman climbing a flight of stone stairs. When she reached the 

top, she was tired and made a futile gesture. The scene in itself was banal, but by 

printing it 20 times and connecting the end of the scene with the beginning of her 

climb, it expressed the futility of life because she never got there. This scene in the 

editing followed a very intricate piece of shiny machinery, somehow correlated in 

movement and rhythm to that of hers. 

Another scene showed a tremendous piston, brilliant and shiny, plunging up and 

down in a very phallic movement. This was followed by the bulging stomach of 

Katherine [Hawley, Murphy's wife], who was now pregnant. 

I was intrigued to do something with the artificial legs that exhibit silk stockings and 

decided to do a stop motion dance with these legs around a clock. In bringing the 

legs to the studio, I drove through Paris in an open cab, with a leg over each 

shoulder, screaming. 10 

Dudley Murphy began his film career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 

the late 1910s under the tutelage of eminent Hollywood art director Cedric 

Gibbons. From there, he moved into art directing positions at assorted 

Hollywood studios. He made several poetically inspired films, starring his 

first and second wives, and attempted to distribute them commercially. 

With the help of an investor he then formed in the early 1920s a company 

called "Visual Symphonies," the goal of which was to identify a method to 

establish a frame-by-frame correspondence with a musical composition. 11 

The first film to emerge from these efforts was Danse macabre, a dance film 

choreographed to and therefore necessarily performed with Saint-Saens's 

music. Ballet Mecanique followed two years later; by this time, Murphy had 

31

accumulated considerable experience in shooting and editing him. Moreover, 

he considered the film to be an extension of his "visual symphonies." 12 

Murphy's account helps to explain how Leger, an artist without specific 

technical expertise in cinema, actually made a film. Yet the story of the 

project's origins conflicts with the account of another contributor, Man Ray: 

One day a tall young man appeared with his beautiful blond wife, and introduced 

himself as a cameraman from Hollywood. . . . Dudley Murphy said some very flattering 

things about my work and suggested that we do a him together. He had all the 

professional material, he said; with my ideas and his technique something new 

could be produced. We became quite friendly, spent a few days together discussing 

subject matter —I insisted on my Dada approach if we were to work together, to 

which he readily agreed . . . We took some walks together, I bringing my little 

camera and shooting a few scenes without any attempt at careful choice of people or 

setting, emphasizing the idea of improvisation. For the more tricky effects we 

planned indoors, Dudley set up an old Pathe camera on its tripod, the kind used in 

the comic shorts of the day. He showed me some complicated lenses that could 

deform and multiply images, which we'd use for portraits and close-ups. The camera 

remained standing in my studio for a few days, which annoyed me, as I never like to 

have my instruments in view . . . When Dudley appeared again, he announced that 

he was ready to go to work and would I purchase the him. I was surprised, thinking 

this was included with his technical equipment - that I was to supply the ideas only. 

He packed up his camera, took it over to the painter Leger's studio, explaining that 

he himself had no money and that the painter had agreed to finance the film. I made 

no objection, was glad to see the black box go, and relieved that I hadn't gotten involved 

in a co-operative enterprise. And that is how Dudley realized the Ballet Mecanique, 

which had a certain success, with Leger's name. 13 

The goal of the Dadaists, according to Man Ray, was to "try the spectators' 

patience." 14 And clearly that concept was incorporated into the final form of 

the film in the repetition of the washerwoman climbing the stairs and in the 

fracturing of repeated forms, such as that of his mistress's, Kiki of Montparnasse's, 

face toward the end of the film. 15 

Man Ray's description curiously is not corroborated in the other accounts 

of the making of Ballet Mecanique. While the film clearly bears the imprint 

of Leger's predominantly machine aesthetic in the first half of the 1920s, it 

also contains Man Ray's distinctive treatment of people in his photographs 

and other films. It is worth noting that in 1926, when Man Ray embarked on 

the making of Emak Bakia, he envisioned the film in terms similar to Leger's 

stated intentions for Ballet Mecanique: 

A series of fragments, a cine-poem with a certain optical sequence make up a whole 

that still remains a fragment. Just as one can much better appreciate the abstract 

beauty in a fragment of a classical work than in its entirety, so this film tries to indicate 

the essentials in its contemporary cinematography. 16 

Man Ray's involvement with Ballet Mecanique, nevertheless, was restricted 

to the shooting of imagery in the earliest phases of the project. 

Ezra Pound's role in the film's production was also limited, in this case to 

the introduction of the various makers of the film to one another. In a letter 

of July 1923 to his parents, Pound noted, "Dudley Murphy, whom I met in 

Venice in 1908, he being then eleven; turned up a few days ago ... he is try- 

32 

ing to make cinema into art." 17 By September, he stated "We [Pound and 

George Antheil] have a new Leger 'projet' waiting to be framed." 18 In November, 

Murphy wrote "I have practically completed the film with Ezra 

Pound and it looks quite interesting ... it is quite abstract-no people-only 

interesting forms." 19 It is clear by January 1924 that the three collaborators, 

Pound, Murphy, and Leger, were at work on the film; "Also work on vorticist 

film-experiment interesting, but probably Murphy hasn't brain 

enough to finish the job in my absence or without pushing." 20 

Pound had very much become, in the early 1920s, the key sponsor of aspiring 

composer Antheil. 21 While Pound himself was deeply interested in 

music and was in fact composing his own compositions and operas, he encouraged 

Antheil to embark on a performing tour of Europe, with Pound's 

mistress, pianist Olga Rudge. In 1923, Antheil gave a Paris concert with 

music so deliberately audacious that it provoked a major riot in Paris's Theatre 

des Champs-Elysees; the riot was caused intentionally and was filmed 

for use in Marcel LHerbier's 1923 film L'Inhumaine. The notoriety Antheil 

gained from this performance emboldened the composer to propose publicly 

a new project. Whether Leger's and Murphy's project predates this and 

whether it was Ezra Pound who encouraged Antheil to join in is unclear, 

given the lack of reliability characteristic in much of Antheil's writings; 

nevertheless, it is Antheil's account of Ballet Mecanique's origins that further 

confuses the issue of who made what and when: 

[In October 1923] I announced to the press that I was working on a new piece, to be 

called "Ballet Mecanique." I said that I also sought a motion-picture accompaniment 

to this piece. The newspapers and art magazines seemed only too happy to publish 

this request, which interested a young American cameraman, Dudley Murphy. He 

had really been flushed by Ezra Pound, who convinced him. 

Murphy said he would make the movie, providing the French painter Fernand Leger 

consented to collaborate. Leger did. 22 

Antheil's composition, which was scored for machines, bells, anvils, automobile 

horns, player pianos, and percussion and was converted into three 

Pleyela piano rolls, was not completed, however, until the autumn of 1925. 23 

Leger was eager to get it, writing to Antheil in April 1924, "Where is your 

composition, Ballet Mecanique? Let me know what is available to listen to 

. . ." 24 To Leger's dismay, the score was not completed by September 1924, 

when Leger first screened the film publicly at the Internationale Ausstellung 

fur Theatertechnik organized by Frederick Kiesler. Leger was so confident 

that Antheil's music would be finished and successfully merged with the film 

that the title card on the print screened in Vienna referred to the synchronized 

score. Its first known performance was, like most of its subsequent 

performances, independent of the film's screening; by this time, several 

different prints of the film were already in distribution. Leger's reaction to 

the music was, according to Antheil, wildly enthusiastic: 

• • . I hear that Leger has been simply crazy since he heard the Ballet Mecanique several 

days ago. He heard it for the first time, for I've been very busy with my opera and 

couldn't go to him. So we arranged a performance of the music several days ago, and 

after it was over he simply embraced me. Leger expected a great deal, but he said it 

was beyond his expectations and that it was as right as right can be. 25 

33

Figure 2 

In several letters to both Antheil and Ezra Pound, Leger refers to an additional 

collaborator on Ballet Mecamque, Charles Delacommune. 26 Delacommune's 

company, Synchro-Cine, is credited by the use of its logo, at the end 

of The Museum of Modern Art's print of the film, which Leger gave to the 

museum in 1935. It is clear that Leger and Murphy knew and worked with 

Delacommune at the time of the film's making in 1923-24 because Leger acknowledged 

his role in his article on the film published in Little Review in 

1924. 27 At the time, Delacommune founded a company called Synchronisme 

cinematique (known as Synchro-Cine after 1928), which served as an umbrella 

organization for Delacommune's research into synchronization. One 

of the first films he "synchronized," through the use of punched musical 

scores aligned to sprocket holes in nitrate films, was Murphy's La Valse de 

Mephisto. Murphy continued to employ him on Ballet Mecamque, paying 

him 300 francs on January 18, 1924 for his services on the film, 28 and Leger 

entrusted the distribution of his prints to him in the late twenties and early 

thirties. 

Leger was so engrossed in Delacommune's method of synchronization, 

which Delacommune had patented in 1922 and 1923, as well as the "cinepupitre," 

the mechanical apparatus he invented, that he sketched the 

machinery to be used on back of notes made in relation to Ballet Mecanique 

(Fig. 2). 29 On the front of these pages, Leger made specific notes on ideas he 

34 

Figure 3 

had, perhaps with Murphy and/or the other collaborators, on the film's imagery. 

30 He proposed dividing the screen into nine equal sections, an idea 

that anticipated Gance's use of this device in the opening sequences of his 

1927 film Napoleon. He envisioned figures engulfed by mechanical objects, 

integrated into an array of constructed objects, typewriters, pendulums. The 

alternation of black on white and white on black was to be explored. Advertising 

images were to be used frequently. Above all, contrasts were intended 

to reign, a way of suggesting equivalences through the use of quick-fire juxtaposition. 

In addition to individual images Leger suggested for inclusion in the film, 

he also fused a previously unrealized film project into Ballet Mecanique. The 

painter was a passionate fan of the work of Charlie Chaplin, having been 

first introduced to Chaplin's films during the First World War by the poet 

Guillaume Apollinaire. 31 Leger was fascinated by Chaplin's control over his 

audience and, by extension, the potential of cinema to affect and manipulate 

35

audience response. 32 He illustrated an edition of Ivan Golfs book, Die Chaplinade 

(1920) and shortly thereafter began work on a scenario for an animated 

him, Chariot Cubiste. Leger's scenario was extremely detailed, chronicling 

every moment in a day in the life in Paris of Chariot, who was constructed 

as a marionette in relief (Fig. 3). At least five lengthy drafts of the 

scenario were penned by Leger; however, the film appears never to have 

been made, probably due to the lack of financial backing. 33 

Leger made use of the marionette and the idea of a disintegrating/reconstituted 

Chariot at the begining and end of Ballet Mecanique. He is almost 

always juxtaposed in his jerky choreography with the repetitive movements 

of the woman (Katherine Hawley Murphy) seen at the beginning of the film 

on the swing and seen later sniffing flowers in a garden (Fig. 4). But between 

Leger's involvement with his Chariot Cubiste project and the undertaking of 

Ballet Mecanique, his work on another film, this time for filmmaker Marcel 

L'Herbier, intervened and redirected Leger's attention toward the potential 

of mechanical imagery in his films. For L'Herbier's 1923 L'Inhumaine, Leger 

created the sets for the film's climactic laboratory scene (Fig. 5). Machinery 

in this silent film suggested, presumably with the help of a live orchestral accompaniment, 

whirring, buzzing, clanging, and pumping, thereby enhancing 

the sensory experience for the viewer. Leger incorporated the lessons 

from that film into the images he chose for Ballet Mecanique: swinging 

Christmas ornaments and saucepan covers (Fig. 6), incessantly pumping 

pistons, whirling gelatin molds, gyrating pieces of corrugated sheet metal. It 

36 

Figure 5 

appears that Léger instructed Murphy to shoot many of these images, along 

with other images Murphy already had shot with Man Ray or, in several in 

stances, chosen with Pound or on his own; many of the refracted and frac- 

37

Figure 6 

tured images, such as Kiki's face (Fig. 7), the owl, or the corrugated sheet 

metal resulted from Pound's ideas on film inspired by his experience with 

the vortographs of Alvin Langdon Coburn and from Man Ray's rayogram experiments. 

34 

When the actual fusion of the images into a final film took place, however, 

it was Leger's evolving vision that dominated that of Pound, Man Ray, and 

Murphy. While his machine aesthetic dominated much of the imagery finally 

selected when Leger and Murphy sat down at the editing table, the 

rapid montage that Leger had learned by watching Abel Gance dominated 

his editing style. He reflected later that the "editing gave me a lot of trouble. 

There are long sequences of repeated movements that had to be cut. I had to 

watch the smallest details very carefully because of the repetition of 

images." The minute and extensive frame by frame cutting that occurred is 

visible on the nitrate print of the first known version of the film, premiered 

at the Internationale Ausstellung fur Theatertechnik in Vienna and preserved 

by Frederick Kiesler. 35 

Leger declared: 

The particular interest of the film is centered upon the importance which we give to 

the 'fixed image,' to its arithmetical, automatic projection, slowed down or accelerated—additional, 

likeness. 

No scenario-Reactions of rhythmic images, that is all. 

38 

Figure 7 

Two coefficients of interest upon which the film is constructed: 

The variation of the speeds of projection: 

The rhythm of these speeds. 

We persist up to the point when the eye and spirit of the spectator will no longer accept. 

We drain out of it every bit of its value as a spectacle up to the moment when it 

becomes insupportable. 36 

Leger's fascination with the mechanical aspects of movement were coupled 

with his curiosity about the audience's response to it. His description of the 

editing of the washerwoman climbing the stairs, also recalled by Murphy, 

underscores his desire to challenge the spectator: 

... in "The Woman Climbing the Stairs," I wanted to amaze the audience first, then 

make them uneasy, and then push the adventure to the point of exasperation. In 

order to "time" it properly, I got together a group of workers and people in the neighborhood, 

and I studied the effect that was produced on them. In eight hours I learned 

what I wanted to know. Nearly all of them reacted at about the same time. 37 

The wish to challenge the spectator and to juxtapose images, speeds, and 

rhythms in order to establish equivalences characterize Leger's approach to 

his painting. In his work, he sought to apply a "law of plastic contrasts," one 

that allowed him to combine different forms: flat vs. modeled surfaces, fig- 

39

Figure 8 

ures vs. flat building facades, volumes of smoke vs. active architectural surfaces, 

pure, flat vs. gray, modulated tones. 38 Leger believed we "live in a 

state of frequent contrasts" and that the role of art was to be of its time. 39 He 

also aspired to "conquer his public": 

We live surrounded by beautiful objects that are slowly being revealed and perceived 

by man; they are occupying an increasingly important place around us, in our interior 

and exterior life. 

40 

Figure 9 

Cultivate this possibility, release it, direct it, extend its consequences. 40 

Increasingly, however, the imagery which Leger chose to present to his public 

changed. Whereas in 1923 Leger's absorption was with observed life in 

me machine-dominated modern era in paintings such as Le grand rémorqueur, 

by 1924 he returned to more abstract Elements mécaniques (Fig. 8) a 

theme he had previously pursued in the late 1910s. The imagery became the 

machine, then the machine closeup, then the closeup of everyday life. By 

41

1926, Leger had immersed himself almost completely in making drawings 

and paintings of closeup imagery (Fig. 9). 

What intervened was Ballet Mecanique. The effect of a hat alternating with 

legs, with ornaments, with shoes, triangles, alternating with circles, a pearl 

necklace alternating with the words "un collier des perles," single zeros alternating 

with multiple zeros-all of these opened up new avenues of exploration 

for Leger. By narrowing his vision, he could focus on the varied meanings 

and associations of objects. In painting, his intentions approached those 

of Rene Magritte and Max Ernst. Certainly Leger had not become a Surrealist; 

indeed he went to great pains to distance himself from the group. He 

had not completely abandoned Purism either, still portraying objects from 

daily life that belonged to the machine age as much of his imagery. But Ballet 

Mecanique, as a collaborative product by artists from various media, allowed 

Leger to see the potential of his ideas in another medium, as well as helped 

to redirect the values he endeavored to explore in his own favored medium 

of painting. 

Notes 

1. This is the case in the most recent major monographs devoted to Leger: 

Christopher Green, Leger and the Avant-Garde (New Haven and London: Yale University 

Press, 1976), and Peter de Francia, Fernand Leger (New Haven and London: Yale 

University Press, 1984). 

2. Georges Sadoul referred to the film in an article written after Leger's death in 

1955; see Georges Sadoul, "Fernand Leger ou la cineplastique," Cinema 59.35 (April 

1959:81), and Bulletin de I'ACA 4 (January-February 1959): 7. 

All known footage for Ballet de couleurs belonged to Nadia Leger until her death in 

1982 and presumably is part of the Leger estate. Nadia Leger and Georges Bauquier 

were collaborating with Mary Meerson, formerly of the Cinematheque francaise, 

Paris, to complete this film, left unfinished at Leger's death, and present it in the early 

1980s. To my knowledge, the film has never been publicly screened. Mary Meerson, 

in conversation with the author, Paris, November 1982 and Jean Mitry, in conversation 

with the author, Neuilly, April 1983. 

3. In this context I will not address the relationship of Ballet Mecanique and contemporary 

theorists' writings on film. In doing so, I have concluded that this context does 

not help to illuminate the making and meaning of the film and therefore disagree with 

Richard Brender, who, in a recent article devoted to Leger's cinema, assessed the film 

by evaluating it against these theorists' expectations. See Richard Brender, "Functions 

of Film: Leger's Cinema on Paper and on Cellulose, 1913-25," Cinema Journal 24.1 

(Fall 1984): 41-63. 

4. Fernand Leger, "A Critical Essay on the Plastic Quality of Abel Gance's Film The 

Wheel," Comoedia (1922), translated in Fernand Leger, Functions of Painting, translated 

by Alexandra Anderson, edited by Edward F. Fry (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 

pp. 20-21. 

5. See the extensive correspondence from Blaise Cendrars to Abel Gance on a variety 

of topics related to the making of La Roue (Abel Gance archives, Centre national 

de cinematographic, Paris, and the Abel Gance papers, Cinematheque francaise, 

Paris). 

42 

6. Leger already knew Epstein, having published his "La couleur dans la vie (Fragment 

dune etude sur les valeurs plastiques nouvelles)" in Epstein's journal Promenoir 

5 (1921): 66-67. 

7. Gance commissioned articles from Jean Epstein, Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Thevenet, 

and Leger for various newspapers. See Abel Gance, "Dennitif La Roue," unpublished 

manuscript, 1 p. (Abel Gance papers, Cinematheque francaise, Paris). 

8. Letter from Fernand Leger to Abel Gance, 11 November 1922 (Abel Gance papers, 

Cinematheque francaise, Paris). 

9. Ibid. 

10. Dudley Murphy, "Murphy by Murphy," unpublished autobiographical manuscript, 

January 1966 (Erin Murphy O'Hara, Malibu, California). The image of 

Katherine's bulging pregnant stomach is not present in any of the known versions of 

Ballet Mecanique. However, according to Dudley Murphy's son, the filmmaker 

Michael Murphy, Murphy possessed a print, one he carried with him from Paris to 

the United States in 1926 and screened in New York theatres in that year, which contained 

this and other nude, particularly suggestive images. It appears that all extant 

copies, which appear to have been distributed only by Leger and as early as 1924, had 

these passages deleted. Interview with Michael Murphy and the author, Malibu, 

August 1982. 

11. "'Visual Symphonies' Find Recognition; New Short Subjects Replace Prologues," 

Moving Picture World (January 28, 1922): 387. 

12. Letter from Dudley Murphy to Herman Dudley Murphy, July 20, 1924 (Poco 

Murphy, Sea Cliff, New York). 

13. Man Ray, Self Portrait (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1963), 

pp. 266-267. It is worth noting that Man Ray claimed Leger financed the film, while 

Dudley Murphy asserted that Ezra Pound did; see letter from Dudley Murphy to Herman 

Dudley Murphy, November 19, 1923 (Poco Murphy, Sea Cliff, New York). 

14. Ibid., p. 260. 

15. Man Ray in fact published and signed a number of these images as independent 

prints; see, for example, Kiki ofMontparnasse (1924), in: Man Ray, Photographe (Paris: 

Musee national d'art moderne, Centre national dart et de culture Georges Pompidou, 

1982), p. 104, pi. 107. Other images are currently preserved in glass negatives in the 

Man Ray studio in Paris. 

16. Frank Stauffacher, Art in Cinema (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 

1947), p. 53. 

17. Letter from Ezra Pound to his parents, July 1923 (Ezra Pound Archives, Beinecke 

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut). 

18. Letter from Ezra Pound to his parents, 12 September 1923 (Ezra Pound Archives, 

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut). 

19. Letter from Dudley Murphy to Carlene Murphy Samoileff, November 16, 1923 

(Poco Murphy, Sea Cliff, New York). 

20. Letter from Ezra Pound to his parents, 29 January 1924 (Ezra Pound Archives, 

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut). 

I am grateful to Archibald Henderson III for suggesting that I consult these letters. 

21. On the relationship between Antheil and Pound and especially on Pound's interest 

in music, see Archibald Henderson III, "Pound and Music: The Paris and Early Rapallo 

Years," Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1983. 

43

22. George Antheil, Bad Boy of Music (New York: Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 

Doran and Company, Inc., 1945), pp. 134-135. 

23. The three piano rolls, recorded in Paris in 1925, are currently in the collection of 

the Archives of the History of Art, Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, 

Santa Monica, California. 

24. Letter from Leger to George Antheil, dated April 1924 (Ezra Pound Archives, Beinecke 


25. Letter to Ezra Pound from George Antheil, n.d. (1925), (Ezra Pound Archives, Beinecke 


26. See, for example, letters from Leger to Ezra Pound, dated 22 April, 23 November, 

and 14 December 1932 (Ezra Pound Archives, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut), and Leger to George Antheil, February 

5, 1933 (George Antheil Archives, El Cerrito, California). 

27. Fernand Leger, "Film by Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy, Musical Synchronism 

by George Antheil," Little Review (Autumn-Winter 1924-1925) :44. 

28. Katherine Hawley Murphy's datebook for 1924 (Poco Murphy, Sea Cliff, New 

York), page for January 18, documents this payment. 

29. These notes were first published by Standish D. Lawder in his pioneering study, 

The Cubist Cinema (New York: New York University Press, 1975). Pierre Alechinsky 

purchased the notes on the advice of film historian Lotte Eisner, who recognized that 

they were notes for Leger's film. Previously they were in the possession of Robert 

Hessens, the Belgian filmmaker, who was making a short film on Leger analogous (in 

Leger's view) to personal manuscripts and notes in preparation; see letter from Leger 

to Robert Hessens, n.d. (1950s), (Pierre Alechinsky, Bougival, France). 

30. Murphy's own notes list white gloved hands moving in black spaces, nude bodies 

writhing in blackness, water falling through a triangle, a wheel approaching the 

camera, and numerous stunts. Whether these were Murphy's or Leger's ideas is unclear; 

the pronounced contrasts among the images listed suggest that these were 

mainly Leger's thoughts. Dudley Murphy, "Page of notes," Unpublished MS., 1 p. 

(Poco Murphy, Sea Cliff, New York). 

31. Leger was so taken by Chaplin that he devoted an admiring article to him, describing 

his first impressions of the filmmaker/actor; see Leger, "Chariot Cubiste," unpublished 

MS., 7 pp. (Fernand Leger Archives, formerly Musee national Fernand 

Leger, Biot) and Leger, "Temoignage," Les Chroniques dujour (special issue devoted to 

Chaplin) 73 (December 15-31, 1926). 

Leger also referred to Chaplin's "mechanical" possibilities in his "L'avenir du 

cinema," Unpublished MS., n.d. (1923), 1 p. (Fernand Leger Archives, formerly Musee 

national Fernand Leger, Biot). 

32. Leger considered both Chaplin and Buster Keaton's work to have this ability; see 

Leger, "Sur le cinema," Unpublished MS., 1 p. (Fernand Leger Archives, formerly 

Musee national Fernand Leger, Biot. 

33. For the five scenario manuscripts, see the unpublished documents in the Fernand 

Leger Archives, formerly Musee national Fernand Leger, Biot. 

Leger alluded to his difficulties in obtaining this backing in his letter to Jean Epstein, 

March 2, 1923 (Marie Epstein, Paris). 

34. See Lawder, p. 140, 142. 

44 

35. This print, found in 1976 by Lillian Kiesler, the artist's widow, is presently in the 

collection of Anthology Film Archives, New York. Its condition and important 

provenance and screening history makes it the definitive version of the film, to be 

used in evaluating the film's relationship to its score. All published studies of Ballet 

Mecanique to date have been based on the Museum of Modern Art's print of the film, 

given by Leger to the museum at the time of his retrospective in 1935. A considerable 

amount of material has been edited out of MOMA's version. 

36. Fernand Leger, "Film by Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy, Musical Synchronism 

by George Antheil," Little Review (Autumn-Winter 1924-25): 42-44. 

37. Fernand Leger, "Ballet Mecanique," (listed as c. 1924, but most certainly not written 

before 1926), printed in: Fernand Leger, Functions of Painting, p. 51. 

38. Fernand Leger, "Notes on the Mechanical Element," 1923, published in Functions 

of Painting, p. 29. 

39. Ibid., p. 30. 

40. Fernand Leger, "The Spectacle: Light, Color, Moving Image, Object-Spectacle," 

Bulletin de I'Effort Moderne, 1924, reprinted in: Functions of Painting, p. 44-45. 

List of Illustrations 

1. Fernand Leger, Poster Design for Abel Gance's La Roue, c. 1922. Gouache. Musee 

National Fernand Leger, Biot, France. Photo: Studio Jacques Mer, Antibes. 

2. Fernand Leger, Notes for Ballet Mecanique, c. 1923-24. Pen and ink. Collection 

Pierre Alechinsky, Bougival, France. 

3. Fernand Leger, Chariot Cubiste, c. 1922. Wood Relief. Galerie Jan Krugier, 

Geneva and New York. 

4. Katherine Hawley Murphy swinging, still from Ballet Mecanique, 1924. Photo: 

British Film Institute, London. 

5. Laboratory set from Marcel L'Herbier's film, L'Inhumaine, 1923. Photo: British 

Film Institute, London. 

6. Still from Ballet Mecanique, 1924. Photo: British Film Institute, London. 

7. Still from Ballet Mecanique, 1924. Photo: British Film Institute, London. 

8. Fernand Leger, Elements mecanimes sur fond rouge, 1924. Oil on canvas. Musee 

National Fernand Leger, Biot. Photo: Studio Jacques Mer, Antibes. 

9. Fernand Leger, Composition on Blue Background, 1928. Oil on canvas. 16Vs x 13 in. 

Private Collection. 

45

Sandy FLITTERMAN-LEWIS: Dulac in Context: French Film Production 

in the Twenties. In: Dies.: To Desire Differently. Feminism and the French 

Cinema. Univ. of Illinois Press 1990, S. 78-97. [R] 

Sandy FLITTERMAN-LEWIS: From Fantasy to Structure of the Fantasm: 

The Smiling Mme Beudet and The Seashell and the Clergyman. In: Dies.: 

To Desire Differently. Feminism and the French Cinema. Univ. of Illinois 

Press 1990, S. 98-140.

THREE 

Dulac in Context: 

French Film Production in the Twenties 

IN ORDER TO APPRECIATE the specifically feminist import of Germaine 

Dulac's work—to understand what distinguishes that work from the 

filmmaking of her contemporaries—it is useful to look at the economic 

and aesthetic contexts of French film production in the twenties. 

French filmmaking of that period is traced with the ambiguous and 

contradictory legacy of both its own pioneers and the richly innovative 

work of the Americans. In the search for "cinematic specificity" that 

preoccupied not only Dulac, but the other major directors (Louis 

Delluc, Jean Epstein, Marcel L'Herbier, and Abel Gance) as well, there 

is a simultaneous rejection of the theatrical and literary emphases of 

the traditional commercial cinema along with an appreciation of both 

the technical achievements and the purely visual conception of this 

same cinema. Out of this contradiction emerged some of the first 

attempts to subvert what came to be called the dominant "Hollywood 

model" and to develop the systematic alternatives associated with this 

first cinematic avant-garde. 

French filmmakers found themselves in an ambivalent situation 

regarding the hegemony of American production during the twenties. 

On the one hand, they resented the massive importation of American 

films that dominated the market and absorbed the film-viewing audi 

ence. Before World War I, the French film industry had led the world 

in film production; after the war, which concurrently saw the industry's 

collapse, film production suffered from the diversion of capital to the 

reconstructed areas of northern France. During the war the two major 

French film companies, Pathe and Gaumont, which also controlled the 

Dulac in Context / 79 

exhibition circuits, started projecting great numbers of American films 

in order to draw audiences. The result was that by 1924, 85 percent 

of the feature-length films shown in France were American-made.1 

At the same time, French filmmakers were fascinated by the techni 

cal innovations and artistic achievements of the American cinema. 

Notably, Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film The Cheat, shown in France in 

late summer of 1916, was seen as something of a cinematic revelation: 

Dulac said simply, "The Cheat represents the beginning of human 

feelings in the cinema." 2 

The films of D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince, 

actors like Pearl White, Douglas Fairbanks, and Sessue Hayakawa, and 

the comedies of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Mack Sennett 

were received enthusiastically. It was American films that marked (he 

transition from enthusiastic viewing to actual filmmaking, and in a 

short time these films provided emerging filmmakers not only with 

inspiration, but also with cinematic models to analyze and emulate. 3 

Paradoxically, the attention paid to the American cinema led French 

filmmakers toward a national cinema grounded in experimentation, 

one that turned away from the commercial imperatives of the Holly 

wood product toward new areas of cinematic expressivity and specifi 

cally filmic construction. In addition, attempts to challenge the domi 

nant cinema were characterized by a situation of double rupture in 

relation to commercial cinema in France. At the time, the so-called 

"mainstream" cinema consisted of filmmakers like Louis Feuillade and 

Henri Pouctal, among others, whose popular serials concentrated on 

an economy of action and narrative motivation, leaving little room 

for stylistic elaboration or technical virtuosity. In very general terms, 

filmmakers like Gance and L'Herbier attempted to create a quality 

French art cinema within the context of this popular commercial 

cinema by utilizing influences from literature, painting, and music in 

films with wide popular appeal. At the same time, Dulac, along with 

Delluc and Epstein, concerned herself with defining the essence of 

cinema, concentrating on the plastic rhythms of montage. It is in this 

sense that all five of these filmmakers have been called the First Avant- 

Garde, particularly when their work is seen in relation to the films of 

the Dadaists and the Surrealists (René Clair and Luis Bunuel, for 

example), as well as to films by those filmmakers interested in more 

purely formal or graphic concerns, such as Hans Richter, Vicking 

Eggeling, and Henri Chomette. 

In his highly interesting, if idiosyncratic history of the French cinematic 

avant-garde, En marge du cinema francais, 4 

Jacques B. Brunius 

begins his discussion with a clarification of terminology. Brunius feels 

that a general confusion of the terms experimental, abstract, pure, total

80 / To Desire Differently 

(integral), and avant-garde has allowed them to be used interchangeably 

while they all describe very particular—if in some sense similar— 

approaches to the cinema. All of these types of production, of course, 

are seen in a position of marginality in relation to the dominant com 

mercial cinema. 

Experimental cinema, a term used particularly in the United States 

and England, refers to everything outside of ordinary commercial 

production and is characterized by an orientation toward research and 

experimentation. Brunius points out that once this kind of cinematic 

research is successful, it runs the risk of becoming standard fare, 

stereotyped and imitated by those who lack the spirit of exploration. 

He also specifies that this type of experimentation is primarily for 

those interested in it for the sake of experiment. On the other hand, 

pure cinema emphasizes the rhythmic possibilities of the cinema, aban 

doning representational forms, actors, and decors for the pure play 

of light and movement. Henri Chomette's Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse 

(which worked with moving light reflected on a crystal, and images of 

the Metro and Bateau-Mouches in negative and accelerated motion) 

and Cinq minutes de cinéma pur are cited as examples. It is this type of 

filmmaking that Dulac's later "symphonic poems" represent as well. 

Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale and Ruttmann's Les Quatre études exem 

plify the work of abstract cinema by taking the interest in nonrepresen- 

tation even farther in the realm of graphics. 

Brunius is harshest on the loose usage of the term avant-garde, which 

he dismisses as so many "ill-bred pedants" who populate "avant-garde 

boutiques." For him, the avant-garde must abandon a fascination with 

gratuitous novelty and the style of the day in order to seek new meth 

ods for expressing truly original thoughts. In this—almost in spite of 

himself—he is quite close to Dulac's formulation in her 1932 article 

"Le Cinéma d'avant-garde." She sees the term avant-garde as applying 

to any film that strives to "renew the expressive possibilities of image 

and sound, breaking with established tradition in order to search out, 

in the domain which is strictly visual and auditory, new emotional 

chords." 5 

For Dulac then, the avant-garde cinema does not simply 

attempt to appeal to large audiences through clever artificial tricks 

and devices, for, in the double movement characteristic of her think 

ing, this cinema is at once profoundly personal (internal) and signifi 

cantly social (external). It is, in her words, both more egotistical and 

more altruistic than films of superficial innovation: "Egotistical because 

it is the personal manifestation of a pure thought; altruistic because it 

is only interested in progress."6 Beneath the sometimes inaccessible 

surface of a truly avant-garde film are the seeds of discoveries that 


suggest the cinematic form of the future. It is in this sense that the 

avant-garde both critiques the present and anticipates the future. As 

such, avant-garde cinema, in Dulac's formulation, becomes undeniably 

political in its suggestion of new cinematic forms to describe a new 

social reality. The feminist implications of this kind of thinking are 

far-reaching, for in positing alternative structures of seeing, Dulac 

implies the necessity of social transformation as well. Her "new emo 

tional chords," then, can be understood as another discourse of desire, 

a way of conceptualizing "otherwise," for it is thus at the level of 

cinematic language that true social change can be conceived. 

Regardless of the shades of difference in the terminology used to 

describe various aspects of the cinematic avant-garde, the intellectual 

and artistic ferment of France in the twenties created a situation in 

which polemics about film and its modernist context thrived. This 

produced Impressionist. Dadaist, Cubist, and Surrealist experiments, 

all of which conceived of film as an art whose specific nature was visual, 

and all of which took various positions in relation to the narrative, 

fictional component of the art. This led to an emphasis on the visual 

image, on mise-en-scéne, on montage, and on technical devices of 

lighting and camerawork as opposed to what was conceived of as the 

narrative linearity of the literary or theatrical commercial cinema. The 

cinematic avant-garde thus self-consciously defined itself in opposition 

to mainstream narrative cinema. 

It is often the case that the formation of an art cinema (that is, film 

production-distribution-exhibition circuits on the margins of domi 

nant commercial cinema, usually characterized by a high degree of 

experimentation, and often surrounded by polemics on the specific 

nature of the medium) coincides with the development of national 

cinemas. Traditionally, this convergence has come about in terms of 

a mutual response to the domination of domestic markets by foreign— 

primarily American—films. This is particularly true of French cinema 

of the twenties, whose rallying cry, as has already been noted, crystal 

lized on the masthead of Delluc's journal Cinéa: "The French cinema 

must be cinema; the French cinema must be French." In very general 

terms, French film production of the twenties can be identified by an 

emphasis on visual style (which can be seen to highlight a personal 

artistic vision in reaction to the more homogenized institutional specta 

cle), an exploration of subjective or internal elements of character 

elaboration (as opposed to the emphasis on dramatic action), and a 

concern with the spectator-screen relationship conceived in philosoph 

ical or aesthetic terms (as opposed to a spectator-screen relationship 

understood simply in terms of consumption). Thus, although none of


these characteristics might be recognized as specifically nationalistic, a 

field of artistic endeavor generated in opposition to the foreign model 

unites both national and artistic claims of this cinema. 

The First Avant-Garde thus functioned in the maimer of any politi 

cal opposition force—it assumed a role of critical negation. Activity 

crystallized around three major areas of endeavor: the creation of a 

field of critical inquiry and appraisal through the development of film 

criticism in magazines and specialized journals; the establishment of 

widespread viewing availability and the creation of an audience inter 

ested in cinematic experimentation through the founding of art the 

aters, ciné-clubs, and noncommercial distribution circuits; and the 

development of a cinematic avant-garde through increased filmmak 

ing and theoretical activity, this often accompanied by researches in 

style and technique and by open forums for the theoretical elaboration 

of these researches. 

Film Journals 

Although there were many industry trade journals throughout the 

twenties, the period saw the emergence of a new kind of film journal 

in France, one geared to nonprofessional audiences and committed to 

the exploration and elaboration of the cinema's artistic possibilities. 

Dulac, who along with Ricciotto Canudo, Jean Tedesco, and Louis 

Delluc, was a major figure in the film journal movement, appraised 

such critical activity: "In the current state of cinematography, the work 

of criticism, analysis, and polemical exchange has as much productive 

value as the films themselves. I would even go so far as to say they 

have more value. . . . They direct the cinema toward a specific goal, 

revealing its ideal form, an image of its perfection. ..."7 

With a few important exceptions, such as Ricciotto Canudo's "Manifesto 

des sept arts," published in Paris in March of 1911, 8 

Abel Gance's 

"Qu'est-ce que le cinématographe? Un sixième art," appearing in the 

trade magazine Ciné-journal in 1912,9 film reviews by Maurice Raynal 

in the avant-garde monthly Les Soirées de Paris, and a few enthusiastic 

commentaries on the cinema by Guillaume Apollinaire, there was 

relatively little of what could be called actual film criticism before 

World War I. However, slowly during the course of the war, and then 

finally at its end, the situation changed quite radically. A body of "film 

criticism" in the form of columns in daily newspapers (for example, 

L'Oeuvre, Le Journal, Paris-Midi, L'Intransigeant) or articles written by 

such figures in the literary world as Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise 

Cendrars, Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon, Max Jacob, Colette, Jean 


Cocteau, and Philippe Soupault began to develop. At the same time, 

specialized journals emerged that were concerned with theoretical and 

aesthetic issues. 

The weekly journal Le Film, founded in February of 1914 by its 

publisher Henri Diamant-Berger, was the first large magazine devoted 

entirely to the cinema. When Louis Delluc was appointed as editor-inchief 

in 1917, he began the work of establishing an indigenous French 

film culture, informing his articles on the cinema with appraisals of its 

aesthetic potential, encouraging polemics around the specific nature 

and possibilities of the medium, and supporting the work of young 

filmmakers like Dulac, Gance, and L'Herbier. Delluc changed the 

format of the magazine and began soliciting articles from scriptwriters 

and directors (Dulac, Gance, and L'Herbier all had articles in Le Film) 

along with the work of artists and poets. Apollinaire's "Avant le cinema," 

as well as Aragon's first published poem, "Chariot sentimental," 

and his seminal article asserting that film was the art of modern life, 

"Du Decor," all appeared in Le Film. 

The same ambivalent relation toward American film that characterized 

the general cultural scene in France—wild enthusiasm tempered 

by resistance to its dominance—was present in Le Film. Delluc's first 

piece for Le Film was an enthusiastic review of Thomas lnce's 1916 

film Home, which contained references to all of Ince's other films seen 

in France, along with William S. Hart's The Aryan. What impressed 

Delluc most about the American films was their sense of vitality, naturalness, 

and spontaneity. Next to the stiffness of acting and gesture of 

the contemporary Film d'Art productions, for example, American 

films virtually radiated with life, generating a surplus of realism when 

placed against the stale artificiality of the commercial French product. 

At the same time, Le Film was militantly nationalistic, encouraging 

the work of new French filmmakers in the face of what was recognized 

as the massive threat of foreign competition. In the editorial commentary 

that prefaced an article by Dulac entitled "Mise en scène,"10elluc 

notes that in France there are a handful of new directors whose work 

is "animated with a new vitality," concluding, in reference to Dulac's 

Ames de fous, that "we can expect quite a bit from French talents, when 

they are French in this way." In the article itself Dulac argues that 

the cinema can take its place among "the superior forms of artistic 

expression" once it is seen on its own terms and not as a poor relation 

of the theater. Exclaiming "Oh! The Americans have shaken us up a 

bit!" she confidently predicts, "When we've understood that the cinema 

is an artform, a French artform, . . . which can expand and affirm 

the great reputation of our literature in the world, reestablish the


uncontested superiority of our taste, and defend our culture, we'll have 

achieved our real goal." Although perhaps a little excessive in its 

chauvinism, Dulac's formulation is nonetheless significant of the association 

of aesthetics and nationalism characteristic of film activity of 

the time. 

In 1920, Delluc and another young film critic, Léon Moussinac, 

started Le Journal du ciné-club as an organ of information serving the 

burgeoning French film culture. In addition to listings, film reviews, 

and articles on other forms of popular entertainment such as vaudeville 

and the music hall, it contained historical and biographical information, 

as well as articles by film stars and directors. Also during this 

time (starting in 1918) Delluc wrote film criticism for the daily Paris- 

Midi. 

In May of 1921, Delluc founded Cinéa (he had left Le Journal du 

ciné-club after sixteen issues), a major weekly film journal that he edited 

until December 1922. It was on the masthead of issue number 45 

(March 17, 1922) that Delluc placed his famous slogan calling for 

national and cinematic specificity. In the interests of extending theoretical 

and aesthetic debate around French film by removing it from its 

more commercial context and reinforcing the artistic and intellectual 

components of film writing, Delluc included articles and interviews 

with those whom he felt were pointing the way for French cinema of 

the future—actors Jacque Catelain, Ivan Mosjoukine, Eve Francis, 

and of course the filmmakers Dulac, Gance, L'Herbier, and Epstein. 

Attention was also paid to avant-garde activities in the other arts in 

France in the form of articles discussing such things as Cocteau's Les 

Mariés de la Tour Eiffel and the Ballet Suédois production of Canudo's 

Skating Rink. 

While Ciné-pour-tous (1919) came out bimonthly, Cinémagazine (begun 

in 1921) published complete transcripts of lectures given at the 

specialized theaters and ciné-clubs (in particular, Germaine Dulac's 

series of talks around The Smiling Mme Beudet, and her "workshops" 

illustrated with short fragments from individual films), and also conducted 

polls and inquiries with filmmakers and critics. In November 

1923, Cinéa and Ciné-pour-tous merged to form a new bimonthly film 

journal under the editorship of Jean Tedesco. Cinéa-Ciné-pour-tous 

then carried the banner of sophisticated and intellectual film studies 

through the remainder of the twenties, It aimed at a more cultured 

audience than either of its predecessors, focusing on such aesthetic 

debates as the question of a cinematic avant-garde, the issues surrounding 

the adequacy of the musical analogy and the necessity of 

intertitles, and the polemic raised by the notion of "pure cinema." This 


latter raged in a series of articles throughout 192(5, which included 

such titles as Pierre Porte's "Une sensation nouvelle" (number 64, July 

1) and "Le Cinéma, art objectif ou subjectif?" (number 69, September 

15), Henri Fescourt and Jean-Louis Bouquet's "Sensations ou sentiments?" 

(number 66, July 31), Jacques Brunius' "Musique ou cinéma?" 

(number 68, September 1), Henri Chomette's "Cinéma pur, art naissant," 

and Paul Ramain's "A La Recherche de l'émotion vraie" (both 

number 71, October 15). It was a debate that carried over into the 

single issue of Dulac'sjournal Schémas, where many of the same authors 

contributed articles that further elaborated their positions. 

Cinéa-Ciné-pour-tous also included articles by the French filmmakers 

whom Delluc had championed at the outset of their careers, now firmly 

established as the innovators of the French cinematic avant-garde. 

Several important texts of Impressionist film theory by its practitioners 

thus appeared in this journal, among them: Dulac's "Le Cinéma, art 

des nuances spirituelles" (number 28, January 1, 1925), Gance's "Le 

Cinéma, c'est la musique de la lumière" (number 3, December 15, 

1923), Epstein's "Pour une avant-garde nouvelle" (number 29, January 

15, 1925) and "L'Objectif lui-même" (number 53, January 15, 1926), 

and two minor articles by L'Herbier. In an interview some forty years 

after this period, L'Herbier commented on the crucial nature of the 

activity of critical writing undertaken by these filmmakers: "Dulac, 

Epstein, Delluc, myself—we did not at all share the same aesthetic 

positions. But there was a point of communion between us: the search 

for that famous 'specificity.' On that point we all agreed, without any 

possible dissent. Another point in common was the fact that we all 

wrote a great deal, in magazines and journals, what we thought about 

the cinema: we needed to clarify, on paper, the ways in which we 

conceived cinematic art."11 

To balance this heavy emphasis on theory and aesthetics, Cinéa-Cinépour-tous 

published detailed weekly listings of new films, including 

specific production information, as well as articles explaining cinematic 

procedures for amateurs, and a series entitled "Les Cinéastes," which 

examined the work of filmmakers both foreign and domestic. The 

journal also ran an extensive interview with Gance after the release of 

La Roue, and seven production articles on Napoléon. 

Thus by the end of the decade, a significant body of film writing 

had been developed, to the extent that by 1929, Le Tout cinéma could 

estimate that there were thirty-eight specialized film journals, counting 

trade publications, in Paris. 12 

In addition, regular film review columns 

had become widespread in French daily newspapers. Therefore, a 

context for writing seriously and critically about the cinema had been


created; an ongoing awareness of contemporary film culture was established 

and the formulation of a specifically cinematic aesthetic was 

encouraged. Dulac's prolific film-writing activity is due in no small part 

to this productive cultural context, and the reciprocity between theory 

and practice so important to feminist thinking finds its specific historical 

roots in this critical milieu as well. 

Film Culture 

In addition to the development of a critical practice of writing about 

the cinema, the establishment of a serious film culture in France was 

also due to the creation of ciné-clubs and specialized theaters. These 

alternative, noncommercial viewing situations stimulated an independent 

film production and exhibition sector distinct from the mainstream 

commercial cinema. This enabled the diffusion of new ideas 

to a wider audience, an audience often open to experimentation and 

energetically interested in aesthetic issues. The ciné-clubs [film societies] 

promoted the same French, German, Swedish, and American 

films as did the journals, but they added something—they provided 

the element of active participation from the audience by stimulating 

discussions, organizing debates and forums, and coordinating lecture 

series. They also provided the opportunity for short, noncommercial 

films of an experimental nature to be viewed by an audience flexible 

enough to appreciate their experimental status. As previously noted, 

Germaine Dulac was a key figure in the ciné-club movement, in part 

because she felt that these film societies provided the audience most 

receptive to experimentation. In the educating tone characteristic of 

her film lectures, she used these opportunities to increase appreciation 

of avant-garde films: "An experimental film [film d'essai] is not necessarily 

a good film. Realized with haphazard means, it is often less perfect 

than films shown on the regular circuits, but it always contains some 

new principle and spirited researches worthy of being encouraged and 

retained." 

Louis Delluc initiated the idea of ciné-clubs with his publication of 

the Journal du ciné-club (it was also he who coined the term cinéaste), but 

Ricciotto Canudo, along with Henri Fescourt and Bernard Deschamps, 

actually founded the first regularly functioning group of this kind. 

The Club des Amis du Septième Art (C.A.S.A.) had its first official 

meeting on April 22, 1921. Dulac describes the alternative status of 

ciné-clubs in her precise definition: "A ciné-club is a group of spectators 

who, without scorning those classic or popular works offered by the 

official circuits in commercial theaters, are interested in learning about 


and encouraging the technical and artistic progress of avant-garde 

films and films of quality, by means of special screenings at irregular 

intervals. . . . In contrast to the audience of commercial theaters, which 

is careful to expect the pleasure of known quantities each evening, 

the audience of ciné-clubs, constantly on the watch, encourages and 

commends new endeavors. . . . " 14 

Dulac sees the ciné-club's function of encouraging critical reception 

of filmmakers' work as highly important, both to the evolution of the 

art of the cinema, and to the development of a sophisticated audience. 

However, she is careful to deny an elitist conception of this audience, 

noting the cinema's peculiar combination of aesthetic sophistication 

and mass popular appeal. If the ciné-club functions to proselytize and 

educate about the cinema, it must also be aware of the needs of the 

audience it seeks to "convert." "Certainly we'must not divide the 

cinema into an exceptional class and a commercial class. A popular art 

[the cinema] must reach both the general public and the elite."15 

Starting in the mid-twenties, specialized theaters represented another 

form of alternative film exhibition, and in some cases they provided 

an alternative financial base for experimental film production 

as well. Before 1924, Paris did not have a single theater exclusively 

showing films of special artistic interest; this was the area taken up 

by the independent ciné-clubs and individual special screenings. On 

November 14, 1924, Jean Tedesco opened the Vieux-Colombier in 

order to show French and foreign films of precisely this kind. Dulac 

points out that Tedesco was the first major exhibitor to envision the 

need for a specialized distribution sector in order to show films that 

either could not obtain commercial distribution or were not commercial 

enough to maintain mainstream audiences. 16 

Between 1913 and 1924 Jacques Copeau had made the Vieux- 

Colombier one of the most famous showcases in Paris for dramatic 

avant-garde theatrical productions. When Tedesco took it over for 

film exhibition, he carried this interest in the artistic avant-garde over 

to film (both production and exhibition). He premiered Dmitri Kirsanov's 

Mémlmontant (made entirely free of studio economics) and Jean 

Renoir's La Petite marchande d'allumettes (commissioned and partially 

directed by Tedesco, with interiors shot in the theater's attic). Screenings 

of independent films, often shorter than regular features because 

of the smaller amount of money invested in their production, included 

all of Dulac's later short "visual poems" and Jean Epstein's Photogénies—short 

cinematic "documents" commissioned by Tedesco and dismantled 

after the screening. In addition, in 1925 the theater cosponsored 

a series of conferences with Le Ciné-Club de France and (he


important literary journal Les Cahiers du mois, at which filmmakers and 

critics gave lectures accompanied by screenings. Dulac's "Les Esthétiques, 

les entraves: La Cinégraphie intégrale" is the text of one such 

lecture; Epstein's "Pour une avant-garde nouvelle" is another. 

On January 21, 192(3, Armand Tallier and Mlle L. Myrga opened 

the Studio des Ursulines with the following statement of purpose: "We 

propose to recruit our public from among the best writers, artists, 

and intellectuals of the Latin Quarter, and from among the growing 

number of people who have been driven away from the movie theaters 

due to the poverty of existing films. Our program will be composed of 

French and foreign films of quality which represent diverse tendencies 

and schools: everything which represents originality, value, effort will 

find a place on our screen." 17 

Some of the films shown at this theater, 

which had also previously served the theatrical avant-garde (Charles 

Dullin's "atelier" ensemble was based there), are evidence of the Ursulines' 

eclectic programming, which included both commercial American 

and foreign films with works of the cinematic avant-garde: James 

Cruze's Jazz, Howard Hawks's A Girl in Every Port (with Louise Brooks), 

Stroheim's Greed, German classics such as The Joyless Street and The Blue 

Angel, Man Ray's Emak Bakia and L'Etoile de mer, Epstein's La Glace à 

trois faces, Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures, and of course, Dulac's and 

Artaud's The Seashell and the Clergyman. 

There was a constant effort, especially on the part of Dulac, to 

integrate this particularized audience into the larger context of the 

general cinema-viewing public. Continually maintaining that the goal 

of the avant-garde was to seek out new modes of expression that could 

expand the parameters of cinematic thought, she worked consistently 

to bring the audience into a relation of discovery compatible with her 

own excitement for the possibilities of the cinema. Avant-garde film 

work thus had a dual aim: to enrich the visual language and style of the 

cinema while at the same time educating mass tastes. Dulac therefore 

insisted on the educational function of agitational work: "To bring 

together those works of the screen possessing an intrinsic cinematographic 

value, in order to study them and to make them appreciated 

by the general public which ordinarily might scorn them through lack 

of comprehension." 18 

In her emphasis on the educational function of 

certain types of film exhibition, then, Dulac introduces a conception of 

cultural production which contrasts with the notion of film as aesthetic 

object. Avant-garde activity is seen in a social context rather than as 

the product of ivory-tower experimentation, and it is in this sense that 

the ciné-club and alternative screening activities intersect with the 


works themselves in a reciprocal meshwork which can be understood 

as the "text" of culture. 

Film Practice 

The creation of a film culture in France in the twenties, attuned 

to aesthetic issues and enthusiastically receptive to experimentation, 

provided a fertile context for the theoretical and practical explorations 

of Dulac and her contemporaries, Gance, L'Herbier, Delluc, and Epstein. 

These filmmakers are often designated as Impressionists because 

of their common interest in the cinematic rendering of subjectivity 

through the exploitation of the expressive possibilities of film. While 

serious debate about the accuracy of such a title continues, it is nonetheless 

true that there exist between these filmmakers certain similarities 

in their work and aesthetic formulations. In addition, they all 

conceived of their work as being in opposition to established film 

practice of the time, and all were mutually supportive in encouraging 

the aesthetic advancement of the cinema as an autonomous art form. 

Dulac employs the term and provides a description in an essay 

written for LÁrt cinématographique in 1927; she repeats her definition, 

in slightly modified form, five years later in "Le Cinéma d'avantgarde." 

Then came the period of the psychological and impressionist film. It seemed 

frivolous to place a character in a given situation without penetrating the 

secret domain of his [or her] interior life, and the actor's playing became 

complemented by the play of his [or her] thoughts, of visualized feelings.'19 

Once the description of the multiple and contradictory interior impressions 

(which occur in the course of an action) was joined to the specific facts of 

the drama—the facts no longer existing in themselves, but becoming the 

consequence of a moral state—a duality imperceptibly intervened which, in 

order to remain harmonious, adapted itself to the rhythmic cadence, to the 

dynamism, and to the tempo of the images. 20 

Toward this end of cinematically rendering the life of the mind and 

psychological states of the characters, the Impressionist filmmakers 

employed a wide variety of cinematic devices. From camera techniques 

(prisms, distorting lenses, masks, unusual camera angles and focal 

lengths), through technical devices (dissolves, punctuating fades, softfocus, 

multiple superimpositions, and double exposures), to experiments 

with rhythm and motion (both fast and slow motion, accelerated 

montage, and multiple repetitions) and the exploitation of other pa-


rameters in film (large grain film stocks, dramatic lighting effects, and 

new techniques of make-up and gesture), a battery of experimental 

techniques was devised that became the stylistic hallmark of Impressionist 

filmmaking. 

The "duality" that was "adapted ... to the rhythmic cadence ... of 

the image" enables Dulac to see this work as a prelude to abstract 

filmmaking, a practice of cinema which rejects referentiality (and the 

potential surplus realism of the filmed image) in favor of the more 

cinematically "pure" properites of light, rhythm, and movement. "Imperceptibly, 

narrative storytelling and the actor's performance lost 

their isolated value in favor of a broad orchestration of shots, rhythms, 

framings, angles, lighting, proportions, contrasts and harmonies of 

the images." 21 

She expands on this by means of the musical analogy, 

equating the filmmaker and composer in their artistic efforts: "Just as 

the musician works with the rhythm and sonorities of the musical 

phrase, the cinéaste began to work with the rhythm and sonorities of 

the image." 22 

In this formulation, cinematic images take on an "emotive 

value" in some way related to their plastic composition and the rhythmic 

relations between them; meaning is generated by the properties 

of the images themselves, "without the aid of the [written] text." 

For Dulac, however, this cinematic abstraction does not necessarily 

mean the total denial of humanistic concerns. Rather, in a pre-semiotic 

grasp of the interrelations of form and signification, she posits an early 

formulation of the cinematic signifier. "In sum, the avant-garde has 

provided the abstract research and manifestation of pure thought and 

technique later applied to more clearly human films. It not only posited 

the foundations of screen dramaturgy, but discovered and disseminated 

all of the expressive possibilities contained within the camera 

lens." 23 

In other words, Dulac sees all of the work of experimentation in the 

cinema—from the films of the Impressionists to the more abstract 

work of the adherents of "pure cinema"—as having a signifying function. 

Insisting on the aesthetic qualities inherent in the cinema at a 

time when the new medium was obliged to assert its difference from 

other forms of popular entertainment, she concludes: "Whether partisans 

of lyrical, poetic, psychological or pure cinema, all of these schools 

are valid. Cinematographic expression is not single, but multiple. Will 

it not be the conjunction of all these diversities of its form, carried to 

their extreme degree, which will make the cinema a very great art?" 24 

It is critical that the work of the five Impressionists, this first cinematic 

avant-garde, be understood as much more than stylistic renovation 

or technical advancement of the medium. As the film scholar 


Bernard Eisenschitz points out, each film that they made was conceived 

as "a struggle to define a new artistic practice" 25 

—a struggle that was 

fundamentally in opposition to the dominant commercial cinema, both 

French and American, of the time. In their effort to put cinema on 

the same level as the other arts, these filmmakers were also agitating 

for its status as a specific, autonomous practice with its own history, 

evolution, conventions, and procedures. The keynote of the dominant 

cinema as it emerged in Hollywood is found in the particular kind of 

effect produced in the cinema spectator. The impression of a continuous 

and homogeneous spatial unity, the centrality of the perceiving 

subject, and the reinforcement of the reality of depicted events all 

contribute to the production of this effect, which makes the spectator 

a credulous participant in the cinematic fiction. The research into 

cinematic signification carried on by the Impressionist filmmakers— 

whether this was on the level of the intrinsic properties of the filmic 

image itself or on the level of types of narrative organization through 

rhythmic montage constructions—represents one of the earliest attempts 

to develop an alternative type of meaning-production in the 

cinema. 

In these researches, the reproduction of an illusory world, irreducibly 

tied to its referent, ceased being of prime importance, while the 

status of filmic images as signs and their organization into a discursive 

structure became foregrounded. Eisenschitz formulates this in similar 

terms when he describes the work of Epstein (L'Auberge rouge. La 

Glace a trois faces), Gance (J'Accuse, Napoleon, La Roue), and L'Herbier 

(LÁrgent): "One already finds in their work the destruction of the 

taboo of the image as a transparent, total, and inviolable reflection of 

the world and a construction of a filmic space-time dimension (un 

espace-temps du film)." 26 

In this light, the proliferation of visual experiments 

associated with Impressionist filmmaking—and often used as 

evidence of an aestheticizing sensibility—stands among the first serious 

theoretical reflections on the cinema in its history. 

Cast in ideological terms, this construction of a "filmic space-time 

dimension" indicated the way toward a radical disruption of the spatial 

and temporal cohesion offered by the dominant cinema. Conventionally, 

it is this cohesion which provides the viewer with the illusion of a 

unified fictional space which can be penetrated and "experienced." 

Absolutely necessary for the production of this illusion is the strongest 

possible coincidence between narrative (diegetic) motivation for shot 

changes and their formal or rhythmic potentialities. Any attempt to 

highlight the fragmentary and constructed nature of the cinema by 

exploiting the plastic and rhythmic elements of composition can be


seen as an effort to disrupt the work of narrative unity and spatial 

coherence. This can operate on many different levels, and the Impressionist 

filmmakers, in differing ways, explored every formal permutation. 

In all of their experiments with camera distance and angle, with 

rhythmic editing, and with technical devices, it is possible to see a 

wedge being driven between narrative referentiality and the discursive 

organization of the film. Thus a new signifying dimension became 

part of filmic discourse, the plastic emphasis on film's fragmentary 

nature suggesting a multiplicity of effects instead of a single expressive 

meaning. Therefore, although one might interpret the Impressionists' 

efforts to increase the viewer's participation in the film as the imposition 

of a univocal meaning, the fact remains that their films have an 

undeniable formal and material dynamism, an explosion of signification 

fundamental to establishing the specificity of cinematic language. 

Thus in the work of the First Avant-Garde can be found an early 

form of cinematic writing, what Dulac refers to as "cinêgraphié" and 

contemporary theory calls the meaning-production process of the filmtext. 

Henri Langlois says as much in his critical assessment: "They 

were already writing films with the camera; they had already achieved 

a form of cinematic language. Through their research with the contrasts 

of black and white, through the meaning they conferred on 

each image according to their choice of camera angle, through their 

intertwining of surfaces, volumes, and temporal variations by means 

of montage, through an ever-increasing fragmentation of shots and 

their simplification, our avant-garde was leading directly to the cinematographic 

hieroglyph, to this ideographic language on which 

Eisenstein would base his work." 27 

Dulac is only slightly more concrete when, in an introduction to one 

of her illustrated lectures at the Musée Galliera, she refers to "the 

expressive procedures of the cinema—the role of different types of 

shots and angles, the fade-out, the dissolve, the superimposition, softfocus, 

distortions—in sum, the entire syntax of the film." 28 

Problems 

with the linguistic metaphor aside, this early formulation of the signifying 

possibilities of formal structures is basic to the conception of filmic 

writing. Going on to discuss the arrangement of individual shots 

through editing she says, "You will understand . . . the emotion that a 

logical succession of images can provoke . . . the work moves us, therefore, 

by means of a purely cinematographic technique." 29 

To the extent, 

then, that the filmmakers of the First Avant-Garde realized that 

the cinema was a "language," they began to tell stories by a sequence 

of images alone, an organization without recourse to verbal intertitles 

or literary elaboration. 


The Impressionist propensity for intimate psychological narratives 

which permitted the exploration of the life of the mind led to an 

effusion of cinematic devices and techniques capable of portraying 

memories, flashbacks, dreams, fantasies, and mental states. For all of 

the Impressionists, then, the cinema was thus put not in the service of 

the "realistic" reproduction of dramatic characters, but rather in the 

service of the expression, suggestion, translation, and representation 

of emotions, thoughts, and feelings. As Jean Mitry puts it, "The descriptive 

image, in some sense, became 'subjectivized.' " 30 

In addition to Dulac, both Jean Epstein and Abel Gance are credited 

with adding rhythmic editing to the repertoire of subjective techniques. 

Gance's La Roue emerged on the scene in 1923; an exciting 

crystallization of all of the experimental techniques that had preceded 

it, it demonstrated an expressive lyricism that became a hallmark of 

French film of the twenties. As Dulac notes, it marked a decisive 

turning point in the evolution of cinematographic art. Its use of accelerated 

montage techniques to establish a rhythmic, methodically organized 

structure paved the way for future experiments and further 

definitions of cinematic specificity as movement and rhythm. By basing 

his rhythmic editing of La Roue entirely on the metric relations between 

the shots, Gance was able to achieve a creation of "pure visual rhythm" 

whose "meaning was established on the value of the duration of the 

images." 31 

In other words, the filmed image's referentiality ceased to 

have primary importance, while other meanings, more related to the 

plasticity of montage, emerged. 

The rapidity of tempo due to shots that became increasingly shorter, 

for example, created the sensation of an emotional crescendo. Dulac's 

description of this process is fairly precise and wildly enthusiastic: 

Abel Gance's La Roue marked a great step forward. In this film, psychology, 

gestures, drama all became dependent on a cadence. The characters were 

no longer the only important factors in the work, hut objects, machines, the 

length of the shots, their composition, their contrast, their framing, their 

harmony all play a role. Rails, locomotive, boiler wheels, pressure-gauge, 

smoke, tunnels functioned—through images—along with the characters. A 

new drama emerged composed of feelings, of raw movements, of unfolding 

lines. The conception of the art of movement and of rhythmically organized 

images came into its own, as did the expression of "things," magnificently 

achieving the visual poem composed of human life-instincts, playing with 

both the material and the ineffable. A symphonic poem in which feeling 

explodes not in facts, not in acts, but in visual sonorities. 32 

It is easy to see how this exciting evidence of the expressive possibilities 

of movement and form could lead to the theories of pure cinema, so


dear to Dulac, based on rhythmic structures capable of signifying by 

themselves. The visual orchestration of signs achieved through the 

rapid alternation of shots thus produced a dynamic theory of cinematic 

articulation. Rhythmic patterns based on internal (within the shot) and 

external (between shots) relations became the foundation of cinematic 

composition. 

In one way or another, all of the Impressionist filmmakers took, up 

researches into the rhythmic potentials of accelerated montage and the 

aesthetics of pure movement. But it was Dulac who was to follow this 

more consistently toward its logical conclusion of nonreferential signification. 

She used a fragment of La Roue (considered the core of the 

film, it was entitled La Chanson du rail) for her illustrated talks, thereby 

removing it from extraneous narrative and diegetic material in order to 

concentrate on the purely aesthetic properties of its accelerated montage 

structure. "One can be moved without characters, therefore without 

theatrical means: Look at the song of the train-tracks and wheels. A 

theme, but no dramatic action. . . . The train-track, a railway of rigid 

steel, intertwined, the train-track, far removed from human life, a poem 

whose rhymes are moving lines, simple, then multiplied. . . . Then the 

wheels, a rhythm, a speed . . . aconnecting-rod whose mechanical movement 

follows the rhythm of a heartbeat."33 

Dulac used this fragment as evidence of the signifying capacity of 

pure form. A profoundly emotional sense of rhythm proved capable of 

evoking feelings, thoughts, experiences, without recourse to "the petty 

little stories with which the audience too often satisfies itself."34 Through 

this kind of formulation, Dulac was positing the metaphoric elaboration of 

the fragment as a form of resistance to the powerful drive of narrativity 

associated with dominant cinema. She was thus paving the way for the 

consideration of the cinema as a sign system in its own right. Arguing 

for the artistic autonomy of the cinema she declared: "A real film should 

not be capable of simply being 'told,' since it draws its active and emotive 

principle uniquely from visual vibrations. Can one 'narrate' a painting? 

Can one 'narrate' a sculpture? Certainly not!" 35 

This raises the issue of assessing the filmmaking practice of the First 

Avant-Garde. While the title "Impressionist" is perhaps reductive, 

linking the five filmmakers in a relationship based too much on a strict 

interpretation of the content of their films ("subjectivity," "interior 

life"), no single name covers the magnitude of their collective contribution 

to the history of cinematic language. Differing fundamentally 

from what preceded them, they endowed the cinema with a "marvellous 

power of formal renovation, which was linked, as well, to a very 


specific conception of their material." 36 

This involved a major recasting 

of narrative conceptions—a new formulation of the film's subject matter 

conceived visually, in terms of plastic or formal organization. What 

emerged was a fundamentally cinematic method of constructing films. 

This meant, among other things, that a film could move not by a 

linear concatenation of events, as in its literary predecessor, the novel, 

but by a "vertical" (to use L'Herbier's term) structure more akin to 

poetics. This latter could deploy all of the signifying possibilities of the 

cinematic image and its relations, giving filmic discourse a productive 

new dimension. The work of the First Avant-Garde thus situated itself 

in the space between narrative referentiality and discursive organization, 

thereby emphasizing cinema's systematicity—its particular way of 

producing meaning through a constant dialectical interaction between 

diegetic content and formal structure. No longer considering formal 

elements as mere stylistic devices tacked on in the service of narrative 

imperatives, the filmmakers of the First Avant-Garde advanced the 

understanding of cinematic language, whose fundamental dialectic of 

continuity (which bridges the transitions between shots) and discontinuity 

(which introduces ruptures at another, formal, level) is at the 

core of its meaning-production. 

What are the feminist implications of Dulac's contribution to film 

language, then, given the general aesthetic context of her time and its 

widespread cinematic exploration of subjectivity? Or, to put it another 

way, what is the resisting status of her films within a cinematic practice 

that had already conceived of itself as oppositional? To arrive at the 

precise feminist inflection of Dulac's concern with unconscious signification, 

it is necessary to consider her work from the perspective of 

feminist theory. It is possible to understand Dulac's move toward 

abstraction and the nonreferentiality of the image—her theorization 

of "pure cinema"—as an attempt to conceptualize a form of "feminine 

cinematic writing" in which the oppressive logic of patriarchal structures 

of thought would be bypassed for the more suggestive, multiple, 

and varied forms of signification on the connotative level. Dulac's 

particular emotional emphasis, her enduring belief in the evocative 

power of cinematic technique and the proliferation of meanings implied, 

suggests that against the tyranny of hierarchical meaning the 

filmic image could counterpose a celebration of flux. Moreover, Dulac's 

most incisive researches into processes of signification are cinematically 

worked out precisely in terms of figuring "the feminine" and 

the specificity of female desire. These issues will be explored in the 

following chapter.


NOTES 

1. Carlton J. H. Hayes, France: A Nation of Patriots (New York: Columbia 

University Press, 1930), p. 186. It seems probable that Hayes's (inaccurate) 

figure comes from Léon Moussinac, Panoramique du cinéma (Paris: Au Sans 

Pareil, 1929), p. 17. Again, Richard Abel's exhaustive and comprehensive 

study of the period, French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-1929 (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1984) provides a detailed background. David 

Bordwell's French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style 

(New York: Arno Press, 1980), is also useful. 

2. Germaine Dulac in Colson-Malleville text (unpublished manuscript of 

Dulac's collected writings), chapter 2, "Historique du cinéma: Evolution vers 

le cinéma pur," p. 8. All translation from the French are my own unless 

otherwise noted. 

3. For a highly useful discussion of the Parisian excitement around American 

films, see Richard Abel's "The Contribution of the French Literary Avant- 

Garde to Film Theory and Criticism (1907-1924)," Cinéma Journal 14:3 

(Spring 1975): 18—40, and his more recent article, "On the Threshold of 

French Film Theory and Criticism, 1915—1919," Cinema Journal 25:1 (Fall 

1985): 12-33. 

4. Jacques B. Brunius, En marge du cinéma français (Paris: Editions Arcanes, 

Collection Ombres Blanches, 1954). 

5. Germaine Dulac, "Le Cinéma d'avant-garde," in Le Cinéma des origines 

à nos jours, ed. Henri Fescourt (Paris: Editions du Cygne, 1932), p. 357. An 

alternative translation of this article, by Robert Lamberton, can be found in 

The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, ed. P. Adams Sitney 

(New York: New York University Press, 1978), pp. 43-48. 

(i. Dulac, "Le Cinema d'avant-garde." 

7. Germaine Dulac, quoted in Pierre Leprohon, Histoire du cinéma (Paris: 

Editions du Cerf, 1961), p. 64. 

8. Reprinted in Ricciotto Canudo, L'Usine aux images (Geneva: Office Centrale 

d'Edition, 1927), pp. 5-8. 

9. Reprinted in Marcel L'Herbier, éd., L'Intelligence du cinématographe, 

(Paris: Editions Corréa, 1946), pp. 91-92. 

10. Germaine Dulac, "Mise en scène," Le Film, no. 87 (November 12, 1917): 

7-9. 

11. Marcel L'Herbier, "Autour du cinématographe: Entretien avec Marcel 

L'Herbier par Jean-André Fieschi," Les Cahiers du cinéma, no. 202 (June—July 

1968): 29. 

12. Cited by Bordwell, French Impressionist Cinema, p. 62. 

13. Colson-Malleville text, chapter 10, "Les ciné-clubs," p. 3. 

14. Colson-Malleville text, chapter 10, pp. 1, 2. 

15. Ibid., p. 2. 

16. Dulac, "Le Cinéma d'avant-garde," p. 362. 

17. Quoted by Dulac in "Le Cinéma d'avant-garde," p. 362. 

18. Colson-Malleville text, chapter 10, p. 1. 


19. Germaine Dulac, "Les Esthétiques. Les entraves: La Cinégraphie 

intégrale," in L'Art cinématographique, vol. 2 (Paris: Alcan, 1927); reprinted in 

French in The Literature of the Cinema (New York: Arno Press, 1970), p. 41, 

and translated by Stuart Liebman as "The Aesthetics, the Obstacles: Integral 

Cinegraphie" in Framework, no. 19 (1982): 6—9. 


21. Ibid., p. 360. A similar, but less precise, statement can be found in "Les 

Esthétiques," p. 45, where Dulac simply refers to "the study of images and 

their juxtaposition." 

22. Dulac, "Les Esthétiques," p. 45. 


24. Colson-Malleville text, chapter 10, p. 3. 

25. Bernard Eisenschitz:, "Histoires de l'histoire (Deux périodes du cinéma 

français: le muet—la génération de 58)," Défense du cinéma français, January 

8—March 16, 1975, Maison de la Culture de la Seine Saint-Denis, p. 28. 

26. Eisenschitz, "Histoires," p. 28. 

27. Henri Langlois, "L'Avant-garde français," Les Cahiers du cinéma, no. 202 

(June-July 1968): 17. 

28. Germaine Dulac, "Les procédés expressifs du cinématographe," Cinémagazine, 

no. 27 (July 4, 1924): 15. 

29. Dulac, "Les Procédés," p. 15. 

30. Jean Mitry, Le Cinéma expérimental (Histoire et perspectives) (Paris: Editions 

Seghers, 1974), p. 67. 

31. Mitry, Le Cinéma expérimental, p. 69. 

32. Dulac, "Le Cinéma d'avant-garde," p. 360. This passage is similar, 

though not identical, to what appears in "Les Esthétiques" on page 43. 

33. Germaine Dulac, "Conférence de Mme Germaine Dulac" Cinémagazine, 

no. 51 (December 19, 1924): 517. This also appears in L'Art du cinéma, ed. 

Pierre Lherminier (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1960), p. 65. 

34. Ibid. 

35. Germaine Dulac, "Films visuels et anti-visuels," Le Rouge et le noir (July 

1928): 39. This can also be found in Lherminier, L'Art du cinéma, p. 70. An 

alternate translation, by Stuart Lamberton, can be found in The Avant-Garde 

Film, ed. Sitney. 

36. Noel Burch and Jean-André Fieschi, "La Première vague," Les Cahiers 

du cinéma, no. 202 (June-July 1968): 24.

FOUR 

From Fantasy to Structure of the Fantasm: 

The Smiling Mme Beudet and The Seashell 

and the Clergyman 

[U]nconscious ideas are organized into phantasies or imaginary 

scenarios to which the instinct becomes fixated and which may be 

conceived of as true mises en scène of desire. 1 

The cinema is marvellously equipped to express the manifestations of 

our thought, of our hearts, of our memories. 2 

DISCUSSIONS OF DULAC'S FILMS tend to contrast what are perceived as the 

two poles of her work, to compare two conflicting—and consecutive— 

cinematic practices. The first is represented by La Souriante Mme Beudet 

(The Smiling Mme Beudet, 1923), frequently cited as an outstanding 

example of feminist filmmaking because of its exploration of what 

would constitute a feminine imaginary. In it, a fairly traditional narrative 

sequence is amplified by a whole range of suggestive poetic and 

cinematic techniques used to evoke the inner world of the main character, 

rendering her fantasies and desires through the cinematic depiction 

of mental processes. The other tendency, exemplified by the 

violent clash between the sexes depicted through a kind of antinarrative 

experimentation bordering on abstraction, is seen in Surrealism's 

first film, La Coquille et le clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman, 

1927). 3 

Based on a scenario by Antonin Artaud, the film demonstrates 

an astonishing originality in its structure, exploding all myths of character 

and plot in an effort to generate the fantasmatic process of 

dreaming itself. This use of narrative and its antithesis would seem to 

suggest contradictory conceptions of the cinema. However, from the 

Beudet and Seashell / 99 

standpoint of Dulac's own preoccupation with what constitutes an 

alternative language of desire "in the feminine," a remarkable consistency 

strongly connects such superficially divergent projects. 

Another level of debate contrasts the overt and easily interpreted 

feminism of Beudet with what is perceived as the stridently masculine 

Surrealist aesthetic of Seashell. For example, in a rather serious instance 

of misattribution, an article that pits Dulac-the-feminist against Artaud-the-misogynist 

bases its argument on the claim that Artaud had 

objected to the film on the grounds that Dulac has used optical tricks 

and had "feminized" the script. 4 

In fact, Artaud never actually made 

either assertion. More specifically, both criticisms were made some 

twenty-five years after the release of the film, and five years after 

Artaud's death. It was Jacques B. Brunius, in his 1954 book En marge 

du cinéma français, who criticized Dulac's film for having "drowned [the 

scenario] under a debauch of technical tricks" 5 

—a criticism which, it 

has been established, was first launched not by Artaud himself, but by 

Yvonne Allendy. For the second, infinitely more offensive, criticism, 

Ado Kyrou must take credit. In a 1953 assessment of the film that 

borders on the hysterical, he states: "The script is very beautiful; filled 

with eroticism and fury, it could have been a film in the same class as 

Bunuel's L'Age d'or, but Germaine Dulac betrayed the spirit of Artaud 

and made a FEMININE film." 6 

This misunderstanding about the nature of the debate surrounding 

Seashell illustrates, in a fairly graphic way, the pitfalls of a form of 

feminist criticism that too readily employs unexamined assumptions 

and notions of a "feminist aesthetic." An analysis which shifts its emphasis 

from a superficial reading of the content of the films to a 

more nuanced understanding of the place of the woman within the 

mechanisms of fantasy and desire in the cinema suggests a way to 

overcome this problem. Seen from this latter perspective, Dulac's shift 

in interest from the representation of fantasy (through the portrayal 

of the intensely active mental world of her heroine in Beudet) to the 

actual generation of the fantasmatic process (through the seemingly 

arbitrary and irrational depiction of those processes themselves in 

Seashell) can be understood as an entirely consistent evolution in her 

search for a new cinematic language capable of expressing female 

desire. Dulac's two films can thus be seen to crystallize certain positions 

within her ongoing theoretical research into cinematic language, from 

the more explicitly feminist content of Beudet (the dissatisfied housewife 

brutalized by an obnoxious husband and a repressive bourgeois 

system) to a concentration on the processes of cinematic meaningproduction 

in Seashell (the cinema's capacity to materially reproduce


the structure and logic of dreams and the unconscious), and eventually 

to her concern with pure cinema. At the heart of both films is an interest 

in the psychical mechanisms of the unconscious, an exploration of 

subjective reality which—whether determined by the specific confines 

of fictional characterization or liberated by the unmediated play of the 

logic of dreams—is capable of revealing not only productive insights 

into our deepest longings, but the structure and function of "femininity" 

in its social, psychic, and cinematic contexts, as well. 

The Smiling Mme Beudet 

The Smiling Mme Beudet depicts the imaginative life of its main character 

with a psychological precision previously unseen in the cinema at the 

time of its release in 1923. In fact, its slim plot, which concerns an 

aborted murder—misread as a suicide attempt—by an unhappy middle-class 

housewife, serves merely as a pretext for the visual orchestration 

of thoughts, memories, dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies that 

constitute Madame Beudet's internal world. The film's unsmiling protagonist, 

whose revolt against the stifling constraints of her bourgeois 

marriage is demonstrated by a desire for liberation through fantasy, 

provides the point of focus for both narrative articulation and spectator 

identification. The plot involves two days in the life of this cultured 

and sensitive provincial housewife (Germaine Dermoz) and her oppressively 

vulgar fabric merchant husband (Arquilliere). One evening, 

having found her piano locked by Monsieur Beudet, who is at a 

performance of Faust, Madame Beudet loads the gun that her husband—in 

a jokingly sadistic parody of suicide—often puts to his head. 

The next morning, overcome by guilt, fear, and remorse, she unsuccessfully 

tries to empty the chamber before the habitual joke's repetition, 

but before she can do so Beudet impulsively aims the gun at his 

wife instead. The film climaxes and resolves ironically, as the egotistical 

husband mistakenly interprets the loaded gun as his wife's suicide 

attempt, and his renewed appreciation of her is matched by Madame 

Beudet's disbelieving resignation—and the implied closing off of any 

future possibilities for her fertile imaginative world. 

Yet it is the very interiority of this world that comprises the majority 

of the film's forty minutes. Dulac uses a whole range of experimental 

cinematic techniques in order to represent Madame Beudet's dreams 

and desires, to render female subjectivity filmically through the metaphoric 

figuration of her character's fantasies. Through a battery of 

technical devices ranging from dissolves, punctuating fades and irises, 

soft-focus and superimpositions to both slowed-down and accelerated 


motion, distorting lenses, camera manipulations, high-contrast distortions, 

and unusual angles, Dulac creates a highly charged visual atmosphere 

for these mini-scenarios of the fantasmatic. The actual narrative 

action of the film, as I've noted, is relatively sparse; it is in the 

visual orchestration of Madame Beudet's inner world that Dulac's 

prime interest in cinematic experimentation can be found. In her 

desire to eliminate those constraints on expression implied by the logic 

of narrative causality and of character development through action, 

Dulac turned to music as a model for cinematic composition. For her, 

the unmediated directness of the visual image could best be conveyed 

through a musical form: "Shouldn't the cinema—an art of vision, as 

music is an art of hearing—lead us . . . toward the visual idea, made 

of movement and of life, toward a conception of an art of the eye 

composed of emotional inspiration, evolving in its continuity and attaining, 

just as music does, our thoughts and feelings?" 7 

Thus for Beudet, Dulac relied upon such musical inspiration in order 

to organize the flow of images constituting Madame Beudet's solitary 

reveries, her flights of fantasy, and her perceptions of the emotional 

prison that enclosed her. Images chosen for their evocative power— 

for their ability to suggest a state of mind or feeling—were thus filmed 

using technical devices meant to enhance this power or interpret its 

effects. These images in turn were organized according to a psychical 

and subjective logic rather than one based on dramatic or causal 

requirements of the narrative. 

This emphasis on feeling led Dulac to call the close-up the "psychological 

shot" because of its peculiar ability to materialize "the very 

thoughts, souls, emotions, and desires of the characters projected on 

the screen." 8 

Dulac felt that in this way she was able to bypass the 

logical structure of verbal language in order to more profoundly move 

and directly touch the spectator by means of a filmic structure based 

on visual rhythm. 

In a 1928 article entitled "La Musique du silence," Dulac affirmed 

the importance of correctly assessing the cinema's fundamental capacity 

to visualize feelings. She saw a danger in the traditional cinema's 

reliance on precise dramatic action for its structure: "Two actors are 

speaking to each other in the course of a scene. A mistake. Only the 

silent expressions on their faces will be visual. Alas, in ordinary dramatic 

cinema, facts count more than expressions." 9 

Dulac felt that 

traditional cinema was too literary because, following in the footsteps 

of its predecessor, the novel, it developed its action uniquely through 

a succession of dramatic situations. For her, the cinema was most 

consistent with its expressive and aesthetic potential when it was able


to "develop emotively through the image alone. . . . The cinema can 

certainly tell a story, but one mustn't forget that the story is nothing. 

The story is a surface. The seventh art, the art of the screen, is the 

palpable rendering of the depth which extends beneath this surface: 

the musical ineffable (l'insaisissable musical)." 10 

Yet, although a universalist assumption of consciousness might be 

inferred from these formulations, it is not simply a generalized notion 

of fantasy that interests Dulac here; clearly, in Beudet, she is concerned 

to articulate what might be called a feminine "imaginary," as she makes 

the exploration of female subjectivity the very core of her film. For this 

reason, the fantasy sequences—organized in each instance by a relay 

of mental associations—are anchored in the particulars of the woman 

character she creates, a frustrated, imprisoned housewife who longs 

for some sort of romantic evasion, Thus a focus on the content of 

the representation of fantasy is necessary as Dulac finds metaphoric 

equivalents and subjective distortions for each of Madame Beudet's 

imaginings. The most complete realization of this filmic rendering of 

unconscious processes is found in what can be called the "fantasysolitude" 

sequence of the film, a series of seven segments in which 

Madame Beudet's fantasies take hold and overpower her in the moments 

preceding her decision to load her husband's gun. However, 

although this sequence is virtually the longest in the entire film (comprising 

roughly one-fifth of its total shots) Dulac is careful to prepare 

this cinematic explosion of perception, fantasy, and desire by a number 

of shorter subjective sequences, momentary indications of the power 

of Madame Beudet's imaginative capacities. 

This "prologue" to the fantasy sequence has a trajectory of its own, 

for it moves from a purely mental representation of Madame Beudet's 

thoughts through a metaphoric image signifying her wish for escape, 

to an imagined scenario of desire in which a fantasm of her creation 

actually interacts with the space of the room in which the Beudets sit. 

This gradation in the type of mental or unconscious operation is 

matched by an increase in duration, as each of the three sequences 

furl hers the demonstration of Dulac's interest in combining the experimental 

techniques of the First Avant-Garde with a cinematic elaboration 

of female desire. There is in this progression a movement from 

a more conventionally accepted icon of feminine resistance, through 

a momentary display of the power of the female imagination, to a 

situation which locates the productive capacity to dream (and thereby 

enact the possibility of liberation) within the female psyche itself. In 

this way the prologue prepares the more extensively developed fantasy 


sequence, whose conclusion to the complex visual chain of associations 

results in the ultimate act of resistance, a fantasy of murder. 

The first of these "preparatory" sequences is a simple exchange of 

two pairs of shots, each representing the Beudets' part in a conversation. 

Monsieur Beudet tries to convince his wife to see Faust, and she 

replies with a polite shake of her head. A close-up of Beudet singing 

(fade to black) is followed by a shot of the opera chorus, while Madame 

Beudet's close-up (again, a fade to black) leads into a glowering Mephistopheles, 

large in the left foreground, and a resisting Marguerite, 

arm stretched out to fend off his intrusion. Although the first of these 

has been attributed to Dulac's attempt to give some small measure of 

subjectivity to other characters, I maintain, instead, that Dulac's chief 

interest is in the subjective experience of her female character and the 

possibilities it represents for expressing feminine desire. From this 

standpoint, Beudet's shot simply illustrates what he is saying (a silent 

film convention), while Madame Beudet's shot—a representation of 

her thoughts—is a first indication of the interiority that will control 

our identification with her throughout the film. 

This is an appropriate preparation for the sequence that follows, 

the first demonstration of Madame Beudet's ability to imaginatively 

call up an image of something longed-for, and thus a mark of the shift 

from a mental image to the representation of a wish. The five shots of 

this sequence cluster around a subjective inversion of the reverse-shot 

structure, a cinematic figure conventionally used to indicate perceptual 

point-of-view. Instead of the traditional alternation of character 

seeing/object seen, Dulac gives us a sequence of object-seen/character 

seeing/object-fantasized—and thus a transformation from perception to 

imagination as a close-up of a car advertisement (for a Sizaire-Berwick) 

in a magazine dissolves to a profile close-up of Madame Beudet reading, 

and its fade to black then opens on a shot of the miniature car 

gliding across a background of clouds. The sequence ends on an 

extreme close-up of Madame Beudet's eyes (reminiscent of a subsequent 

use of this ethereal and haunting shot in Seashell, to which I will 

return), as the frame is filled with eyes that close—in resignation or in 

satisfaction. This momentary insertion of two antinaturalistic shots 

within the context of the narrative development connects Dulac's interest 

in mental processes with her related belief in the close-up as a 

powerfully evocative expressive tool. But more important, this first 

indication of Madame Beudet's fantasmatic capacity to escape what 

she cannot leave in reality reflects Dulac's own desire to represent 

cinematically the psychic force of the human mind, as well as her


uncanny ability to designate such subtle distinctions as those between 

thought, imagination, and, ultimately, unconscious fantasy. 

The last preparatory sequence depicts precisely that latter process 

of the unconscious, for in it Madame Beudet advances from a picture 

that she imagines to a fantasmatic scenario that she directs. Having 

succeeded in mentally projecting an image of a vehicle for escape (if 

only for an instant), she is now able to envision a little mise-en-scene 

of action in the form of a confrontation between an imaginary lover 

and the oppressive husband who sits across from her. In no fewer 

than twenty-four shots the sequence depicts a phantom tennis player 

(come to life from the pages of the magazine by means of a superimposilion) 

who waltzes over to Beudet's desk, lifts him bodily, and carries 

him off. To Madame Beudet's spontaneous—and exceptional—eruption 

of laughter, Beudet responds in mimicked glee, taking the gun 

from the drawer as a title explains: "A stupid and oft-repeated joke, 

dear to Monsieur Beudet: The suicide-parody." A subjective shot of 

the blanched and contorted face of Beudet in large close-up (Dulac's 

cinematic distortion to suggest Madame Beudet's emotional attitude 

toward her husband) is matched by a profile shot of Madame Beudet 

wincing. The return to a more "realistic" shot of Beudet as he places 

the gun back in the desk and shrugs is followed by a close-up of the 

back of Madame Beudet's head and a subsequent alternation of similar 

shots and shrugs. 

This sequence is notable for a number of reasons. First, it is the 

introduction of the suicide joke that will generate the central dramatic 

action of the film. But, and this is the second point, this joke is not 

presented in the form of a simple narrative event. Rather, it is prefaced 

by the first example of Madame Beudet's mental ability to "create" a 

character of her own who performs in a fantasmatic scene enacted 

within the actual space of her life, a fictive character capable of representing 

through action her desire to rebel against her despotic: husband. 

And so powerful is this imaginary scene that it can accomplish 

what nothing else in her oppressive existence can do—it makes her 

laugh. A smile that explodes in one single moment of the film thus 

gives renewed ironic substance to its title, for it is not simply that 

Madame Beudet never smiles; she is, in fact, quite capable of smiling— 

even laughing—but only as a result of the power of her own fantasmatic: 

capability. 

Third, the conclusion of the sequence is a foreshadowing of the 

film's ending. The two shots of the back of Madame Beudet's head 

function in direct contrast to her interaction with the fantasy tennis 

player. In the moment when we see her face, we observe her as the 


sole member of an audience reacting to a scenario of her own creation, 

and are thus given access to her interiority. But when the back of her 

head is depicted, there is a sealing off of this capacity to fictively 

interact, and of our capacity to identify as well. Therefore, just as these 

last shots of the sequence represent a temporary cessation of Madame 

Beudet's imaginative activity, the final images of the film itself signify 

a similar—and this time permanent—closure. The film's ending shot 

depicts Monsieur and Madame Beudet in American-shot (depicting 

characters to the hip, that is, three quarters of the body), seen from 

the back, as they continue down the provincial cobblestone street 

toward the vanishing point of the frame. Madame Beudet's resignation 

to the suffocating trap of bourgeois marriage is signified by the narrative 

action; the impossibility of future flights of fantasy is equally 

emphasized by the symbolic "closed door" of the back of the head. To 

return to the sequence under analysis, then, the hostile sarcasm of the 

exchange between the couple that concludes this fantasized scene of 

the tennis player's triumph is a forceful indication of just how powerfully 

Madame Beudet's painful reality can limit and confine her imagination's 

play. 

Having thus prepared the view with these glimpses into the visual 

richness of Madame Beudet's interior world, Dulac now turns to her 

most sustained exploration of processes of the psyche (to date) by creatinga 

situation in which fantasy emerges from enforced solitude. Having 

been left alone by the boorish husband—off at the opera with two of his 

provincial peers—and discovering that he has locked the piano—her 

one objective source of pleasure—Madame Beudet paces aimlessly 

through the darkened parlor as her thoughts and reveries fill the screen. 

The very minimal situation of a woman at home alone thus becomes the 

simple dramatic framework (the surface) that permits the purely visual 

elaboration of subjectivity (its depth). 

For purposes of analysis, this sequence will be called the "fantasysolitude 

sequence." Madame Beudet's subjective vision is constructed 

through a series of montage units, seven smaller segments which each 

evoke a different emotion, and which collectively combine to create a 

generalized atmosphere that both objectifies her state of mind and articulates 

her desire. In this cinematic texture of perception, thought, and 

fantasy, each sub-segment portrays a different type of subjective relation 

of Madame Beudet to the external world. In order to render this, 

each smaller segment is structured by a different type of technical device, 

alternating montage pattern, or cinematic punctuation, allowing 

the full range of expressive possibilities of the cinema to come into play. 

I have identified the seven segments by titles that denote their


content: 1) "Initial Solitude" (two shots); 2) "The Poem" (fourteen 

shots); 3) "The Maid" (eight shots); 4) "Imprisonment" (eighteen 

shots); 5) "Fantasy of the Phantom Lover" (thirteen shots); 6) "Monsieur 

Beudet's Haunting Appearances" (nineteen shots); and 7) "The 

Resolution" (three shots). In each segment, an alternation that interposes 

shots of Madame Beudet with different types of subjective image 

renders the emotional and mental atmosphere of her psyche. Thus 

Madame Beudet "sees" optically subjective images (shots which convey 

her perceptual viewpoint), semi-subjective images (shots which suggest 

her emotional attitude toward an object), and purely mental images 

(memories, thoughts-, and fantasies). 12 

Each of these segments is thus 

organized on the basis of an alternation of seeing and seen, implying 

that Madame Beudet's vision, both perceptual and imaginary, articulates 

the shot-changes that compose the sequence. In this way, Madame 

Beudet is continually determined as the central focus of spectatoridentification 

and Dulac is able to achieve her stated intention: "If the 

opposition and succession of images are capable of creating movement, 

they can also perfectly depict the state of mind of a character, enabling 

us to enter his [or her] thoughts more readily than words can do." 

Initial Solitude 

The first segment ("Initial Solitude") simply uses its two shots to establish 

the situation: Madame Beudet, alone in the study, turns off the 

desk lamp and discovers that the piano has been locked. The soft 

chiaroscuro created by her first gesture can be seen to initiate the 

sequence, marking the transition from the brutal reality of the Beudets' 

marriage to the imaginative realm of the subsequent flow of 

images. This short segment is matched in its simplicity (and lack of 

technical effects) by the three shots at the end of the sequence ("The 

Resolution"): Madame Beudet goes over to the desk, takes out the 

revolver, and reaches into the drawer for the bullets. The repetitions 

(Madame Beudet in American-shot, the desk, the window) reinforce 

the framing effect of these two segments that enclose the sequence, a 

sequence that effectively demonstrates "the multiple and contradictory 

interior impressions" which characterize "the secret domain of [Madame 

Beudet's] inner life." 14 

As such, the entire sequence can be read as a microcosm of the film, 

for within its limits—precisely defined by the "realistic" representation 

of Madame Beudet in the study—the whole interplay of fantasy and 

desire is rendered through a visual equivalent of stream-of-consciousness 

narration. In the context of the film itself, Madame Beudet's 

imaginary reveries are her only means of escape from her suffocating 


bourgeois marriage. Thus the film's introductory title, "In the 

provinces. ..." is repeated at its end, with the additional commentary 

"In the quiet streets, without horizon, under the heavy sky. . . . Joined 

together by habit." The same dismal images of Chartres ("Notations 

of sadness, the empty streets, the mundane, colorless people. ..." ) 15 

occur after both opening and closing titles, with the important addition 

of the Beudet couple, firmly ensconced in the provincial environment 

of the film's final image, and this provincial environment now equally 

ensconced in the narrative legibility required by cinematic illusionism. 

But while the end of the "fantasy-solitude" sequence is marked by 

Madame Beudet's resolve to liberate herself from the tyrannical husband—an 

active solution that involves loading his revolver—the end 

of the film, as noted before, confirms her powerlessness, enclosing 

her extraordinarily rich fantasy world within the immutable shape of 

"reality," and closing off the film's expressive psychological depth with 

an image of stark realism. 

The Poem 

Throughout her writing, Dulac stressed the importance of conceiving 

a film visually, of working from a "visual idea" or a "visual theme" that 

she equated with feelings, emotions, or sensations. In accordance with 

this, the "fantasy-solitude" sequence originates with a state of mind— 

despair, loneliness, frustration—and evokes this by means of suggestion 

rather than through precise definition. The interplay of images 

thus takes the place of what might have been the free indirect discourse 

of verbal intertitles ("Madame Beudet longed to be transported by a 

fiery, romantic lover . . . ," for example). The spectator is appealed to 

directly, without recourse to rational processes of the intellect, by 

means of a visual language which functions, paradoxically, by indirectness. 

This is a process of "suggestive magic" actualized in cinematic 

images—the Symbolist poem visualized. 

Therefore, it seems quite natural that in this sequence, Madame 

Beudet first seeks escape through Symbolist poetry, Baudelaire's "La 

Mort des amants," to be precise. The fourteen shots of the next subsegment 

are thus patterned on an alternation that shifts between 

images of Madame Beudet reading and thinking, intertitles of lines 

from the poem, and corresponding shots of objects around the house. 

The implication of this logic of montage, the cinema's discursive process, 

is that Madame Beudet is trying to imagine the poetic images as 

she reads by calling to mind objects of her quotidian reality. 

The result, of course, is undeniably ironic, as the banality of the 

objects only reinforces her dissatisfaction with a loveless marriage. The


Baudelaire poem is in fact about a perfect union of two lovers (lines 

not quoted in the film): "Our two hearts will be two immense torches,/ 

Which will reflect their double lights/In our two minds, these twin 

mirrors" ["Nos deux coeurs seront deux vastes llambeaux,/Qui réfléchiront 

leurs doubles lumières/Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs 

jumeaux"]. But what Madame Beudet "sees" in her mind's eye—each 

image prefaced by a fade-in and closed by a fade-to-black—are the 

Beudets' empty bed, their neatly stacked pillows, and the vase of 

flowers that has become a symbol of their confrontation. In response 

to the poem's invocation of spiritual doubling, then, images of her 

alienated life emphasize Madame Beudet's sense of isolation. The 

punctuating fades signify her thoughts as she tries to conjure, from 

her own experiences, images of "beds wafted with light scents" ["des 

lits pleins d'odeurs légères"], "couches deep as tombs" ["des divans 

profonds comme des tombeaux"], and "strange flowers" ["d'étranges 

fleurs"]. But the vague perfume, the suggested swoon, the exoticism 

of the poem are lost in the bland reality of her life's objects. She throws 

the book down in disgust. Thus the spectator's first entry into Madame 

Beudet's feelings is guided by the character's own cognitive powers of 

imagination and the ensuing frustration when these efforts fail. 

The Maid 

The spectator goes deeper into Madame Beudet's unconscious mind— 

but only for an instant—in the next sub-segment. In a conventional 

exchange of the reverse-shot structure, the maid enters and asks if she 

may go out with her fiance (the question is rendered in an intertitle). 

The only two shots of Madame Beudet in this segment (indicating her 

reply by a sad nod of the head) surround the first truly imaginary 

apparition of the sequence. In a single close-up of the maid, the 

fiance is made to appear, kiss her cheek, then disappear through a 

superimposition that dissolves in and out. Framed as it is by identical 

images of Madame Beudet in American-shot, this sequence of shots 

implies her own mental projection of a loving relationship. This image 

of desire is thus a foreshadowing of things to come: Madame Beudet 

will only experience the love she longs for through an imaginary 

scenario of her own creation. 

Imprisonment 

The sub-segment treating Madame Beudet's sensation of entrapment 

is marked by signifiers of imprisonment and chronological time. 

Clocks, associated with calculated and measurable time, and thus with 

the mercantile mentality of Monsieur Beudet, first seem to harass her 


by appearing everywhere she turns. Thus a strict alternation of closeups 

("psychological shots" of Madame Beudet back-lit in a shadowy 

halo effect, then various clock faces and clanging bells) terminates 

with a close-up, accentuated by a hazy iris, of Madame Beudet's eyes, 

another image in a paradigm of shots of this kind. In this way, the 

experimental flow of the subjective time of consciousness (perhaps 

emphasized by the "luminous halo" that surrounds Madame Beudet, 

and calling to mind Virginia Woolfs definition of life as "a luminous 

halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning 

of consciousness to the end") l6 

is cinematically contrasted with metonymies 

of the implacable and ordered movement of chronological time. 

This contrast is then condensed into one striking, emblematic image 

that is repeated in various avatars for three shots. Madame Beudet, in 

medium-close-up, stands before a mantelpiece mirror and rests her 

head on a glass clock cover. Where the signifying function of editing 

had contrasted the two types of temporality across the cut, the temporal 

registers are now juxtaposed by a form of internal montage that 

relates elements within the frame among themselves. 

Madame Beudet's sensation of temporal oppression is matched with 

one of spatial entrapment in the remaining shots of the segment. 

Once again, this is provided by a metonymy, this time of physical 

imprisonment: a penitentiary. After an intertitle that announces (a bit 

too literally), "Always the same horizons. ..." close-ups of Madame 

Beudet in profile looking out the window enclose shots of a dreary 

provincial doorway and its facade that reads "House of Detention 

and Corrections." There is perhaps a problem with this notion of an 

objective correlative that relies too heavily on the content of the image 

to convey a state of mind. Images of clocks and prisons remain too 

anchored in their referents to fully achieve the suggestive evocation 

of the Symbolists. It is conceivable that at this point Dulac would have 

been more successful if she had adopted a pattern of accelerated 

montage, for example, which might have allowed the spectator to 

experience the feeling of suffocation more readily. Nonetheless, in 

terms of the overall structure of the sequence, this segment largely 

functions as preparation for the more viable imaginary production, 

Madame Beudet's "Fantasy of the Phantom Lover," and thus successfully 

contrasts an overt referentiality with what is ultimately the most 

fantasmatic sequence of the film. 

Fantasy of the Phantom Lover 

Here "fantasy" refers to the fulfillment of a wish by means of the 

production of an imaginary scene in which the subject (in this case,


the character Madame Beudet) is the protagonist. It is distinguished 

from the world of imaginative activity in general by its profound and 

systematic relations of desire: "[ T]he primary function of phantasy [is] 

namely the mise-en-scene of desire—a mise-en-scene in which what is 

prohibited (línterdit) is always present in the actual formation of the 

wish." 17 

Thus in terms of the film, Madame Beudet has engaged in 

imaginative activity of a conscious or subliminal kind up until this 

point in the sequence. Now, in order to convey the transition into the 

"dream-state" which makes imaginary production of a fantasmatic sort 

possible, Dulac has recourse to the figure of the "double." 

First, in American-shot, Madame Beudet slumps into a chair, recalling 

the habitual gesture of Emma Bovary that characteristically precedes 

her transports of vague desire ("She sank down into an aimchair"). 

The next shot—an axis-match close-up of Madame Beudet 

which dissolves into and then fills the frame—provides us with her 

double, the character who will act as protagonist in her ensuing fantasy. 

This Madame Beudet turns her head and looks off toward left frame 

as the image fades to black. Suddenly, the apparition, the phantasm, 

the phantom lover appears in a doorway—a blurred, superimposed 

image, advancing on air, arms outstretched. The corresponding closeup 

discloses Madame Beudet's hands in a gesture of response. The 

following shot, rendered hazy by a sort of reverse-iris effect which 

frames Madame Beudet's face in a halo of light, reveals her ecstatic 

smile—her only genuine smile in the entire film. 

Whereas Madame Beudet's laughter, discussed earlier with the action 

of the tennis-player, had the effect of an unexpected eruption, 

here her smile emphatically retains something of an enigmatic quality. 

It is a smile of puissance, of orgasmic ecstasy, of an expressiveness not 

seen on Madame Beudet's face before or since. This has the effect of 

suggesting a kind of condensation of woman's sexuality, of undecipherability, 

and of pleasure in a momentary image that is as uncertain 

as it is fleeting. And it is in this sense that the earlier laughter (related 

to an imagined vision) prepares this moment, a moment which is 

particularly significant in that it is linked precisely to the "representation" 

of the fantasmatic object of desire. For this reason, it is this smile 

which carries the weight of the film's title. Completely enclosed in an 

imaginary, subjective realm which has been prepared by the entire 

sequence, it is this smile to which all of the action returns, this smile 

that signifies at the same time the desire of the character, the filmmaker, 

and the spectator herself. 

But the signifier of contradiction appears in an intertitle 

("But. . . . "). A close-up of Madame Beudet's eyes, framed in an iris 

Beudet and Seashell / 11 1 

and now looking toward the right of the frame, prepares the way 

for the following shot—a high-contrast, distorted image of Monsieur 

Beudet's grinning face. As if to oppose the harsh reality of the marriage 

evoked by this image with the possible excitement and suggestive 

sexuality offered by the fantasy, the shot of the phantom lover is 

repeated. Subsequent shots reveal Madame Beudet tossing her wedding 

ring until the segment's final shot irises on her hand, the ling 

firmly back in place. 

Throughout this sub-segment, then, Madame Beudet's fantasmatic 

projection is rendered through an alternation of shots: her "double" 

seeing, the imagined representations seen. Her hallucination of the 

phantom lover confronts the memory of her oppressive husband in a 

scenario that subsumes desire to the law. The figure of the double, 

indicating the dream-state necessary to the production of this fantasm, 

also functions to induce the spectator's participation in this production. 

It is by virtue of this double that Madame Beudet becomes a character 

in her own fiction. Likewise, the viewer twice removed (watching Madame 

Beudet watching her fantasm), becomes a credulous participant 

in the hallucination, spectator to the fantasy-within-a-fantasy offered 

by the film, and equal participant in her desire. 

Monsieur Beudet's Haunting Appearances 

The penultimate sub-segment of the "fantasy-solitude" sequence elaborates 

on the horrific appearance of Monsieur Beudet, as subsequent 

shots render him capable, even in his absence, of preventing Madame 

Beudet's fantasy of escape. This is the longest sub-segment in the 

sequence, and as such demonstrates his power, both narratively and 

textually, to foreclose his wife's desire. The segment opens as Madame 

Beudet, still seated in the armchair, jumps up, startled. The image of 

Monsieur Beudet, made even more grotesque through a variety of 

technical procedures from bizarre camera angles and distorting lenses 

to both fast and slow motion, appears in nine of the segment's nineteen 

shots, alternating (in general) with close-ups of a terrorized Madame 

Beudet. 

The effect is such that he seems to surge up wherever Madame 

Beudet, in increasing panic, turns. First he bounds over the balcony 

in slow motion. This apparition differs from that of the phantom lover 

in that while the latter, an imaginary creation of Madame Beudet, 

appeared from an imagined doorway in a barely distinguishable softfocus 

haze. Monsieur Beudet, a remembered figure, climbs through 

the window of the Beudet apartment and has some degree of corporeality. 

He grimaces, grins, and laughs in subsequent images, chasing


her in accelerated motion, pushing the flowers to the center of the 

table in slow motion, demanding that she adjust his collar. These 

last three are characteristic gestures, memories of Monsieur Beudet's 

behavior that now haunt Madame Beudet as she sees him before her 

eyes. The image of her fear thus concretized, these gestures culminate 

in a repetition of Monsieur Beudet's parodic suicide joke. And as he 

disappears from the frame in this final haunting image, leaving the 

empty desk, Madame Beudet's "resolution" to load the gun seems the 

logical conclusion. 

The Seashell and the Clergyman 

A dream on the screen—The most recent psychological research has established 

that the dream, far from being a formless and chaotic mass of images, 

always tends to organize itself according to precisely defined rules, and thus 

has its own—affective and symbolic—logic. Consequently, someone else's 

dream (if we were able to see it) would be capable of moving us as effectively 

as any other spectacle, by addressing not our logic and our intellectual 

comprehension, but this obscure and unconscious sensibility which elaborates 

our own dreams for us. Such is the bold attempt of poet Antonin 

Artaud, who has proposed a scenario made of a dream: The Seashell and the 

Clergyman. Madame Germaine Dulac has just finished making this film . . . 

and we can expect that [she] has surpassed herself in this effort of the avantgarde. 

It concerns a dream which is not enclosed in any kind of story and 

which each spectator will have to understand, or better, experience uniquely 

according to the resources of his own personal sensibility. 18 

With The Seashell and the Clergyman, Dulac extends her concern with 

the mechanisms of the unconscious by shifting her focus from a fantasy 

of which a fictional character is the subject to the fantasmatic process 

itself. Thus, while her interest in the processes of the psyche remains 

constant, one of the things that marks the difference between the two 

films is a modification in the type of spectatorial involvement required 

by each text. Whereas in Beudet, as we have seen, the spectator is made 

to identify with a specific character whose thoughts, dreams, and 

fantasies are represented within the confines of a fiction, what Seashell 

elicits is the spectator's actual participation, as the subject of the fantasm, 

in the experience of those psychic processes themselves. And it 

is here that the consequences for the exploration and expression of 

desire, and of feminine desire in particular, are most provocative. In 

Beudet, Dulac had conceived of her female character's unconscious 

desires as specific objects capable of being rendered on the screen 

through formal means: here, in Seashell, she uses the female figure


precisely as a representation, thematizing woman as a force of desire 

within the production of the filmic writing itself. 

In order to have a better understanding of the radical feminist 

potential of a film like Seashell, it is first necessary to grasp the distinction 

between the mobilization of spectator identification through a 

fictional construct and the production of a liberated and active viewing 

subjectivity—a distinction that characterizes the specific procedures of 

the two films. As discussed earlier in relation to the entire cinematic 

apparatus, contemporary film theory posits that the film spectator is 

in some sense "constructed" in and by the viewing experience, and 

that fictive participation in the film's events has its roots in fantasy. As 

is evident from the analysis of Madame Beudet's imaginings, "Even 

where they can be summed up in a single sentence, phantasies are still 

scripts . . . of organized scenes which are capable of dramatization— 

usually in a visual form." 19 

Within this framework of a wishfulfilling 

staging of desire, all fantasmatic production is conceived as a relation 

to a representation, a relation of the subject born of loss and marked 

by the perpetual impossibility of satisfaction. The desiring process, 

then, is one of infinite circulation, of endless displacement from representation 

to representation. And it is the intersection of film and 

unconscious fantasy around a concept of "dramatization" that accounts 

for the mobilization of the spectator's desire in the viewing 

situation. 

It is this dramatization which connects Seashell to Beudet in terms of 

Dulac's feminist project. Certain formulations of the Surrealist film 

conceived it as a textual space in which various psychic forces were 

made to interact—in short, they posited a notion of film as textual 

process. Alain and Odette Virmaux's definition of the Surrealist film 

as "a means of exploring the profound life of consciousness, obsessions, 

and fantasms in their spontaneous and irrational eruption" 20 

foregrounds this staging of psychic processes at the base of the Surrealist 

film's textuality. It can be successfully argued that Seashell, undeniably 

acknowledged as the first example of Surrealist cinema (both 

chronologically and aesthetically), represents the earliest attempt to 

cinematically render these unconscious forces in a way that engages 

the viewer in a process of identification with the film-text itself, rather 

than with any specific fictional construct. Once liberated from the 

constraints of both character and plot, these forces are thus free to 

circulate on the screen with all the energy of unconscious drives themselves. 

A film like Seashell, then, facilitates the spectator's own—and 

unique—participation in the meaning-production process without recourse 

to the traditional mechanisms of identification.


As noted earlier, Dulac's film is based on a script by the revolutionary 

poet and dramatist Antonin Artaud. This double authorship has been 

the source of much critical confusion, for the riot that accompanied 

the film's inaugural screening on February 9, 1928, has led to extensive 

debates concerning artistic theory, intentionality, and cinematic transcription 

from verbal to visual text. 21 

What interests me here, however, 

is the way that Seashell's articulation of hallucinatory dream-images is 

consistent with Dulac's exploration of unconscious processes throughout 

her career and how, in fact, this suggests possibilities for the 

conceptualization and representation of feminine desire. My concern 

is with how a concept of "femininity" is produced in the text of Seashell, 

and for this reason the textual markers of authorship are of more 

significance than the particulars of the debate between individuals. It 

is within this context that I consider both Dulac and Artaud as having 

similar conceptions of the film and compatible impulses behind its 

realization. For the present analysis, I thus emphasize the correspondence 

of authorial voices. 22 

To attempt to describe the "plot" of Seashell is to immediately situate 

oneself within its central problematic, for the film consists of a series 

of moments connected associatively without any regard for narrative 

logic or causality. It is precisely the unpredictability and confusion of 

dreams that Artaud sought in his scenario, a succession of images "in 

a film constructed according to the dark and hidden rules of the 

unconscious," images that would follow each other despotically, arbitrarily, 

relentlessly in a "poetry of the unconscious . . . which is the only 

poetry possible." 23 

This pure poetry of visual elements was intended to 

approximate subjectivity by recreating the impact of the dream as it is 

being dreamed: "[The Seashell and the Clergyman attempts] to find, in the 

occult birth and wanderings of feeling and thought, the deep reasons, 

the active and veiled impulses of our so-called lucid acts[.] [This] 

scenario can resemble, can be related to the mechanism of a dream without 

actually being a dream itself. [It seeks to] restore the pure work of 

thought." 24 

Thus a simple outline of the visual situations that follow 

each other for no apparent reason is the closest one can come to a 

narrative description, for the significance of each sequence of images 

comes from its suggestive relationship (its representation of thought 

processes) rather than from its content (its motivation through character 

development). 

A clergyman (Alex Allin) fills beakers with a black liquid from an 

oyster shell, then lets them shatter on the floor; a general (Lucien 

Bataille) arrives and brandishes his saber; the clergyman follows him 

through the city streets to a church, where an astonishingly beautiful 


woman in eighteenth-century attire (Genica Athanasiou) suddenly 

appears. There is a confrontation in the confessional, as the officer 

abruptly becomes a priest; after tossing the priest from a cliff, the 

clergyman takes the latter's place in the confessional, then, confronting 

the woman, rips off her bodice, which turns into a carapace of shellshaped 

armor. There is next a wildly dancing society crowd into which 

a royal couple (the general and the woman) arrives, followed by the 

clergyman brandishing first the seashell and then the carapace; as he 

momentarily sees another apparition of the woman, he drops the carapace, 

which disappears in flames. His coattails then grow and expand 

across the parquet floor; suddenly, he is chasing the woman down a 

country road, as she metamorphoses (through close-ups) into a series of 

facial distortions; he continues to chase her through several hallways 

with closing doors until, finally, he enters a room where there is a large 

globe on a pedestal. He beckons to the unseen woman, captures her 

head, and places it inside the ball; now jauntily trying his key on a number 

of doors, the clergyman again sees the royal couple and this time 

pursues them both through the hallways and on the country road. 

Pounding fists wake the clergyman, who is asleep on a hammock on a 

ship; he spies the general and the woman kissing, a sight that prompts 

an attempt to strangle her fantasized neck in a movement that initiates 

a series of dreamlike images of glittering stalactites, islands, shimmering 

water, a tiny sailing ship, mist. Abruptly, a corps of maids emerges into 

a room, busily dusting as the woman, now a governess, takes charge; 

there is a couple (an unseen man and the woman) with tennis rackets, 

then a return to the maids who clean the globe as a group of butlers 

arrives. A return to the tennis scene precedes the arrival in the room of 

the clergyman and the woman now as a wedding couple; a close-up of 

the clergyman's head initiates a series of dream-images which are displayed 

on four different portions of his face. Suddenly, the headless 

clergyman descends the stairs, holding the glass ball; he then arrives in 

the room as the servants line up; a panning shot of their eyes causes 

the clergyman to drop the globe, which shatters on the floor, his face 

emerging among the shards. He stands, now with the oyster shell in his 

hand, then drinks from the shell that has his head in it, and the film ends 

as he drinks the black liquid—and his own image—which pours from 

the seashell. 

Again it is Artaud's words that clarify this apparent narrative confusion 

and indicate the profound systemalicity at work beneath the film's 

surface disorientation. "The Seashell and the Clergyman does not tell a 

story, but develops a series of states of mind, just as one thought 

derives from another, without needing to reproduce a logical sequence


of events. From the clash of objects and gestures, true psychic situations 

are derived, and from these, rational thinking, trapped, can only seek 

a subtle escape." 25 

What is particularly illuminating for the purposes of this chapter is 

the manner in which an emphasis on psychic processes eliminates the 

distinction between internal and external necessitated by the conventional 

fiction film, for it is precisely this latter kind of film that must 

develop narrative alibis and rational explanations for the appearance 

of every one of its images. In the traditional film, a veneer of narrative 

complications acts as an explanatory frame for the arbitrariness of the 

subjective images, whereas in Seashell, the absence of this frame allows 

the spectator to actually participate in the fantasmatic process. 

Far from being a facile depiction of dream associations on the screen, 

therefore, Seashell attempts to reproduce—for the spectator's active engagement—the 

actual production process of desire, its perpetual metamorphoses 

as it circulates from representation to representation. And 

it is no coincidence that this is associated specifically with the representation 

of the female figure, for throughout the text the elusive quality 

of the female figure is equated with that of desire in its evanescence. 

The woman's image is repeatedly generated as a fantasm of vision 

throughout the film—femininity is thematized as desire itself. Therefore, 

conceptions of the "feminine" do not disappear from Seashell, 

but are reoriented so that they are associated more fundamentally 

with unconscious processes. 

Artaud's understanding of this is quite apparent in his description 

of the female character (portrayed by the woman with whom he was 

still passionately and desperately in love, although he was at the time 

in the process of ending their long and intense affair): "The woman 

displays her animal desire, she has the shape of her desire, the spectral 

shimmering of the instinct which drives her to be at the same time one 

and ceaselessly different in her repeated metamorphoses." 26 

In the 

film, Dulac was able to emphasize the fantasmatic quality of this female 

ligure through expressive lighting, through soft-focus and hazy iris 

effects, and through sudden appearances and disappearances that 

enhanced her ephemeral status as an apparition. The figure of the 

woman thus emerges in Seashell, repeatedly in different guises, as a 

concrete, visual manifestation of unconscious forces of desire. According 

to Artaud, again, the woman was meant to portray "a role which 

is entirely instinctive, one in which a very surprising sexuality takes on 

an air of fatality that goes beyond the character as a human being and 

attains the universal." 27 

It is clear from both Artaud's intent and Dulac's 

cinematic articulation of it, then, that the mediations of the subjective 


consciousness of a character, the rationalizations of narrative complications 

are not only unnecessary, they are strictly forbidden: This image 

of the woman is continually presented as representation. Thus rather 

than a figure with a referent in the actual world, a personality with 

depth of characterization, Génica Athanasiou's appearances materialize 

the actual production process of the image itself—an image of the 

woman as desire. However, it is extremely important to understand 

that both Artaud and Dulac in no way attempt to ascertain "the truth 

of woman" in this film, nor do they posit any social generalities of 

gender. Rather than suggesting an essentialist association of woman 

and instinct, or the particularities of personality, both scenarist and 

filmmaker place their emphasis on the dynamic and protean variations 

that the woman's form assumes. By foregrounding the fantasmatic 

nature of this image of the woman—as an imaginary production, with 

the capacity of simulacrum, of memory, of hallucinated vision—the 

female figure in Seashell thus provides a sustained reflection on the 

construction and production of femininity both in the film and within 

its cultural and psychic contexts. 

Another point to be made in relation to Artaud's positing of sexuality 

over personality in the construction of the female image concerns his 

reference to the "surprising" sexuality of the woman (in the passage 

just cited). Like most of Artaud's language, the term "une sexualité 

très curieuse" defies literal translation, for the very "curiosity" that 

seems self-evident in its meaning explodes in a number of allusive 

directions once it slides from French to English. What is peculiar to 

the meticulous or inquisitive investigator—attracting and retaining the 

attention of the pursuit—becomes almost meaningless as an attribute 

when used to modify "sexuality." What remains, instead, are the 

strange, the surprising and the singular—qualities of the rare and the 

extraordinary. How contradictory, then, that Artaud should choose a 

word designating an astonishing uniqueness in order to describe the 

characteristic that makes his female "universal." It is precisely within 

this complication that Dulac chose to situate her elaboration of "femininity" 

in this film, for the very elusiveness of definition is what characterizes 

her female form. 

A brief exploration of Artaud's descriptions of the feminine figure 

in the scenario and Dulac's cinematic actualizations of them might be 

useful in this light. As previously noted, at a very superficial level, 

none of the "characters" in Seashell conforms to traditional notions of 

character elaboration and development. Yet even at the outset, by 

virtue of her ephemeral quality and the clergyman's fascinated pursuit, 

the woman's image is secured as central to the cinematic fiction. This


"very beautiful" woman's figure, in various aspects, characterizations, 

and symbolic forms, constantly and unexpectedly appears throughout 

the film, as the clergyman, a consciousness in search of itself, pursues 

her. 

However, in order to avoid an immediate and superficial reading 

of the film as romantic quest, I should point out that Seashell neither 

begins nor concludes with this pursuit of the woman. Rather, if an 

interpretation must be posited (and it should be noted that Artaud 

had excised "everything that had a poetic or literary quality" in the 

decoupage he sent to Dulac), the film has as much to do with the 

clergyman's quest for identity as it does with romantic aspirations. The 

film thus both opens and closes with the clergyman alone, in a circular 

reiteration of images that assures the association of clergyman, liquid, 

seashell, and self. This equivocation of interpretations is intentional: 

Artaud and Dulac were less interested in the character's psychological 

narrative—be it of identity or of romance—than they were in dramatizing 

fundamental operations of the psyche. Instead of a single protagonist—male 

or female—used to focus and organize the identificatory 

processes of the spectator, then, there is a multiplicity of positions 

available within the fantasmatic scenario, a scenario which, in fact, 

comprises the entire film. It is this form of dispersed subjectivity that 

puts the viewer, rather than the character, in the place of the desiring 

producer of the fantasm, and in so doing, unfixes notions of the 

singular self, and of "masculinity" and "femininity" as well. Numerous 

relations of identification with both characters and functions make 

the film's "story" a series of dramatized relationships and narrative 

moments in a psychosexual dynamic—and the spectator perpetually 

slides between and among them. 

A form of spectatorial identification with fantasmatic activity itself 

thus allows the female figure to function as a representation in the 

dream-space of the film, a generalized social and psychic articulation 

of "femininity" as it is produced from situation to situation. It is in this 

sense that the overall "narrative" structure of both scenario and film 

achieves the dream-logic so important to Artaud, and thereby permits 

the rendering of sexuality as a process unrestricted by prior definitions. 

Both Dulac and Artaud agreed that a film's structural coherence 

should emerge from within the text itself rather than from an organizing 

principle external to it. In fact, Artaud was not against the notion 

of the dream per se, but against its use as an alibi to justify the bold 

technical maneuvers of the film. In his preface to Seashell, immediately 

after his famous disclaimer ("I will not seek to excuse its incoherence 

by the easy loop-hole of dreams"), Artaud is quick to point out the 


importance of the film's internal logic: "Dreams have a logic of their 

own—but more than that, they have a life of their own in which 

nothing but dark and intelligent truths appear. This scenario seeks 

out the somber truth of the mind, in images emerging uniquely from 

themselves, images which . . . draw their meaning . . . from a sort of 

powerful inner necessity which projects them in the light of a merciless 

obviousness (evidence sans recours)."28 

But although his evocation of these "somber truths" demonstrates 

a profound understanding of the mechanisms of the unconscious, 

Artaud most definitely objects to traditional notions of psychology, 

personality, and behavior. Thus he emphatically counterposes this 

self-engendering power of the image to the facile explanatory coherence 

of narrative or of psychology. Again in the preface he is quite 

explicit on this point: "In the scenario that follows I have attempted 

to realize this idea of a visual cinema in which even psychology is 

devoured by acts. No doubt this scenario does not achieve the absolute 

image of all that might be done in this direction; but at least it points 

the way. Not that the cinema must renounce all human psychology. 

That is not its principle. On the contrary, it must give this psychology 

a much more vital and active form—and this without those discursive 

connections which attempt to make the motives for our actions appear 

in an absolutely stupid light instead of exposing them to us in their 

original and profound barbarity." 29 

And it is here that the distinction critical to a feminist reading of the 

film emerges, for in eliminating psychology as a means of rational 

explanation or interpretation, the full psychic force of the unconscious 

as a signifying system becomes apparent. Screen images and sequences 

thus become violently evocative stimuli for the viewer's own intuitive 

and psychic processes, chosen for their powerful immediacy and capacity 

to move rather than for their discursive ability to delineate 

fictional constructs, male or female. In this context, then, the viewer 

is continually engaged in the activity of meaning-production through 

textual instances that actualize psychic forces: "characters" become 

generalized cultural constructs—symbolic representations of masculinity 

and femininity, of patriarchal authority and female sexuality in 

a circuit of desire. It is along these lines that the appearance of the 

woman's figure in the film—as spectral apparition rather than as substantial 

character—must be understood. Through each incarnation, 

through each elusive moment, the woman in Seashell achieves exactly 

that directness of the "purely visual situations whose dramatic action 

springs from a shock designed for the eyes, a shock founded . . . on 

the very substance of the gaze" 30 

that Artaud called for and that the


dream-work implies. It is in this sense that the images of libidinal 

violence, of perverse sexuality, and of passion must be understood. 

There is an even more important point: Artaud envisioned The 

Seashell and the Clergyman as the film that would tear the cinema away 

from its status as reflection, reproduction, and representation of the 

real, and in so doing demonstrate its capacity to signify the unrepresentable—the 

fantasmatic world of hallucinations, metamorphoses 

and desires. Yet it is only—and specifically—the figure of the woman 

that bears the full weight of this project. For while the clergyman 

remains clothed in his ecclesiastic frock throughout the film, the patriarchal 

figure likewise alternating between military uniform and 

priestly robes, it is the female figure alone who undergoes no fewer 

than ten transformations of attire. From billowing eighteenth-century 

gown and feathered bonnet to slender black silk dress with train, from 

a flowing Empire-style garment to the dark high-collared outfit of a 

governess, from the contemporary tennis outfit of pleated skirt and 

sweater to the filmy simplicity of a wedding gown, the image of the 

woman perpetually reappears, as variable as she is elusive. Her changes 

of costume correspond to changes of function in the representation 

of the sexual dynamic, as she repeatedly forms a different couple 

with each of the men at different times. A closer look at her varied 

appearances throughout the film will demonstrate the way in which 

a sense of almost "physical intoxication" is achieved through these 

repeated metamorphoses of the visual embodied in the female ligure. 

The first indication of the woman in Seashell emerges unexpectedly: 

She is seated in a horse-drawn carriage beside the officer whom we 

recognize from the film's first sequence. Artaud's scenaric indications 

are even devoid of a verb—the officer is simply seen "with a very 

beautiful white-haired woman." 31 This sudden emergence of the female 

figure is depicted in the film by means of the first in a series of 

"impossible" points of view. The initial two shots of the carriage show 

it traversing the frame from different sides, intercut with images of 

the clergyman crawling in the street. As he crawls around the corner 

of a building, we see him suddenly lurch upward, as a close-up reveals a 

horrified expression on his face. The "reverse-shot" is a close-mediumshot 

of the woman seated in the carriage, making our first encounter 

with her one signalled by her status as an object of vision. As spectators, 

we see the woman in a way impossible for the clergyman, given both 

his distance from the carriage and his position behind it. Yet his 

reaction is vividly portrayed, and the force of the woman as haunting 

vision, replayed throughout the film, is secured from the start. 

As the scenario describes it, the officer and the woman enter a 


church; once they are in the confessional together, the clergyman leaps 

on the officer, who turns into a priest. At this point, Artaud indicates that 

the priest should appear differently to the clergyman and the woman. 

Dulac conveys this sequence in a way which emphasizes the ephemeral 

beauty of the woman: As the woman and the officer form a primal couple 

in the confessional (a shot that opens and closes the sequence, its 

repetition acting as a frame), shots of the clergyman begin to alternate 

with shots of the woman, alone in the frame. A close-up of the clergyman's 

eyes, framed by a soft iris, initiates a strikingly lovely shot of the 

woman—a frontal close-up of her face, isolated and enhanced by the 

hazy lighting that surrounds it. The episode in which the clergyman 

strangles the priest is elaborated in a separate sequence. Artaud designates 

a number of separate close-ups of the priest to indicate his different 

demeanors, "aimiable and complaisant when [his face] appears to 

the woman, savage, bitter, and menacing when it considers the clergyman." 

In a sequence of roughly twenty-five shots, Dulac utilizes a variety 

of technical devices, including an original and inventive use of split 

screen, superimpositions, a wide range of high and low angles, distorting 

lenses, and larger or smaller close-ups to convey the violence of the 

episode and the gamut of expressive attitudes evoked by the scene. At 

this point, the female character's face expresses love or shock, concomitant 

with the emotions designated by the scenario. 

In a subsequent episode, it is now the woman and the clergyman 

who are in the confessional, and as the clergyman's rage develops, the 

film follows the scenario's description fairly closely. Allin's anger is 

accompanied by pounding fists and paroxysms of gesticulation, while 

the image of the woman maintains its evanescent stature. Once again, 

a close-up of astonishing beauty, this time of Genica Athanasiou's eyes 

surrounded by a gauzed iris, renders the woman in all her seductive 

loveliness while the scenario says simply, "The woman stands before 

him, looking." Through the metonymy of the close-up of the eyes, 

Dulac thus materializes the act of looking in a provocative way, making 

the eyes, which look themselves, the object of the (spectator's) gaze. I 

will return to this shortly. 

The responding shot, a masked close-up of the clergyman's eyes, 

initiates the next sequence, one which has, because of its violence and 

the fairly obvious misogyny of its literal denotation, been seized upon 

by traditional feminist criticism. The clergyman "throws himself upon 

[the woman] and tears off her bodice as if he had wished to lacerate 

her breasts. But her breasts are replaced by a carapace of shells." Yet 

this can only be interpreted as an act of psychologically motivated 

violence within the context of a conventional narrative film; here, 1


maintain, both Dulac and Artaud are interested in the libidinal force 

of the gesture—in its function as a representable instance in the dream- 

work—and in these terms it is one of many "purely visual situations" 

that constitute the film. 

Therefore, the apparition of the woman, a spectral vision that 

freezes the clergyman in terror or incites him to violence throughout 

the film, must not be interpreted as a sign of Artaud's sexist fear of 

women. Rather, these sudden, disturbing unexpected appearances— 

at once horrifying and seductive—are instances of the visual shock 

"founded on the very substance of the gaze," images in which the 

woman—as a figure of desire—evokes ambivalent sexuality, passionate 

obsession, and libidinal violence. In a subsequent episode of the film— 

after another of the woman's protean transformations into a queen in 

a royal couple, her absorption into the air (done through a dissolve), 

and her reappearance in a different corner of the room (this time 

portrayed in hazy iris as a mythical figure in flowing white robe and 

long hair)—the clergyman reacts: "This apparition seems to terrify 

the clergyman," indicates the scenario, as he drops the carapace-breastplate 

he has been brandishing. This sequence, then, makes use of the 

cinematic reaction-shot to convey pure dynamic emotive processes, 

for, as Artaud maintains, "There is no hidden significance of a psychological, 

metaphysical, or even human[istic] kind." 32 

This initiates another sequence which condenses a number of the 

"repealed metamorphoses" intended by Artaud to convey that "fantasmatic 

shimmering" of desire. As the woman and the clergyman run 

wildly, distractedly in the night, 

Their flight is intercut with successive apparitions of the woman in diverse 

attitudes [another translation refers to this as "hallucinatory sequences with 

the woman in various guises. ... "]: Sometimes her cheek is enormously 

swollen, sometimes she slicks out her tongue, which stretches out to infinity 

as the clergyman clutches it as if it were a rope. Sometimes her chest swells 

out horribly. 

At the end of their course, we see the clergyman entering a hallway and 

the woman behind him swimming in a sort of sky. 33 

These words are in Artaud's description, and Dulac utilized the full 

extent of her skill and imagination to transform these to the screen. 

All of the distortions are filmed against a very black background, 

something that contrasts with the intense sunlight of the chase sequence 

with which they are interspersed; this also emphasizes the 

spectral and illusory quality of these varied metamorphoses. Through 


the use of distorting lenses, wipes, superimpositions, and rotating 

prisms and lenses, a number of deformations are wrought on the 

feminine figure. Yet in some strange way, none of these is as horrific 

as the images of Monsieur Beudet in the earlier film, although many 

of the same devices are used. This demonstrates fairly graphically, 

therefore, that while the effects in Beudet are aimed at conveying an 

interpretation of character already formulated when the film was shot, 

the focus here is on processes—the conditions of representability at 

work in both unconscious and filmic figuration which it is Seashell's 

project to represent. 

Shortly after this, a sequence of the film occurs that has lent itself 

to the strongest attacks by traditional feminist criticism. The clergyman 

"raises his arms in the air as if he were embracing the body of a 

woman." Then, once his hold is secured, he throws himself upon it, 

strangling it "with expressions of unheard-of sadism," introducing 

the severed head into a glass bowl. Standard interpretations of this 

sequence find still another instance of violence wrought on women, 

yet a reading of both the scenario and the film's images reveals other 

meanings instead. The scenario clearly indicates that what the clergyman 

grabs hold of is a "shadow, a sort of invisible double," thereby 

permitting the "elle" on which he flings himself to be interpreted as 

either the woman or the shadow (which is feminine in French). And 

although it is true that the head that gradually appears in the ball in 

close-up is a woman's face, throughout the film the textual work has 

established an association between the woman and the clergyman's 

identity, between his pursuit of her and his quest for self. Substantiating 

this is the fact that near the close of the film, it is the clergyman's 

head that appears amid the shards of the broken glass ball. And it is 

this head that is placed on the oyster shell, the clergyman's own head, 

which "melts" and becomes the dark liquid that he drinks in the film's 

final shots. Indeed, it is not a "real" female character which has been 

captured and subdued in the film, but an image of the woman, as 

phantom, as specter, as shadow of desire. 

As noted before, there are other transformations of the female 

figure in the film: she appears as a governess, as a young girl, and as 

a bride. Yet one additional sequence stands out in the film, for it 

materializes the libidinal force of the primal scene in a sequence of 

eight shots whose very economy seems to illustrate Artaud's belief in 

the powerful directness of the cinema and its ability to bypass the 

distortion of verbal language and rational thought. Artaud's description 

in the scenario is as follows:


The clergyman finds himself in a ship's cabin. He gets up from his bunk 

and goes out to the ship's bridge. The officer is there, in chains. Now the 

clergyman seems to meditate and pray, but when he raises his head, at the 

level of his eyes, two mouths which touch each other reveal to him, at the 

side of the officer, the presence of a woman who was not there a moment 

ago. The body of the woman rests horizontally in the air. 

Then a paroxysm shakes him. It seems as if the fingers of each of his two 

hands were seeking a neck. 34 

Dulac renders this in a sequence whose shots (one action per shot) 

are all connected by dissolves, contributing to the nocturnal, dreamlike 

quality of the episode. Six shots constitute the crux of the sequence, 

laying out this miniature scenario of vision in terms of positions held 

by its protagonists. First, the officer is seen in long-shot, standing, 

asleep, by a pile of boxes on the ship's deck. The clergyman enters the 

frame from the left foreground, and turning, assuming a position of 

half-wakeful spectatorship, leaning against a pillar as if in a daze or a 

dream. A dissolve to the next shot reveals the officer, now in mediumshot, 

looking up slowly (decelerated motion) toward the top right edge 

of the frame. A parallel movement in the next shot discloses Allin, in 

close-medium-shot, looking slowly down and then left. The next shot, 

a medium-close-up of the officer, is interrupted by the spectral appearance, 

through a dissolve, of the woman's head; she leans over and 

kisses the officer. Now, as can be anticipated, a shot discloses all three 

figures—the "parental" couple in the background, kissing (as the woman's 

leaning body appears horizontal), and the clergyman in Americanshot 

in the foreground, making his characteristic clutching gesture. 

Finally, the sequence is terminated by a close-up of Allin's head; he 

first looks off frame right toward the couple, then turns his head 

frontally, revealing a horrified expression. 

This scene-within-a-scene encapsulates and reiterates the fantasmatic 

drama of spectatorship, a drama which, in The Seashell and the 

Clergyman, is played out through the circulation of figures of desire, 

figures of generalized sexual identity whose movements are not justified 

by narrative peregrinations. And it is here that the cinematic 

image of the woman assumes its full erotic force. As spectral illusion, 

as hallucinated vision, she is the reappearing phantom who draws the 

clergyman—and the viewer—into seeing things which are not there. 

And precisely because of her ephemeral quality, an undecipherability 

as powerful as it is evasive, the feminine figure allows something of 

Artaud's vision of the spectator to be achieved: "The mind is affected 

outside of all representation. This sort of virtual power of the image 

finds hitherto unutilized possibilities in the very depths of the mind." 35 


It seems appropriate to return now, momentarily, to the scene of 

the confessional, for it condenses a number of the film's procedures 

with a kind of striking immediacy. All of Seashell's sequences, in one 

way or another, actualize psychic processes, and their method of doing 

so can be categorized as follows: 1) the representation of the dispersed 

subjectivity that places the viewer at the center of a generalized psychic 

experience; 2) the use of male and female "characters" as cultural and 

symbolic constructs; 3) the use of shots or sequences that foreground 

vision, such as the staging of the primal scene or the emphatic elaboration 

of the gaze; 4) the representation of a dreaming consciousness as 

evidenced by the apparition of metamorphosing objects and fantastic 

visions; and 5) the depiction of the subjectivity turned in on itself, as 

exemplified by the film's conclusion, which repeats its beginning in a 

parable of film spectatorship, the clergyman consuming his own image 

in an act of narcissistic absorption. One brief moment in the confessional—a 

simple exchange of two shots—articulates all five of these 

categories in such a way as to produce a microcosm of the film itself. 

This pair of shots is the "eyeline match" par excellence, for it is, 

quite simply, the alternation of two large close-ups of eyes (gauzily 

masked to render everything else in the image a hazy blur)—first 

the woman's, then the clergyman's. This exchange, embedded within 

sequences that dramatize religious hypocrisy and erotic violence, 

seems, by its very energy, to erupt from the more narrational instances 

that surround it. This is how Artaud's scenario describes the action: 

"The woman and the clergyman are praying in the confessional. The 

clergyman's head quivers like a leaf, and all of a sudden it seems that 

something begins to speak inside him. He pushes up his sleeves and 

gently, ironically, knocks three times on the partition of the confessional. 

The woman gets up. Then the clergyman bangs with his fist 

and opens the door like a fanatic. The woman stands before him and 

looks at him. He throws himself on her and tears off her bodice as if 

he had wanted to lacerate her breasts." 36 

In keeping with her usual practice, Dulac renders—in detailed images 

and gestures—each action described. Yet for one small moment 

she diverges from the written scenario to depict these eyes, and this is 

highly significant. For it is precisely in their capacity to act as signs 

that these haunting, elusive images function to evoke exactly those 

processes of unconscious figuration which are central to the film in its 

effort to create, for the spectator, the experience of the fantasm. In their 

isolation, their fragmentary status, they aid the dissolution of character 

and the redirection toward psychic processes by emphasizing vision 

itself. In so doing, these pairs of eyes create an ambiguous space of


interpretation for the viewer, a site in which character psychology is 

only one option among many others in determining the symbolic value 

of the shot. It is possible, for example, to regard this exchange of 

glances as one instance in the circulation throughout the film of cultural 

signifiers of femininity and masculinity—hers the alert and 

watchful eyes of a female victim, his the lustful eyes of a violent brute. 

This is, after all, a confrontation with an extensive representational 

heritage. From another standpoint, these shots can be seen to take 

their place in a paradigm of subjective images and dream distortions; 

it is generally this sort of close-up that is linked to the flow of glistening 

castles, shimmering water, and the like in the film. 

Yet there is something different about these shots as well, a difference 

that recalls the slide of subjectivity back into itself. Although 

Artaud's script specifies only the gaze of the woman (as opposed to 

that of the man), Dulac chose to emphasize the actual fact of looking 

in a reciprocity of vision that blurs the distinction between characters. 

This slippage is characteristic of a film that associates the clergyman's 

pursuit of the woman with his own quest for self. But more important 

than that, here Dulac is able to give both characters the privilege of 

visuality, and in so doing she reaffirms the psychic reality that is the 

mainspring of the film. There is a remarkably similar close-up of 

eyes in The Smiling Mme Beudet, where it was used to amplify our 

understanding of the character, her desperate need for escape, and 

her imaginative capacity to envision flight. When this type of shot 

reappears in Seashell, however—in what amounts to an echo of the 

earlier film—it reinforces the latter film's project, not of recounting 

the dream or the daydream, but of portraying the unconscious figural 

processes of dreams themselves. And this foregrounded visual exchange 

which slides, as it does, between the masculine and feminine 

configurations of the gaze, represents nothing less than the double 

scenario of sexuality and vision—a dramatization of desire for both 

"character" and spectator that plays itself out on the psyche's unconscious 

stage. 

Fantasy and/as the Woman 

From the foregoing analyses it should be clear that there is an undeniable 

feminist consistency in Dulac's film work, a plurality of intersecting 

concerns that links her early explorations of "female fantasy" in Beudet 

to the more sustained examination of the very mechanisms of unconscious 

desire in Seashell. Thus her preoccupations—with cinematic 

language and its constructions of the viewer, with structures of the 


fantasm, and with the possibilities for representing woman's desire— 

converge in her filmmaking practice, while the explicit manifestation 

of these interests varies from film to film. For this reason, from the 

more overt feminism of the earlier film to the analysis of cultural and 

psychic representations of femininity (through work on signification) 

in the later one, Dulac's entire oeuvre can be said to represent the 

feminist project of conceptualizing differing ways of articulating women's 

relation to language and the body. 

This is precisely the postulation of an alternative feminist cinema 

formulated in Mary Ann Doane's article, "Woman's Stake: Filming 

the Female Body," in which she asserts: "The most interesting and 

productive . . . films dealing with the feminist problematic are precisely 

those which elaborate a new syntax, thus 'speaking' the female body 

differently, even haltingly or inarticulately from the perspective of a 

classical syntax." 37 

Doane calls for a kind of filmmaking that will posit 

a complex interrelation between the female body and psychic and 

signifying processes, because, for her, a pathway out of the essentialist 

impasse lies not in the abandonment of the body altogether, but in 

theories that "attempt to define or construct a feminine specificity 

(not essence), theories which work to provide the woman with an 

autonomous symbolic representation."38 And one of the ways this 

representation can come about is to be found in the very problematization 

of the woman's image engendered by both Beudet and Seashell, for 

in each of these films Dulac is concerned—albeit in different ways— 

to determine new forms in which the woman's body is "spoken" by the 

cinematic text. 

Regarded in this light, each film suggests a way of thinking "femininity" 

in its multiple meanings, and of understanding these meanings in 

their relation to the signifying processes of the unconscious. As such, 

they represent attempts to appropriate the construction and representation 

of the woman's image in its social, psychic, and cinematic contexts—attempts 

which, for Dulac, inflect her continuing research into 

the language of the cinema at every point. Whereas Beudet´s early 

example of representing female desire can be seen as an effort to 

give the woman both a vision and a voice, Seashell offers an abstract 

meditation on the processes that produce these at the level of the 

unconscious. Thus in Beudet the female character thinks (or dreams) 

in images, while in Seashell the female character is, in fact, the image 

itself. 

In the earlier film it is possible to understand Dulac's depiction of 

her heroine's dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies as evidence of 

an assumed definition of female desire, for both Madame Beudet's

The Seashell and the Clergyman (Summary) 

- 3SEX 

The Seashell and the Clergyman (Summary, cont.)


phantom lover and her reveries of escape participate in the certainty 

of familiar meanings. Yet the very certainty with which Dulac can be 

said to "know" her heroine's fantasy already becomes problematized 

within that same film when she confronts the issue of representing her 

female character differently. You will remember that, as a result of 

her solitary thoughts, Madame Beudet loads her husband's gun and 

subsequently engages in a frantic attempt to remove the bullets before 

a tragedy occurs. Sitting in her bedroom the following morning, she 

contemplatively brushes her hair as she considers, in remorse and 

desperation, how to slip undetected into her husband's study. It is 

here that, for one striking moment in the film, Dulac gives us an image 

of arresting beauty as Madame Beudet's face, lavishly surrounded by 

her flowing hair, is replicated in her triple mirror. This reiteration of 

the woman's image, framed and enhanced as it is by the multiple 

borders of the mirror, suggests a considerable departure from what 

was already being established at the time—the conventional representation 

of the woman as object of spectacle and of the desiring gaze. 

For in contrast to an erotic image of the woman looking—offering 

herself to the viewer as an image of her own desire (and thus recalling 

the culmination of this in Marnie's fascinated, self-absorbing gaze)— 

Dulac here fractures the masculine mode of visual pleasure in an 

activity which disperses and problematizes that very image. The tripartite 

framing of the woman's face, then, represents a reflection on the 

image as a mode of representation—a refusal to simply generate an image 

of female beauty constructed in masculine terms. And it is just such a 

dislocation of the visual language used to represent the woman's body 

that begins the challenge to dominant articulations of femininity and 

their structures of the gaze. 

The Seashell and the Clergyman extends this work by activating the 

female image as representation itself, for it is here that the female 

body—and the very processes of desire that constitute it as "feminine"—undergo 

a sustained investigation throughout the film. It is 

therefore no accident that the him of Dulac's that most assertively 

takes the "language of the unconscious" as its subject should offer 

multiple modes of figuring the feminine, not only in terms of the 

different types of costuming and the positions suggested by these, but 

also in its use of explicit nudity and its focus on body parts. The facial 

close-up itself exemplifies these procedures in a highly interesting 

manner. In Beudet, the close-up of the heroine's face—which was for 

Dulac, as noted before, the psychological shot par excellence—is used 

to convey access to Madame Beudet's interiority and her desires. For 

this reason, the connection between the head and the rest of the body


(the face as a metonymy of the person) is not only maintained, it 

is reinforced. However, in Seashell it is precisely this close-up, this 

disembodied woman's face, which becomes the site of transformations 

and hallucinations, in an obsessive reworking of feminine features 

used to produce the psychic atmosphere of the dream. Beyond this, 

Seashell contains several shots of bare breasts, which would have been 

shocking at the time, in addition to various other erotically charged 

bodily fragments such as the neck, the ankle, the shoulder, and so 

forth. In each instance, the shot brings us closer to a reinforcing 

physicality. aligning femininity with the body, while at the same time 

creating a breach between the image and its referent. It thus obliges 

us to read the image as a sign circulating in the textual space of the 

film. 

In this context, it is important to note that the "characters" in the film 

are not simply generalized symbolic forms that interact, but, precisely, 

sexually differentiated figures whose very distinction comes about in relation 

to a concept of the body. From this perspective, Seashell is less about 

the narcissistic identity of its hero than it is about sexual identity in general, 

for it gives us not the conclusion of a solidified character to emulate, 

but the production processes of femininity and masculinity themselves—cultural 

processes which overlay psychic trajectories. In her 

move from the particularized representation of a female character in 

Beudet to the generalized social and psychic representation of "femininity" 

in Seashell, Dulac thus demonstrates her growing understanding of 

sexuality as a process rather than a content. Her interest in unconscious 

processes of desire is the constant between the two films, as is her exploration 

of the constitutive elements of "femininity." But it is in her shift 

from the representation of the content of the fantasy to its very operations 

that the consequences for thinking the woman's relation to language 

and the body can be found. 

In its foregrounding of processes of signification, then, Seashell activates 

that syntactic disequilibrium which challenges both fixed meanings 

and notions of sexual identity from the very start. The excess 

of meaning provoked by its random and incongruous images, the 

circulation of its unexpected signs, suggests the impossibility of stable 

comprehension, or at least implies a kind of signification exceeding 

the borders of established reason. In the proliferation of meanings, 

the film offers diverse positions of viewer subjectivity and in so doing 

puts into relief the complex relations of language and desire. Therefore, 

Doane's positing of a feminist filmmaking which "attempts to 

construct another syntax," one that "threatens the 'idea of language' " 

based on intelligibility, finds a model here. 39 

In Seashell, the female 


body is represented differently as the film reworks conventional modes 

of articulation, organizing its flow of images according to "other" rules. 

Its disrupted, disordered syntactical relations suggest .something of 

the dynamism of unconscious forces and in so doing evoke possible 

alternative constructions of the "feminine." 

I am arguing that this work at the limits of meaning, taken in the 

context of feminist concerns, can be understood as a way of circumventing 

established structures of thinking, a way of reinscribing desire 

into the process of signification itself. When analyzed in this light, 

Dulac's formulation—of an abstract cinema endowed with the capacity 

to passionately move the viewer—takes on new force: "Yes, lines, 

volumes, surfaces, light, envisioned in their constant metamorphoses, 

are capable of taking hold of us by their rhythms if we know how to 

organize them in a construction capable of responding to the needs 

of our imagination and our feelings. . . . "40 This solicitation of each 

spectator's potential for direct, affective access to the cinematic image 

suggests a reconceptualization of desire not restricted to preformulated 

categories of meaning, and by extension, it implies the blurring 

of fixed definitions of masculine and feminine as well. The liberation 

implicit in this reconceptualization has important consequences for 

feminist cinema, for in rethinking sexuality by way of a profound 

exploration of the deepest foundations of all meaning-production, 

Dulac is able to contribute to the formulation of an alternative cinema 

based on new articulations of the body, language, and desire. And it 

is in this sense that, for all their differences in emphasis, both The 

Smiling Mme Beudet and The Seashell and the Clergyman provide significant 

contributions to the development of a forceful new theory of 

sexual difference in cinematic representation. 

NOTES 

1. J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (New 

York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 475. 

2. Germaine Dulac, "Les procédés expressifs du cinématographe," Cinémagazine, 

no. 28 (July 11, 1924): 68. This is a transcript of a talk Dulac gave 

on June 17, 1924, at the Musée Galliera. All translations from the French are 

my own unless otherwise noted. 

3. Both films are available from the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53d 

St., New York, NY 10019. It is possible that the print of Seashell, if ordered 

from another distributor, is in an incorrect order. See note 23 below. 

4. Wendy Dozoretz, "Dulac Versus Artaud," Wide Angle 3:1 (1979): 51. 

5. Jacques B. Brunius, En marge du cinéma français (Paris: Editions Arcanes, 

Collection Ombres Blanches, 1954). p. 138.


(6. Ado Kyrou, Le Surréalisme au cinéma (Paris: Editions Arcanes, 1953), p. 

186. 

7. Germaine Dulac, "L'Essence du cinéma: L'Idée visuelle," Les Cahiers du 

mois, nos. 16/17 (1925): 64. An alternative translation of this article by Robert 

Lamberton, can be found in The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and 

Criticism, ed. P. Adams Sitney (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 

pp. 36-42. 

8. Dulac, "Les Procédés," p. 68. 

9. Germaine Dulac, "La Musique du silence," Cinégraphie, no. 5 (January 

15, 1928): 78. 

10. Dulac, "La Musique." The identical statement appears in Dulac's "Films 

visuels et anti-visuels," Le Rouge et le noir (July 1928); anthologized in L'Art du 

cinema, ed. Pierre Lherminier (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1960), p. 71. 

11. See Richard Abel's insightful discussion of the film in French Cinema: 

The First Wave, 1915-1929 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 

340-44. 

12. This categorization of subjective images is proposed by Jean Mitry in 

Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma, vol. 2 (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1965), 

pp. 61-79. 

13. Germaine Dulac, "Les Procédés expressifs du cinématographe," Cinémagazine, 

no. 27 (July 4, 1924): 17. 

14. Germaine Dulac, "Le cinéma d'avant-garde," in Le Cinéma des origines à 

nos jours, ed. Henri Fescourt (Paris: Editions du Cygne, 1932), p. 359. An 

alternate translation can be found in The Avant-Garde Film ed. Sitney, pp. 43— 

48. 

15. Dulac, "Les Procédés," Cinémagazine, no. 28 (July 11, 1924): 67. 

16. Virginia Woolf, "Modern Fiction," in The Common Reader (1925; repr. 

New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1953), p. 154. There is much suggested 

by the parallels between Dulac and Woolf, not the least of which are the 

"multiple and contradictory interior impressions" that form the cornerstone of 

each woman's artistic practice. The possibilities for a study along these lines 

are endlessly suggestive. 

17. Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language, p. 318. 

18. Anonymous, "Un rêve à l'écran," Cinégiaphie, no. 2 (October 15, 1927): 

32. This appears to be a press release announcing the opening of the film at 

the end of October, a screening that in fact never took place. There is reason 

to believe that this text (or portions of it) were written by Yvonne Allendy, 

Artaud's close friend (and, ironically, the same person who was instrumental 

in the subsequent attacks on Dulac for having "distorted" the scenario by, 

among other things, calling it a "dream"). 

Once the initial agreement with Germaine Dulac was reached, Yvonne 

Allendy increased communiques to the press announcing the film; she 

continued to do this during the film's shooting, and once completed, in the 

weeks preceding its opening; the accent was always placed on the film's 

uniqueness in being made of a single dream. In the beginning of October 


1927, Yvonne Allendy wrote an advance publicity release (we do not know 

if it was ever published and are working from drafts [provided by Colette 

Allendy]) which carried the same assertion and whose prospective titles (A 

Dream-Scenario, A Dream in the Camera, A Dream on the Screen) are 

sufficiently characteristic. (Editors, Les Oeuvres completes dÁntonin Artaud, 

vol. 3 [Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1978], p. 327.) 

(Further references will be noted as OC; this volume contains all of Artaud's 

film scenarios, letters, and texts concerning the cinema. The edition date is 

important, as each edition of OC contains new material and different pagination.) 

A number of Artaud's scenarios and texts on the cinema, translated into 

English, can be found in TDR 11:1 (Fall 1966): 166-85, as well as in the Susan 

Sontag anthology, Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus, 

and Giroux, 1976). 

19. Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language, p. 318. 

20. Alain Virmaux and Odette Virmaux, Les Surréalistes et le cinéma (Paris: 

Editions Seghers, 1976), p. 29. 

21. See chapter 2, note 49. 

22. Although Dulac's film follows the scenario, image for image, with extreme 

precision, there is still a very complex relation between the two texts, 

and this is what I explore in detail in my article "The Image and the Spark: 

Dulac and Artaud Reviewed," in Dada and Surrealist Film, ed. Rudolf E. Kuenzli 

(New York: Willis Locker and Owens, 1987), pp. 110-27, where I discuss the 

Dulac-Artaud debate in terms of conflicting aesthetic theories of Symbolist 

poetic fusion and Surrealist juxtaposition. I trace the actual conflict between 

Dulac and Artaud over the production of the film in detail in my Ph.D. 

dissertation, "Women, Representation, and Cinematic Discourse: The Example 

of the French Cinema," University of California at Berkeley, 1982. 

23. Antonin Artaud, letter to Jean Paulhan, January 22, 1932, reprinted 

in OC, pp. 259-60. A translation by Helen R. Weaver can be found in Sontag, 

Antonin Artaud, p. 281. To further confuse matters, a very serious error exists 

in some American prints of the film, something that continues to be corrected, 

but that has already led to some critical misinterpretations. For some reason, 

when the film's three reels were initially spliced in the United States, the last 

reel found its way into the middle of the film, making American prints end 

with an image of the woman's severed head inside a glass ball. Both the correct 

version of the film and the scenario itself end with the clergyman drinking 

the black liquid from the shell. Within each of the three reels, however, the 

order of individual shots is correct, making the basic sequence structure 

uniform in all prints of the film. It is the order of the sequencing that is incorrect 

in the U.S. prints, and although the Museum of Modern Art has rectified this 

mistake, other distributors have failed to do so. William Van Wert's widely 

read article, "Germaine Dulac: First Feminist Filmmaker," for example, bases 

its entire argument on the incorrect sequencing and its mistaken ending. 

24. Artaud, "La Coquille et le clergyman," Cahiers de Belgique, no. 8 (October 

1928) reprinted in OC, p. 71.


25. Artaud, "Le cinéma et l'abstraction," Le Monde illustré, no. 3645 (October 

29, 1927) reprinted in OC, pp. 68—69, emphasis added. 

26. "Le Cinéma et l'abstraction," OC, p. 69 

27. Ibid. 

28. Artaud, "Cinéma et réalité," La Nouvelle revue française, no. 170, November 

1, 1927, reprinted in OC, p. 19. Artaud had wanted to clarify his position 

about the scenario in relation to Dulac's film, and proposed an article to Jean 

Paulhan, stating, "I have something to defend, and an article could help me 

defend my film without attacking anyone, in order to more clearly determine 

my position in relation to this film" (letter to Jean Paulhan, August 29, 1927, 

reprinted in OC, p. 127). "Cinéma et réalité" was suggested for the October 

issue of La NRF, but actually appeared in November, functioning as an introduction 

to the scenario. Alternative translations of this text are widely available. 

For a more thorough discussion of this particular passage in relation to the 

film's strategies, see my " 'Poetry of the Unconscious': Circuits of Desire in 

Two Films by Germaine Dulac," in French Cinema: Text and Contexts, ed. Susan 

Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (London: Methuen, 1989). 

29. "Cinéma et réalité," OC, p. 19; emphasis added. 

30. Ibid. 

31. The scenario for The Seashell and the Clergyman is reprinted in OC, pp. 

18-25. There is a translation by Victor Corti in TDR 11:1 (Fall 1966): 173-8. 

32. Artaud, letter to Dulac, September 25, 1927, reprinted in OC, p. 128. 

33. Scenario, OC, p. 22. 


35. Artaud, "Sorcellerie et cinéma," OC, p. 66. Written at the time of the 

shooting of Seashell, this article does not appear to have been published until 

1949, when it appeared in the catalogue of the Festival du Film Maudit, 

Biarritz, July 29-August 5, 1949. Translations are in TDR, pp. 178-80, The 

Avant-Garde Film, pp. 49—50, and The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writings 

on Cinema, ed. Paul Hammond (London: British Film Institute, 1978), pp. 63— 

64. 


37. Mary Ann Doane, "Woman's Slake: Filming the Female Body," October, 

no. 17 (Summer 1981): 34. 

38. Doane, "Woman's Stake," p. 33. 

39. Ibid., p. 36. 

40. Dulac, "Du Movement, des harmonies, et du rhythme: A la Symphonie 

visuelle." p. 6, chapter 8 of an unpublished manuscript of texts collected by 

Marie-Anne Colson-Malleville. 

FIVE 

Marie Epstein: 

A Woman in the Shadows 

MARIF. EPSTEIN'S CAREER AS A FILMMAKER offers something more of a 

challenge from the standpoint of an argument that seeks to establish 

an alternative tradition of feminist cinema, for while Germaine Dulac's 

filmmaking practice can be seen to demonstrate a consistent project 

of resistance to traditional cinematic norms—from the dual perspective 

of both aesthetic issues and feminist theory—Epstein's work is, in 

fact, fairly exemplary of French filmmaking in the thirties. All of the 

major directors of the period conceived of their films as efforts to 

establish a national cinematic identity—each in their own way posing 

a form of opposition to the dominant commercial cinema of Hollywood 

by making films "in the French manner." However, Marie Epstein's 

films can also be seen to resist this French standard, placing 

her work in the status of double-rupture in relation to the cinematic 

mainstreams of both Hollywood and France. For one thing, Epstein 

is virtually unknown to the conventional film histories, and for this 

reason her very specific marginalization implies a position at the borders 

of the cinematic activity of the time. But more important for 

the purposes of this study, Epstein's concerted focus on "feminine" 

questions—issues of the maternal, of the domestic, of female bonding—and 

her reworking of basic cinematic structures of point-of-view 

and identification along these lines, offer a form of textual resistance 

whose challenge to the mainstream can only be discerned in terms of 

sustained analysis of her films. To begin the work of elaborating 

Epstein's significant contribution to a feminist theorization of the cinema, 

then, a form of "feminist archaeology" is first necessary.

Linda WILLIAMS: Un Chien andalou. In: Dies.: Figures of Desire. A 

Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film. Univ. of Calif. Press 1981, S. 

53-105. 

CHAPTER TWO 

Un Chien andalou 

New images will come to follow the free bent of desire 

at the same time as they are vigorously repressed. 

Un Chien andalou (The Andalusian Dog) 1929 

SALVADOR DALI' 

Production: Luis Bunuel. 

Director: Luis Bunuel. 

Script: Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali. 

Photography: Albert Duverger. 

Design: Pierre Schilzneck. 

Editor: Luis Bunuel. 

Music: At its first performance the film was accompanied by gramophone 

records, including Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and some 

Argentine tangos. In 1960 Bunuel advised on the compilation of 

a score for a synchronized version based on the 1929 musical 

selections. 

Leading Players: Pierre Batcheff (The Man); Simone Mareuil (The 

Woman); Jaime Miratvilles; Salvador Dali (Marist Priest). 17 minutes. 

Black and White. 

IN 1929 Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's short film Un Chien andalou 

1 burst upon the Paris scene, an instant success in Surrealist and 

1 Dali, "The Stinking Ass," trans. ]. Bronowsky, This Quarter 5 (September 1932): 49-54; 

reprinted in Lucy Lippard, ed., Surrealists on Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 

1970). Originally published as "L'Ane pourri," in Le Surrealisms au service de la revolution 

1:12. 

" Bunuel directed from a scenario written by himself and Dali. Much has been written 

about the respective contributions of each man. Although Dali was present only on the last 

day of shooting, Bunuel gives him equal credit for creation of the scenario: " 'The film was 

50% of each of us. ... I did the cutting of the eye and the ants in the hand; Dali did the 

garden scene and the cocktail shaker bell.'" Francisco Aranda, Luis Bunuel: A Critical Biography, 

trans, and ed. David Robinson (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), p. 60. Many com- 

53

FIGURES OF DESIRE 

other avant-garde circles and the apparent fulfillment of the many 

Surrealist hopes for the cinema. Ever since, this short seventeenminute 

film has enjoyed a privileged position in film history, considered 

variously as: the primary source for the spread of a Surrealist 

style in the commercial cinema, the first film to assault its spectator 

systematically, the classic example of cinematic poetry, and an important 

precursor of the current American avant-garde.' 

In an extended article Philip Drummond shows how the above 

accolades have, for half a century, replaced and obscured any serious 

understanding of the text by so many "presumed moments of 

historico-aesthetic impact and effect." 4 Drummond s detailed analysis 

of the film is an important corrective to the kind of impressionistic 

rewriting to which the film has so often been subjected, and I 

highly recommend it on that account. 

The aim of my own analysis is somewhat different. If, as Artaud 

suggests, Surrealist film can offer the cinematic equivalent of the 

"mechanics of the dream" and if, as is widely recognized, Un Chien 

andalou is the most successfully oneiric of Surrealist films, it is important 

to discover what these mechanics are all about. The aim of 

the following section is to establish the methodological groundwork 

for analysis of the dreamlike rhetoric that dominates the film. With 

this groundwork I hope to offer: (1) a close analysis of the peculiar 

form of the Surrealist figure in film, (2) a subsequent analysis of the 

latent meaning of these figures in relation to the text as a whole, and 

(3) a rhetorico-psychoanalytic reading of the entire film. 

The Rhetoric of the Unconscious. Unconscious desire cannot be 

named. As Freud defines it, it is forbidden a normal mode of dis- 

mentators, Aranda included, tend to attribute positive credit to Buiiuel, negative credit—for 

snobism and avant-garde preciosity—to Dali (ibid., p. 60). This is a tempting view, since Dali 

had much less to do with their following "collaboration" on L'Age d'or and since he appears to 

have a long history of behaving irresponsibly toward Bunuel. Nevertheless, as far as the scenario 

goes, ir seems more reasonable to accept Bunuel's word on their equal collaboration 

than to allow current anti-Dali sentiment to lead us astray. 

'Philip Drummond cites the sources for these prevalent views in "Textual Space in Un 

Chien Andalou," Screen 18 (Autumn 1977): 55. 

4 Ibid., p. 56. 

54 


course; it can only be registered by its transgressions. For the psychoanalyst 

these transgressions are the slips and repetitions that do violence 

to originally intended speech. In dreams they are memory 

traces divested of their original meaning by the hidden discourse of 

the unconscious. 5 

The way in which the unconscious accomplishes these transgressions 

is not in itself codified in the same way a linguistic system is 

codified. Emile Benveniste points out that it is only in the broad 

sense of a general linguistic capacity, as langage rather than langue 

(a specific system or code), that one can speak of "language" in dreams 

or other unconscious expressions. 6 Benveniste continues that it is 

really in the secondary procedures of what is commonly referred 

to as style that one encounters the qualities that constitute unconscious 

langage. He explains that the unconscious makes use of a 

rhetoric which, like style, has its figures. The old catalog of tropes 

can thus provide an inventory suitable to it.' 

Jacques Lacan, in his essay "The agency of the letter in the unconscious 

or reason since Freud" carries Benveniste's original observation 

a step further by drawing an analogy between the primary 

figures of new rhetoric—metaphor and metonymy—and the procedures 

of condensation and displacement in dreams. 8 Lacan suggests 

that condensation and displacement in dreams are primary 

processes that temporarily bind the psychic energy of desire in ways 

similar to the temporary poetic binding of meaning in metaphor 

and metonymy. This is not to say that metaphor and metonymy 

are the same as condensation and displacement. Dreams are unconscious 

productions, and poems are for the most part conscious 

productions. For this reason I prefer to retain the poetic/rhetorical 

terms metaphor and metonymy, but with the ultimate purpose of 

discovering how a specifically Surrealist use of these rhetorical procedures 

resembles the unconscious procedure of "dream work." 

5 Lacan, he Seminaire, vol. 1, Les Ecrits techniques de Freud, p. 270. 

6 Emile Benveniste, "Remarques sur la fonction du langage dans la decouverte freudienne," 

Problemes de linguistique generate (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 86. 

7 Ibid. 

Lacan, Ecrits, pp. 146-75, 

55


JAKOBSON'S METAPHOR AND METONYMY: 

RHETORICAL FIGURES IN FILM 

When Lacan first noted the resemblance between Freud's condensation 

and displacement and Roman Jakobson's rhetorical concept of 

metaphor and metonymy, he acknowledged the importance of Jakobson's 

reformulation of the old catalog of tropes into a more modern, 

restricted rhetoric.consisting of two main figures: metaphor and 

metonymy. 9 This restricted rhetoric 1 " was composed of two basic 

kinds of figures modeled on the binary oppositions of structural linguistics: 

paradigm and syntagm. Since the rhetorical notions of metaphor 

and metonymy derive from the parallel with the linguistic 

function of paradigm and syntagm, it is important to describe what 

these linguistic functions are. 

The structural linguistics of Ferdinand Saussure show that language 

has two fundamental axes. The first, a paradigmatic axis, 

functions to select the elements of any given utterance according to 

certain rules or paradigms. A paradigm is the theoretical reconstruction 

of the linguistic choices made by every speaker of a language. 

These choices are made among similar things. "'Did you say pig or 

fig,' said the cat. i said pig,' replied Alice." Thus Jakobson explains 

that phonologically the cat was attempting to recapture a linguistic 

choice made by Alice. "In the common code of the cat and Alice 

. . . the difference between a stop and a continuant, other things 

being equal, may change the meaning of the message."" Alice has 

made a paradigmatic selection from similar—phonological—elements. 

The second, a syntagmatic axis, refers to the way in which 

the elements actually present in the verbal chain are arranged. Here 

the key function is the combination of contiguous elements along 

Roman Jakobson has written several articles on aphasia, all of which are reprinted in 

volume 2 of his Selected Writings, 2 vols. (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). The most famous of 

these, the one to which I refer, is the 1956 article "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of 

Aphasic Disturbances," pp. 239-59. For a brief history and description of the "old catalogue 

of tropes" that Jakobson is reformulating, see Roland Barthes, "L'Ancienne rhetorique: Aidememoire," 

Communications 16 (1970): 172-230. 

10 The term restricted rhetoric is Gerard Genette's. See his "La rhetorique restreinte," 

Communications 16 (1970): 158-71. 

"jakobson, Selected Writings, 2:241. 

56 


the chain of discourse: how Alice put together the contiguous phonological, 

morphological, and syntactical elements she has already 

chosen. Every speech act, Saussure shows, encompasses both these 

functions. 

Jakobson's article on language and aphasic disturbances shows 

how this binary division of structural linguistics applies to two very 

similar divisions in aphasic speech disorders. Jakobson suggests that 

two rhetorical figures selected from the catalogs of classical rhetoricians 

can be used to simplify and revitalize rhetorical analyses 

in literature and the visual arts. Thus, he proposes that metaphor 

and metonymy are the two quintessential rhetorical figures, because 

they have polar axes similar to those of paradigm and syntagm. 12 

Jakobson explains that the one thing (linguistic) paradigms, (rhetorical) 

metaphors, and the so-called aphasic "contiguity disorder" 

have in common is similarity: all derive from the selection of features 

from among similar things. On the other hand, syntagms, metonymies, 

and the aphasic "similarity disorder" are all marked by the 

function of contiguity, the combination of contiguous and present 

elements. Aphasic similarity disorder affects a speaker's ability to select 

words or phrases from the paradigmatic language code that 

is organized according to similar categories. Contiguity disorder affects 

a speaker's ability to arrange these elements contiguously. The 

speaker with a contiguity disorder will therefore rely heavily on the 

other pole of language, choosing similar or "metaphoric" formulations 

from the paradigm. In response to the word microscope, such 

an aphasic might substitute the similar word spyglass, but he or she 

would have difficulty providing the linguistic context for the word in 

a full sentence. On the contrary, a speaker with a similarity disorder 

would find it difficult to select similar terms from a paradigm. Such 

speakers would find it hard to name, provide synonyms for, or metalinguistically 

define a given term. For example, when shown a pencil, 

an aphasic with similarity disorder would not be able to name it 

but would, instead, veer off to a contiguous quality or function and 

say something like "to write." 1 ' 

Jakobson applies the underlying linguistic categories of similarity 

"Ibid., pp. 244-56. 

'Ibid., p. 247. 

57


and contiguity (or selection and combination) to larger stylistic (or 

aphasic) idiosyncrasies of metaphor and metonymy. 14 In so doing he 

draws the important lesson that similarities that underlie metaphor 

have been given much attention in stylistic analyses, while contiguities 

that underlie metonymy have been rather ignored. We 

hardly notice, for example, that Anna Karenina's handbag becomes 

a metonymic figure for the heroine herself in her famous suicide 

scene in Tolstoy's novel. Jakobson's point is that we tend not to 

notice that metonymies are figures, because the fact that they are 

based on real or virtual spatial contiguities makes them seem so 

much more realistic than metaphoric associations based upon similarity 

alone. 

At the end of his article Jakobson suggests that metaphoric and 

metonymic poles of stylistic expression occur in film. But he does 

not say how this is so other than that the work of Griffith is predominantly 

metonymic, while the work of Chaplin and Eisenstein is 

predominantly metaphoric. ' 5 Although this statement is extremely 

suggestive, Jakobson does not tackle the very difficult problem of 

tracing the differences between verbal and visual figurations. Yet, 

often when we talk about metaphors in film, we really think of the 

model of verbal metaphors. Verbal metaphors are built out of the 

transgression of coded linguistic meanings. On the purely denotative, 

linguistic level, the phrase my love is a flame makes no sense, 

because love is not a flame. On the connotative, rhetorical level, 

however, the word flame has undergone a change of meaning. A 

figural meaning arises out of the discrepancy between the coded, 

literal meanings of the two parts of the statement. This discrepancy 

between what I. A. Richards 16 calls tenor (the underlying idea of 

love) and vehicle (the flame with which love is compared) forges the 

discovery of a new meaning that is based upon the ground of their 

14 Jakobson himself does not always keep these linguistic and rhetorical levels separate. 

Christian Metz, in "Metaphore/Metonymie, ou le referent imaginarie" (Le Signifiant imaginaire, 

pp. 224-29), clarifies Jakobson by stressing the difference between the coded linguistic 

level of the discourse and the uncoded rhetorical level of the referent. I mention this now to 

avoid confusion later. 

15 Jakobson, Selected Writings, 2:256. 

16 1. A. Richards, Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York; Oxford University Press, 1936, 197 r), 

p. 96. 

58 


shared characteristic of heat. The metaphor is composed of both 

halves of the statement. 

But in film, the image of a flame is not an arbitrarily coded link 

between a sound and a concept. If a filmmaker uses the image of a 

flame as a metaphor for love, this visual flame rather stubbornly remains 

a flame, at least more stubbornly than the word. (If one 

thinks of all the love scenes in films that take place adjacent to fireplaces, 

it is clear that such "figures" are only loose approximations 

of the love-flame equation in the verbal metaphor. In fact, they are 

very often partial metonymies owing to the fact that the fireplace 

and its flame are contiguously related to the lovers.) 

One result of Jakobson's reformulation of old rhetoric into two 

binary figures has been to encourage a great many studies in film 

(and literary) metonymy. 1 Rather than the loose application of the 

poetic term metaphor, film analysis now tends to focus on metonymy 

to the extent that film has often been defined as an essentially 

metonymic art. Film metaphors have been pushed aside, as if to 

make up for all the years metaphor reigned supreme. 

An extreme but typical instance of this antimetaphoric tendency 

is film historian and aesthetician Jean Mitry's insistence that film 

metaphors do not actually exist. Mitry argues that most of what are 

called film metaphors are not true metaphors at all but rather at 

least partial metonymies. He cites as an example a famous close-up 

of the pince-nez of the ship's doctor caught in the ropes of the ship 

in Eisenstein's Potemkin, after the doctor himself had been thrown 

overboard. Mitry argues that the pince-nez is not so much a metaphor 

founded on similarity between the upperclass doctor and his 

glasses as a metonymy based upon the fact that the glasses and the 

doctor have been contiguously associated with each other previously 

in the film. 18 

Here Mitry simply gives a more elaborate theoretical basis to the 

general notion mentioned above—that in film metaphor the flame 

and pince-nez, unlike the words for these things, seem to be really 

' One of the best analyses of metonymy in literature is Gerard Genette's "Metonvmie 

chez Proust." Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 41-66. 

Jean Mitry, Esthetique et psychologic du cinema, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions universitaires, 

1963), 1:120-22. 

59


there. If they don't have a reason to be there, Mitry argues, they 

disrupt what is often felt to be the film's primary function of narration. 

Mitry generalizes this notion to proclaim that film, unlike verbal 

language, cannot accommodate metaphors that do not arise 

from the given space or imaginary world of the narrative—from 

what he and other French critics refer to as its diegesis. 19 In other 

words, since film must use images to create its diegetic illusion of a 

world, any figural connotation that comes from outside this world 

goes against the grain of filmic creation; it is a conceptual intrusion 

appropriate to verbal language but not to film. 

Mitry's pronouncements are important because they articulate 

narrative norms that are often implied in analyses of films. But although 

Mitry is correct to show that many so-called film metaphors 

are in fact partial metonymies, he is wrong to deny the existence of 

"pure" filmic metaphor. Such a denial leads him to dismiss such 

metaphors as the two shots that open Chaplin's Modern Times. This 

famous metaphor—a shot of a crowd of sheep herded to the slaughter 

followed by a similar crowd of workers pressing into a subway 

entrance—points out the function of workers in a machine-dominated, 

depersonalized society. Metaphoric similarity between the 

herd of sheep and the "herd" of workers suggests that workers are as 

faceless and submissive as sheep herded to the slaughter. Mitry 

would claim that, since the sheep don't belong to the modern urban 

world of the diegesis (they are extradiegetic), the metaphor defeats 

the realistic thrust of all filmic discourse and thus weakens Chaplin's 

film. He adds that even this metaphor is not entirely pure, since the 

sheep are present in the image chain along with the workers; they 

have not taken their place. Thus Mitry also defines metaphor substitutional^: 

as only that instance where, in a verbal metaphor, the 

word flame replaces the word love (my flame burns) and, in a film 

Diegesis is an important term in the analyses of Un Chien andalou and L'Age d'or that 

follow. The term was first coined by Etienne Souriau to indicate the denotative material of a 

film. Christian Metz explains that the term is derived from the Greek StÂcri? meaning narration 

but also relating to the represented instance—the ficitonal space and time dimension 

implied in and by the narrative. It is thus contrasted with the aesthetic instance of the film, its 

connotative or figural level, which, according to Metz, comes later, building upon the diegesis. 

Christian Metz, Film Language, trans. Michael Taylor, (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1974), p. 97. 

60 

«•« 


metaphor, where the shot of the sheep replaces the shot of the 

workers. 

But if Jakobson's binary rhetorical division is to be useful as a way 

of talking about filmic or any other kind of figures, these divisions 

must be able to accommodate all existing practices. It is no solution 

to disallow metaphor in film, when the films of Chaplin, Eisenstein, 

and Bunuel all contain such metaphors. The real question is 

how these figures operate. 

In this connection I would like to mention a very helpful elaboration 

of Jakobson's rhetoric proposed by Christian Metz. 2 " Metz 

shows that, in spite of jakobson's expansion of verbal rhetoric to include 

visual figures, there is a persistent tendency, even in Jakobson's 

work, to define film rhetoric in terms of verbal tropes. When 

Mitry says the Modern Times metaphor is not a metaphor because it 

lacks substitution, he is thinking in terms of the verbal definition of 

a trope—one word or expression used for another. Metz suggests, 

however, that both in language and in film there are really two ways 

in which a figure can be deployed, and only one of them is an actual 

substitution. The first and more common way is for a metaphor 

(or metonymy) to be arranged syntagmatically in the verbal or image 

chain. The second, less common way, is for the figure to be arranged 

paradigmatically—condensed in such a way that the given 

element of the figure implies the part that is not given. 21 

With this distinction, Metz suggests that we must be careful not 

to confuse the referential axis of rhetoric with the discursive axis of 

linguistics. What has often happened in past rhetorical analyses 

is that, since the phenomenon of contiguity is common to both 

metonymy and syntagm, contiguity of the discourse (syntagm) is 

confused with contiguity of the referent (metonymy). In like manner, 

since similarity or contrast is common to both metaphor and 

paradigm, it is easy to confuse similarity or contrast of the discourse 

(paradigm) with that of the referent (metaphor). In critical practice 

this commonly means that the observations made about metonymy 

are actually pertinent to a discussion of syntagm, while the observations 

about metaphor are pertinent to paradigm. Proof of this con- 

" Metz, "Metaphore/Metonymie," pp. 177-371. 

21 Ibid., pp. 224-29. 

61


fusion is often provided in the tacit assumption that metonymies, 

like syntagms, are always spread out along the horizontal axis of the 

discourse, while metaphors, like paradigms, can only appear vertically, 

as implied but absent terms. 

Metz preserves the primary rhetorical categories of metaphor and 

metonymy while providing a secondary stipulation as to how the 

figure is deployed on the linguistic level of the discourse. Out of 

Jakobson's original binary division, Metz develops a four-part classification 

consisting of: (1) Metaphors placed in syntagm (similarity— 

or comparability—on the level of the referent plus contiguity on the 

level of the discourse). Such metaphors can either be pure, as in the 

extradiegetic example of sheep plus workers from Modern Times, or 

diegetic, as in the shot of Clive Brook and Marlene Dietrich's kiss 

on a train followed by the train whistle blowing in the film Shanghai 

Express. (2) Metaphors placed in paradigm (similarity—or comparability—on 

the level of the referent plus comparability on the 

level of the discourse). Here, a single comparable element of an 

originally two-part metaphor placed in a syntagm comes to stand for 

the thing being compared. Thus (in a diegetic example) in a love 

scene that takes place before a fire, the fire can come to stand for 

(and replace) the passion of the embracing couple. (3) Metonymies 

placed in paradigm (contiguity on the level of the referent plus comparability 

on the level of the discourse). Here, as above, one element 

replaces another, but in this case the original association of 

elements is based on metonymic contiguity rather than similarity or 

contrast. A classic example cited by Metz is the moment in Fritz 

Lang's M when a balloon, which had earlier been contiguously associated 

with a little girl, is shown all alone, caught in a web of telephone 

wires. The balloon replaces the murdered body of the girl 

herself in much the same way Anna Karenina's handbag comes to 

stand for Anna's crushed body. (4) Metonymies placed in syntagm 

(contiguity of the referents plus contiguity of the discourse). This is 

similar to (3), except that both elements of the metonymy are present 

in the image chain as, for example, the earlier moments in M 

when both balloon and girl appear together. n 

What happens most often in narrative films is that a metaphor or 

metonymy first placed in syntagm will at some later point be placed 

22 Ibid. 

62 


in paradigm. Metz's elaboration allows us to keep the rhetorical and 

linguistic levels separate so that we can more completely describe 

the operations of the figure and the way it is deployed in the actual 

discourse. The usefulness of this distinction will, I hope, become 

evident in the analysis of the prologue to Un Chien andalou that 

follows. 

THE PROLOGUE TO UN CHIEN ANDALOU: 

A SURREALIST FILM METAPHOR 

The famous metaphor of moon and eye that concludes the prologue 

to Un Chien andalou is perhaps the most often cited example of 

filmic Surrealism—to the extent that audiences usually remember 

it and forget the rest of the film. The image of a woman's eye cut 

open by a razor has been isolated as a still in countless posters, film 

histories, and anthologies, to become the very emblem of surreality 

in film in much the same way as Dalfs melting watches have functioned 

in painting. But this image has not been sufficiently studied 

as a metaphor. It is, after all, the bizarre similarity between the eye 

cut by a razor and the moon cut by a horizontal sliver of a cloud that 

is so striking in this episode. In this section I propose to concentrate 

exclusively on the peculiar form of this most famous Surrealist 

metaphor. 

Description of the Prologue. The prologue is composed of what appears 

to be an entire scene played out in the space on and near a 

balcony bathed in moonlight. It begins with the title, "Once upon a 

time." Apart from this title the sequence has only twelve shots. The 

following is a numbered description of each shot, including a camera-distance 

scale. 

Title: "Once upon a time . . ." 

SHOT DESCRIPTION SCALE 

1 Fade-in on two hands sharpening a long razor on a Close-up 

strop attached to the door-handle of a French-window. 

Hands are viewed from above and behind. A 

watch is on the left wrist. Four strokes of the razor. 

63


2 Head and shoulders of man, cigarette in mouth, eyes Close-up 

lowered, in three-quarter right profile. The man is 

wearing a striped, collarless shirt. A curtained window 

is visible to right of frame. 

3 As in l. Razor blade is tested for sharpness on the Close-up 

thumbnail of the left hand. 

4 As in 2. Close-up 

5 Man in left profile standing before window-door with Medium 

curtains. He looks at strop, razor, then opens Frenchwindow 

to go outside. 

6 Reverse frontal of balcony and man walking out onto Medium 

it. He looks out across balcony (in general direction 

of spectator) and walks to edge where he leans on 

railing, razor still in hand. 

7 Head and shoulders of man in three-quarter right Close-up 

profile. He raises head to look up. 

8 Dark sky with moon on screen left. A horizontal Long shot 

sliver of cloud approaches from the right. 

9 As in 7. Close-up 

10 Direct frontal view of woman's face staring at specta- Close-up 

tor. To left and slightly behind is torso of man wearing 

striped shirt, a diagonally striped tie, and no 

watch. As his left hand holds open her left eye his 

right hand moves in front of the lower part of her 

face, as if preparing to draw razor across the round 

exposed eye. 

11 As in 8. The cloud now passes before the moon. Long shot 

12 The eye with thumb and forefinger holding it open. Extreme 

The razor slices it open. A jellylike substance spills close-up 

out. 

Shots 1-4. The prologue opens on a high-angle close-up of a man's 

hands sharpening a long razor on a strop. The four strokes of this 

sharpening correspond to the four-shot alternating syntagm (1-4) of 

the entire sharpening action. In shot 2 (close-up of the man's head 

and shoulders, cigarette in mouth), it is only by the downward direction 

of the man's glance that we infer the diegetic contiguity of 

shots 1 and 2, e.g., that these hands and arms are connected to the 

64 


head and shoulders which follow. Shots 3 and 4 repeat this same 

procedure with the slight difference in shot 4 that the razor is now 

tested for sharpness on the thumbnail of the left hand—the first instance 

of a horizontal line bisecting a circular shape. Though shots 

1 and 3 (looking down on the razor and hands) are not viewed from 

precisely the same angle at which the man would see them, the 

downward angle of the shot, from above and behind the hands and 

a little to the left, does approximate the subjective viewpoint of his 

glance. 

So far the diegetic action of a man sharpening a razor has been 

placed in an alternating syntagm characterized by the organization 

of isolated fragments of space leading to the inference of their connection 

in a larger whole. But already there are problems in this 

inference. If we look closely at the relation of the arms and hands to 

the French door and curtain in shots r and 3, we see that the man's 

position in relation to the curtained window close behind this head 

in shots 2 and 4 is spatially different in relation to what is presumably 

the same (now curtainless) window-door in shots 1 and 3. 

Shots 5 and 6. The repetition of close-ups in shots 1-4 gives way in 

the middle of the prologue to two medium shots. These shots reinforce 

the spectator's previous inference as to the contiguity of hands 

and arms (1 and 3) to head and shoulders (2 and 4) by showing the 

whole person and the general scene through which he moves. In 

shot 6 the French doors behind the man form a horizontal line that 

runs into his head at precisely eye level. This is the second instance 

of a horizontal line that bisects a round shape. 

Shots 7-12. Shots 7, 8, and 9 seem about to repeat the alternating 

syntagm of shots 1-4 in which the man's glance is alternated with 

the object he sees in a four-shot series. But there are two important 

differences. In the first series the order is object-seen + glance, 

while here it is the more usual glance (man looks upward at night 

sky) + object (insert of moon). In the second series, just at the point 

where the pattern glance + moon, glance + . . . creates anticipation 

of a return to the moon to continue the already begun movement 

of the cloud across the moon, an entirely new element is introduced, 

a close-up of a woman's face (shot 10). The seated woman 

65


66 

67


is staring directly at the camera; the torso of a (or is it the?) man 

stands beside her preparing to cut open her eye. Thus, instead of the 

anticipated completion of one diegetic action—the movement of 

the cloud across the moon—another, formally similar, action is introduced. 

This new action, like the movement of the clouds before 

the moon finally completed in shot 11, is also divided into two alternating 

shots, culminating in the final shot of the extreme close-up 

of the eye cutting. (The movements of cloud across moon and razor 

across eyeball are the third and fourth instances of round shapes 

bisected by horizontal lines.) 

Because it is an action divided into the same kind of alternating 

two-shot syntagm as the movement of the clouds across the moon, 

this new element of the eye cutting at first seems consistent with the 

diegesis in the rest of the prologue. In other words, we tend to read 

this action as taking place in the continuous diegetic space of the 

balcony and night sky. But at the same time there is no real indication 

that this woman whose eye is about to be cut is placed in this 

space. We only infer it on the basis of the general contiguity of the 

previous syntagms. We tend to assume, for example, that the torso 

of the man standing beside her in shot 10 holding a razor and wearing 

a striped shirt is the same man we have viewed throughout the 

prologue. But, if it is the same man, he has suddenly lost his watch 

and acquired a striped tie. And, after solitarily gazing at the sky in 

shot g, he is suddenly in an entirely new position as well as in modified 

dress in the very next shot. Our tendency to want to absorb a 

nondiegetic element that ultimately cannot be absorbed into the diegesis 

is an important feature of both this prologue and the film in 

general. The result is a subtle tension that seems to emanate from 

within the diegesis without allowing us to point to clear-cut instances 

of a total rupture with its apparent realism. 

This initially subtle spatial discrepancy of the man's position in 

shots 1-4 becomes more apparent in shots 8-12, but only as a tension 

within a dominant pattern of alternating syntagms that describe 

two connected sets of actions: the sharpening and test cutting in 

shots 1-5, and the final bisecting (of both moon and eye) in shots 

8-12. Both of these actions proceed via the division of what at first 

appear to be contiguous fragments of space and time in a conventional 

diegetic manner. But on closer examination (almost im- 

68 


perceptibly in the first, and more noticeably in the second) both 

subvert the very same assumptions about diegetic space and time 

they seem to want us to accept. 

The Figure: Metaphor or Metonymy. The rupture in the diegesis 

that occurs in the second half of the prologue is a rhetorical figure. 

The only apparent motivation for the interruption of the movement 

of the cloud across the moon is the formal similarity between the 

round shape of the moon and eye, and the thin shape of the cloud 

and razor, which "cut" them. Since the motive is similarity of the 

(shapes of the) referents rather than an association of contiguity, this 

figure is metaphoric rather than metonymic. 

Using Christian Metz's four-part division of filmic figuration, we 

can see that this is a metapor placed in syntagm. It is a metaphor in 

which similarities between the referents—moon and eye, cloud and 

razor, and the similar horizontal movements of the latter—are arranged 

contiguously (syntagmatically) in the image chain. 

To reach an understanding of what is special about this particular 

metaphor, it may be helpful to compare it with the much more typical 

function of a similar figure in another more typically diegetic 

film. In the example from Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express 

cited above, Glive Brook and Marlene Dietrich's first kiss is followed 

by an exterior shot of the train's whistle blowing. These two elements, 

kiss (the tenor) and whistle (the vehicle) constitute a diegetic 

metaphor placed in syntagm, in which the vehicle "comments" 

upon the tenor. The usual procedure in reading such a metaphor is 

to construct a connotative system of the referents that can encompass 

both elements. Differences between kiss and whistle are minimized, 

while their similarities (heat, excitement, pressure) emerge 

in a comment upon the sexual excitement of the Dietrich-Brook's 

relationship. 

This particular metaphor observes a structure typical of many diegetic 

metaphors in film: a contiguous background element, the 

whistle that is on the same train, is brought momentarily to the foreground 

as a comment upon the dominant narrative action of the 

kiss. The figure preserves a hierarchy of the tenor belonging to the 

diegesis over the vehicle brought into the diegesis momentarily. 

Thus the vehicle (the more properly figural element of the meta- 

69


phor, brought in for purposes of comparison) rarely takes on more 

than momentary importance before restoring us to the main action 

of the tenor. In the classical metaphor this hierarchy is usually 

maintained by the order of appearance of the two parts of the metaphor 

placed in syntagm: most often, diegetic action of the tenor is 

followed by the comparison of the vehicle commenting upon it. 

The whistle emerges as connotatively significant only after the kiss; 

the reverse would be less effective. But if this order is reversed, as 

for example in the extradiegetic pure metaphor of the herd of sheep 

from the opening of Modern Times, in which the shot of the sheep 

preceeds the shot of the workers, there is a second way in which the 

dominance of the diegesis is assured." The vehicle, whether present 

in the diegesis or not, usually belongs to natural, architectural, or 

otherwise nonhuman material (in this case the sheep) that seems a 

secondary or background element, again maintaining a hierarchy of 

diegesis over figure. 

In the prologue metaphor, precisely this hierarchy is disturbed. 

The distinctive feature of this metaphor is that what would commonly 

constitute the tenor or comparing element of the figure—in 

this case the moon—is given first. But, not only is it given first, its 

entire function builds upon the viewer's expectation of the more 

common metaphoric process—of a metaphor that serves the diegesis—while 

actually giving a diegesis that serves the metaphor. 

Everything happens in this metaphor as if the formal resemblance 

between the moon that is "sliced" by cloud and the woman's round 

eye elicits the human action of slicing the eye. In other words, there 

is a reversal of the usual metaphoric process in which the tenor half 

of the metaphor belongs to the action of the diegesis and the vehicle 

half belongs to a part of the decor or, in the case of the pure metaphor, 

to an entirely extraneous element brought in from outside the 

narrative. Instead, the moon and cloud are precisely the kind of extraneous 

or background material that would usually come second 

and belong to the vehicle, while the eye and the razor, which here 

belong to the compared element of the figure, are the kind of 

3 The Modern Times metaphor is somewhat of an exception in that the vehicle part of this 

metaphor—the sheep—precedes the tenor part—the workers. But this unusual order is because 

the metaphor opens the film; it does not disturb the usual hierarchy of diegesis over 

figure. 

70 

Un Chicn andalou 

human activity that would usually appear first and belong to the 

tenor. 

So it is impossible to say that the vehicle element of this metaphor 

(moon and cloud) comments on another hierarchically more significant 

tenor element belonging to the diegesis (eye and razor). For 

here it is precisely the vehicle—the element that usually appears to 

be the artificial or consciously constructed part of the figure (the 

moon and clouds)—that constitutes the "action" of this sequence. 

In other words, the action has shifted to the vehicle part of the figure, 

which usually comes second and in which we notice the hand 

of the artist at work forging connotative meanings. Within the original 

denotative signifiers—the round shape of the eye and moon, the 

thinness of the cloud and razor, and the similar speeds with which 

both move across their respective objects, there is a remarkable formal 

similarity of the signifiers alone motivating the comparison; yet 

there is no immediate connotative "explanation" on the level of the 

signifieds. 

But not only does the first part of this figure seem to create the 

diegesis, it also becomes a self-reflecting comment on the very process 

of making metaphors. In describing the first part, we tend to say 

that the clouds slice or cut the moon, which they do not really do— 

it is already a figure of speech to say so. But we say so precisely because 

the film has been building up to this final cutting through a 

proliferation of motifs emphasizing the bisection of circular shapes 

by horizontal lines. The first cutting of the thumbnail with the razor 

prepares us for the later—figural—cutting of the moon by the 

cloud. This figural cutting is in turn a prefiguration of the literal 

cutting of the eye which follows. What is so radically disturbing in 

this figure then is, not only the audacity of comparing one violent 

and sadistic image with another that is innocuous and natural, but 

also the fact that such a rigorous formal control exercised by the operation 

of the figure dictates the development of the sadistic and violent 

content. 

To summarize the differences between the Chien andalou prologue 

metaphor and the structurally similar, and more typical, metaphor 

in Shanghai Express, we find that: (1) in the prologue metaphor 

a disturbed hierarchy of background and foreground creates a 

situation in which the figural or vehicle half of the metaphor comes 

71


first and appears to generate the diegesis; and (2) in the Chien figure 

is a deviation from the more typical semantic basis for association of 

the elements of the metaphor—form rather than content dictates 

the ground of the association. Such a figure, though formally modeled 

on the typical metaphor, actually functions as a deconstruction 

of the anticipated metaphoric process in which the denotative content 

of the eye-cutting refuses to be absorbed immediately into a 

connotative expression. 

Unlike the classical figure, this seemingly autonomous figure refuses 

to be read as mere embellishment upon a discourse. It demands 

to be seen as the very cause of this discourse. The figure, 

which in its more usual manifestation can be dismissed as superfluous, 

here becomes essential. In Un Chien andalou this means 

that none of the events related by the prologue can be read as the 

illusion of past events, but only as configurations arising out of the 

act of writing, out of the desire expressed by the figure itself. Yet, 

what is so striking about this particular metaphor is the way the meticulous 

building of an apparently realistic diegesis culminates in an 

outrageous and metaphoric act of violence, which unlike most film 

violence subverts the very realism of its discourse. 

The Hand and the Eye." If, as we have seen, this figure does not 

permit the kind of connotative interpretation that comments on the 

diegesis, there is another sense in which it can be seen as a general 

symbol of the entire act of filmic creation. It is certainly no accident 

that the first shot of this prologue is a close-up of a hand sharpening 

a razor, while the last shot combines the elements of hand, razor, 

and eye. Even to a viewer unaware of the identity of the man who 

wields this razor—he is played by Luis Bunuel himself—and whose 

gaze we constantly follow, it is clear that his function in this prologue 

resembles that of the filmmaker. This function is double: it 

consists of vision and cutting, two processes that are repeated several 

times in the short twelve shots of this sequence. 

Each new element introduced after the first shot is first viewed by 

the man on the balcony. We watch him looking—twice this look is 

24 In this section I am only making more explicit what Pascal Bonitzer ("Le Gros orteil: 

'Realite de la denotation," Cahiers du cinema 232 [October 1971]: 15) and Joel Farges ("L'lmage 

d'un corps," Communications 23 [May 1975]: 88) have already implied. 

72 


followed by the razor, once by the moon. The final look of outward 

regard that precedes the sudden appearance of the woman develops 

out of the pattern created by this vision. It is a progression to envision, 

which the diegetically contradictory elements of the tie and 

the absence of the watch seem to affirm. The cutting that follows 

this envision is nothing less than its implementation, an ironic symbol 

of the hand of the artist at work cutting up the continuous fabric 

of "reality" into newly significant combinations. 

This prologue has yet another kind of vision, that of the woman. 

Hers is an eye that sees nothing, an eye that stares straight ahead, 

passive and unblinking at the approach of the razor. It is an eye that 

is put there to be seen, whose vacant stare, as Joel Farges has 

noted," connects with our own passive voyeuristic stare, which 

through this connection feels the violence of the razor as a blinding 

assault on its own vision. But blindness, as every poet knows, can 

also be a figure for a different kind of sight. For, as the Surrealist 

poet Paul Eluard writes, "he doux fer rouge de I'aurorelKend la vue 

aux aveugles" (The gentle red iron of dawn/Restores sight to the 

blind). 26 And, just as Eluard employs the iron that blinds as a metaphoric 

figure for sight, so Bunuel and Dali draw their razor across 

our eye in such a way that, by blinding us to the possibility of seeing 

through the figure, they force us to look at the work of the figure 

itself. 

LATENT MEANING 

The above analysis of the formal attributes of the prologue metaphor 

is in no sense exhaustive. But at this point it will be more fruitful 

to proceed with the analysis of the rest of the film before venturing 

an interpretation of its latent significance. 

Since metaphor and condensation, unlike metonymy and displacement, 

make associations between elements that may never be 

brought together outside the particular textual space of the metaphor, 

it is reasonable to ask, especially in the case of Surrealist meta- 

Farges, "L'Image d'un corps," p. 93. 

Paul Eluard, "Le Baillon sur la table," La Vie immediate (Paris: Editions des cahiers 

libres, 1932). The translation is mine. 

73


phors like that of the prologue, just what is the motive for these 

combinations: why are the moon and eye, like the umbrella and 

sewing machine in Lautreament's famous image, brought together? 

(In fact, the parallel between Lautreamont's famous comparison 

from Maldoror, "as handsome ... as the fortuitous encounter 

upon a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella" 2 and 

the filmic figure under question is itself fortuitous. In both examples 

male and female symbols combine with cutting motifs. Just as Andre 

Breton has noted the sexual import of Lautreamont's poetic image, 

28 we will eventually see a similarly latent sexual import in the 

prologue metaphor.) 

On the microlevel of a single metaphor, it is not possible to point 

to a consensus of meaning with the same facility with which we 

would translate the classical metaphoric formula My love is a flame. 

In the preceding analysis of the prologue metaphor, we have only 

seen that a self-referential figure seems to generate the diegesis. Although 

there is a latent meaning to this metaphor, it cannot be discovered 

through the kind of translation that the classical equation 

love = flame has accomplished in the past. Once again this is partly 

due to the absence in film, as well as in the unconscious productions 

of the Imaginary, of a fixed code analogous to that of language. 

As we have seen, the figural meaning of verbal rhetoric arises out 

of the discrepancy between the accepted literal meanings of the 

two parts of a statement. This discrepancy between the conventional 

coded meanings of tenor (love) and vehicle (flame) forces the discovery 

of a new meaning based on the ground of a shared characteristic 

(heat). But film does not possess such a fixed denotative code except 

insofar as rhetorical figures themselves have hardened into codelike 

forms. 

Christian Metz's work in film semiology has shown that the narrative 

procedures of film have tended to develop out of connotative 

effects that have later become absorbed into short-lived and only 

partial kinds of systems: what Metz prefers to call a grande syntagmatique, 

rather than a full-fledged paradigmatique. This grande 

syntagmatique is a level of codification that exists only in the larger 

2/ Lautreamont, Maldoror, p. 263. 

28 Breton, Les Vases communicants (Paris: Gallimard, 1955). P- 67. Breton suggests that 

the umbrella represents man, the sewing machine woman, the dissection table the bed. 

74 

1 


organizational units of sequences and not in the minimum unit of 

the shot. Unlike language, the film does not begin with a code that 

connotation then transgresses. Instead the filmmaker begins with 

the raw material of the photographic registration, which connotative 

effect eventually shapes into a denotative code. (For example, 

Metz explains how an alternating montage originates as a way of 

making the denotation more lively and later becomes codified as 

one of the signifiers of simultaneity. 29 ) In other words, the separation 

between grammar and rhetoric is not as sharp as it is in the verbal 

arts, although certainly even the verbal arts present problems 

enough on this score. 

Similarly, in the dream the basic units of discourse are images 

that, unlike words, in themselves have no codified meanings. As 

seen in chapter 1, it is a common mistake in dream analysis to assume 

that the unconscious is a preexisting storehouse of meaning 

which the dream symbols simply represent. Laplanche and 

Leclaire, in their psychoanalytic study of the unconscious, explain 

that it is a misuse of the Freudian understanding of the unconscious 

to see dream images as the fixed symbolization of certain unconscious 

thoughts rather than as the production and creation of meaning. 

30 This is not to say that there is not a latent meaning in every 

dream, but simply that this latent meaning is not an already existing 

entity that can be reached through mechanistic decoding. 

Insofar as Un Chien andalou imitates the procedures of the unconscious, 

its figures too have a latent meaning, not just the usual 

connotation of most filmic figuration, like the kiss and whistle in 

Shanghai Express that can be interpreted in an instant, but a truly 

latent meaning that can be discovered only through a close analysis 

of the entire text. In the prologue metaphor we saw the peculiar way 

in which a figure becomes a part of the denotative diegesis through a 

reversal of the more typical hierarchy of diegesis and figure. The 

disturbance of this hierarchy is an indication that a desire simultaneously 

seeks to find expression and through censorship to cover 

this expression. On the basis of the prologue alone, we cannot yet 

determine what this latent meaning is. We have only been cued to 

Metz, "Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film," in Film Language, pp. 118-19. 

Jean Laplanche and Serge Leclaire, "L'Inconscient: Une Etude psychanalytic," Les 

Temps Modemes 183 (July 1961)183. 

'


the presence of an enigma by the unconventionally and self-referentiality 

of the metaphoric process. 

As a result, we are forced to hold the process of interpretation in 

suspense, to look at the figure and the discourse it generates more 

closely, until on the macrolevel of the whole text we begin to see a 

pattern of overdetermination. Throughout the film these include a 

fascination with body parts that are never quite as they should be 

and the often related activity of cutting or mutilation—mutilation 

that always occurs in the context of male and female relations. The 

following close description and analysis of the rest of the film attempts 

to understand the metaphorical "statement" of the prologue 

in light of the figural complex of the entire film. 

The prologue is followed by a second time-reference, the specificity 

of which, "eight years later," contradicts the earlier fairy-tale 

time-reference ("once upon a time") that began the film. A cyclist 

appears on a deserted Paris street. (I will refer to this man as the cyclist 

through the rest of the analysis to distinguish him from other 

nameless male figures.) In addition to a dark suit, he is wearing 

incongruous lacy-white frills on his head, shoulders, and waist. 

Around his neck, attached by a strap, is a wooden box covered with 

diagonal stripes. When the cyclist rides directly toward the camera 

the box becomes the center of the shot. The following shot is a lapdissolve 

to a close-up of the same box. The diagonal stripes on the 

box are a visual echo (or rhyme) of the vertical stripes on the tie the 

razor-wielding man suddenly acquired during the eye-cutting. 

The scene changes to a full view of a bed and sitting room, in 

which the woman of the prologue sits at a table reading a book. She 

is wearing the same dress but her eye is uncut. Suddenly she looks 

up as if startled. A shot of the cyclist outside leads us to infer that his 

presence must somehow be what startled her. The woman throws 

her book shut onto the table. In a close-up it unnaturally reopens 

to a reproduction of Vermeer's The Lacemaker, showing a seated 

woman intently working a piece of lace. The woman goes to the 

window and looks down on the cyclist. From this high perspective 

we watch the cyclist slowly come to a stop and, without putting out 

a hand or leg to break his fall, keel over onto his side in the street. 

There he remains motionless, one wheel of the bicycle still spin- 

76 


ning, his box still around his neck. In reaction shots, the woman 

has been alternately repelled and intensely interested. She now runs 

downstairs, where in a great show of protective emotion she kneels 

beside him, holds his head, and kisses his face repeatedly. Dissolve 

to a close-up of a box showing a hand opening it with a key. An 

object wrapped in diagonally striped paper is removed. A medium 

shot reveals that the woman, who is now back in the room, is the 

person opening the box with the key, removing from it a diagonally 

striped necktie wrapped in vertically striped paper. 

From the bed beside her, the woman picks up a white collar with 

a black tie attached. She removes the black tie and replaces it with 

the diagonally striped one from the box. A shot of the bed shows 

that the cyclist's frills have been carefully laid out in the position 

they would occupy if the cyclist were himself on the bed. The 

woman puts the collar with the new tie in its proper place but without 

tying the tie. She carefully arranges the whole effigy as the camera 

pulls back to reveal that the box too is in its proper place around 

the "neck" of the "cyclist." The woman then sits beside the bed as if 

watching over a sick person. Two separate shots show the bed and 

frills over which she watches. In each of them the untied striped tie 

magically ties itself—first quickly, then slowly. 

This ritualized arrangement of the cyclists bizarre garments on 

the bed in the woman's apartment has an unmistakable fetishistic 

function, which we shall examine later. For the moment it is sufficient 

to note that these garments evoke the absent cyclist in the form 

of a metonymy-placed-in-paradigm, a figural association based 

upon the previous contiguity of the cyclist and these garments (as 

the pince-nez of the ship's doctor in Potemkin evoked its recently 

drowned former owner). But, in this case, the extremely unlikely 

combination of these particular garments with a male cyclist on a 

Parisian street lends to this metonymy (unlike the more typical 

metonymic association of doctor and pince-nez) a good deal of the 

sense of artificial construction common to metaphor. This sense of 

artifice tends to encourage us to discover an underlying metaphoric 

similarity between the cyclist himself and the confused signs of gender—tie, 

collar, box, and frills—which evoke him. 

Suddenly, the woman starts, as if sensing something. She turns 

her head away from the bed to see the cyclist on the other side of the 

77


room now without the frills and box. He stares with fascination at 

his right hand. The woman approaches, looks at the hand with 

him, and then recoils fearfully. The man continues to stare at his 

hand, glancing at her only briefly to check if she sees it too. 

A Metaphoric Series. At this point an intricate series of similar 

shapes forms a transition between the space of the apartment and 

the street below. The metaphoric series begins by revealing the mystery 

of the cyclist's hand: 

Shot 1. Close-up of the man's hand with a circular hole in the 

palm, out of which ants swarm. Dissolve. 

Shot 2. Close-up of the torso of a female sunbather lying on her 

back with arms crossed behind her head. The shot is centered on a 

round patch of dark underarm hair. Dissolve. 

Shot 3. Close-up of a round sea urchin, whose stiffblack spines are 

slowly moving. Dissolve. 

Shot 4. A round, iris-framed, long shot from a high angle centered 

on the round close-cropped head of an androgynous-looking woman 

holding a long stick. With the stick she pokes at a round severed hand 

lying in the street. The iris opens out to reveal a crowd that has 

formed a circle around the androgyne. 

This is the end of the figure proper, although the action begun in 

the final shot of the androgyne continues with a close-up of the severed 

hand as it is prodded by the stick, a low-angle shot of the crowd 

as it sways slightly, and a policeman who pushes the crowd away 

from the androgyne. As an interior shot reveals the cyclist and 

woman standing before a window looking down on the scene in the 

street, we realize that the high-angle shot that first presented the androgyne 

(shot 2) was in fact the perspective from the woman's apartment 

and that she and the cyclist have overseen the drama of the 

severed hand taking place in the street below. While the cyclist and 

woman continue to watch from above, the androgyne places the severed 

hand in a ubiquitous, diagonally-striped box identical to the 

cyclist's box and clasps it sadly to her breast. Soon afterward she is 

struck by a car. The cyclist's reaction to all these events is one of 

mounting sexual excitement. 

Like the metaphor of the prologue, the metaphoric series proper 

is motivated by the formal similarity of round shapes emphasized by 

78 


the dissolves between shots. The round shape of the hole in the 

cyclist's hand and the swarming movement of the ants resemble the 

similar round shape of the sunbather's armpit and its tuft of hair. 

Thus far similarity of the referents (hollow in hand and armpit) 

combine with contiguity of the discourse to form a metaphor placed 

in syntagm. 

In shot 3 the round shape of the sea urchin and its protruding 

spines echoes the round hole and swarm of ants in shot 1 and the 

round underarm and tuft of hair in shot 2. But, whereas in shots 1 

and 2 the round shapes were concave holes or vacuums from which 

ants and hair emerged, the round shape of the sea urchin in shot 3 is 

a convex volume from which black spines protrude. 

With shot 4 (beginning with the iris on the androgyne), the round 

shapes of the preceding three shots are repeated in a different way. 

Here the iris frame of the shot itself is round. This roundness is 

echoed by the round shape of the androgyne's head within the shot. 

Then, as the iris opens out, its shape is replaced by the round shape 

of the crowd encircling the androgyne and is echoed by the severed 

round hand with which she plays. 

Comparing these images, we discover a marked development 

from the round concave hole of the hand (shot 1) and the equally 

concave round cup of the sunbather's armpit (shot 2) with the convex 

roundness of the sea urchin (shot 3) and the equally convex 

roundness of the androgyne's head and severed hand (shot 4). In this 

progression, the metaphor begins within the diegesis; it continues its 

development extradiegetically in the shots of the armpit and sea 

urchin. Then, in the final shot of the series, the androgyne and severed 

hand lead back into the diegesis through the subsequent revelation 

that the androgyne has been observed by the cyclist, whose 

own mutilated hand began the series. Thus a progression of similar 

shapes deviously links the contiguous space of apartment and street, 

leading first away from and then back to the diegesis. 

THE MEANING OF THE FIGURES 

Each of these enigmatic figures—the prologue metaphor of moon 

and eye, the metonymy of the garments placed on the bed, and the 

79

The cyclist and woman stare at his 

hand. The metaphoric series begins 

with 

Shot 1. The cyclist's hand with ants 

swarming out of a hole. 

Dissolve between the hole in the hand 

and 

Shot 2. The underarm of a female sunbather. 

Dissolve between the underarm of the 

sunbather and 

Shot 3. A spiny sea urchin. 

Dissolve between the sea urchin and 

Shot 4. The androgyne who pokes at a 

severed hand with a long stick.


metaphoric series beginning with the hole in the hand—repeat 

motifs of cut or mutilated flesh and/or signs of male and female 

gender. 

The cutting motif begins with the trial cut of the thumbnail before 

the eye-cutting of the prologue and continues with the mutilated 

hand and completely severed hand of the metaphoric series. 

The opposing signs of male and female gender appear first in the 

diegesis in the combination of male cyclist dressed in feminine 

frills, then in the metonymic manipulation of male collar and tie 

combined with these same frills; they continue in the more abstract 

concave hollows and convex protrusions of the metaphoric series, 

and finally culminate in the person of the androgyne "herself." 

Mutilation by cutting frequently leads to the combination of the 

signs of male and female gender. For example, the initial mutilation 

of the eye-cutting in the prologue is followed by the male-female 

cyclist and then by the fetishized signs of his contradictory gender 

alone in the metonymies of the garments placed on the bed. In the 

metaphoric series this pattern is repeated within a single figure: the 

initial mutilation of the hole in the hand is followed by a shift from 

concave to convex roundness that culminates in the appearance of 

the androgyne, who combines in one person the same contradictory 

gender traits as the cyclist. 

Most commentators have viewed the prologue metaphor variously 

as a symbol of sexual penetration of the female body, 31 as an 

assault on the viewer's own vision and a movement toward inner vision," 

and finally, as in my own preceding analysis, as some 

form of metaphor for the act of cinematic construction itself. My 

further view does not deny any of these meanings but, rather, adds 

the notion that the latent meaning of the metaphor can only be castration. 

The significant point about this meaning is that it emerges 

only in the light of the other figures, as they respond to the initial 

metaphor of the prologue. But what these subsequent figures do, 

paradoxically, is attempt to deny the meaning of castration, even 

"See Raymond Durgnat, Luis Bunuel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 

p. 24. 

"See Ken Kelman, "The Other Side of Realism," The Essential Cinema: Essays on the 

i'ilms in the Collection of Anthology Film Archives, 2 vols., ed. P. Adams Sitney (New York: 

Anthology Film Archives and New York University Press, 1975), 1:113. 

82 

Un Chicn andalou 

though this very denial becomes itself the confirmation of the fear it 

is intended to allay. 

The woman whose eye is cut by the razor in the prologue becomes 

a sexual object of the cyclist's desire in the subsequent diegesis. 

It is thus reasonable to interpret the woman's split eye as a 

metaphor for the vagina and the razor as a substitute penis. But if 

this is so, the metaphor of male desire is peculiarly condensed. The 

fact that penetration occurs through cutting opens up the possibility 

that it is the result of cutting—the result, that is, of castration. This 

only becomes apparent in the movement of the following figures to 

deny the consequences of this castration: to deny sexual difference. 

In a 1927 article" Freud shows how the function of the fetish 

arises from the fear of castration. In the male fantasy, a woman's 

difference (and desirability) is the result of castration. If the fear of 

castration becomes a fixation, the tendency on the part of the male 

unconscious is to replace female love objects with fetish objects that 

will forever disavow the feared castration. Thus Freud shows that 

the function of the fetish is to be a substitute for the mother's "penis 

that the little boy once believed in." 54 He calls this substitute a Verleugnung 

or "disavowal" of the terrifying fact that women have no 

penis: 

In the conflict between the weight of the unwelcome perception and 

the force of his counter-wish, a compromise has been reached, as 

is only possible under the dominance of the unconscious laws of 

thought. . . . the woman has got a penis; but this penis is no longer 

the same as it was before. Something else has taken its place, has been 

appointed its substitute. ... the horror of castration has set up a memorial 

to itself in the creation of this substitute. ... It remains a 

token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against 

it. 55 

Frequently these substitutes—feet, shoes, underpants—are contiguous 

substitutes metonymically associated with the hidden and 

feared lack. They either cover or stop short of the part of the body 

that may have undergone castration. Thus the fetish allows the 

"Fetishism," in Freud, Complete Psychological Works, 21:153. 

Ibid., p. 154. 

"Ibid. 

83


fetishist to preserve the illusion of the female phallus. Yet, as Freud 

points out and as others after him have stressed even more, 35 the 

fetish is an object that, in its denial of what is most feared, cannot 

help but assert that very fear. 

The feminine frills the woman lays out on the bed, to which the 

diagonally striped tie is significantly added, are fetishistic figures of 

the cyclist himself that wishfully present him as a sexually undifferentiated 

being, as both male and female. But this fetishistic 

assertion of the absence of sexual difference simultaneously asserts 

the fear that the fetish is created to deny. 3 ' This process of denial is 

repeated in the following figure of the metaphoric series. But here 

the metaphor also reasserts the initial fear of castration in the beginning 

shot of the wounded hand. Just as the wound of the eye-cutting 

is followed in a subsequent scene by the disavowal of the fetish 

garments, so here the metaphoric assertion of castration is directly 

followed by a progression of increasingly convex shapes that attempts 

to disavow the initial concave wound. 

But, again, the more the text tries to disavow and cover an initial 

lack, the more it asserts that lack. For in the final image of the 

series—the shot of the androgyne on the street—the forms are 

convex; but the content of the convex form is, most disturbingly, 

a severed hand—a cut-off organ. Not only does this process of disavowal 

call attention to the fear of castration, it also ironically points 

out the double nature of the sexual symbols involved: concave and 

convex are two sides of the same bowl. One side is absence (the concave 

wound, the vagina), the other side is presence (the convex protrusion, 

the penis). When the convex protrusion turns out to be a 

severed organ, it becomes a presence that insidiously evokes an absence. 

Thus even a phallic protrusion becomes an ironic metaphor 

for the fear it is intended to allay. 

The paradoxical structure of all these figures reflects the ambiguous 

logic of dreams, in which the assertion of any thought can be 

' 6 Octave Manonni, "Je sais bien mais quand merae," Clefs pour I'imaginaire (Paris: Seuil, 

1969), p. 2. 

57 A variant and even complementary interpretation of the placing of these garments on 

the bed could see it as an expression of the woman's desire that the sexually undifferentiated 

child not develop into a sexual being, thus her own disavowal would seem to be less oriented 

toward a specific fear of castration and more toward keeping the child a neuter (and unthreatening) 

object of her motherly affections. 

84 


both positive and negative in a perpetual movement between the 

opposing poles of signification. Contraries act in this film as they do 

in dreams, where, as Freud has observed, the concept no seems not 

to exist. 38 Causality in general seems to operate throughout the film 

in a particularly dreamlike way. Freud has observed that dreams can 

represent causal connection by the introduction of the dream equivalent 

of a "dependent clause." In certain kinds of dreams a clearly 

separate beginning section—the dependent clause—posits an initial 

condition or state of affairs, which the rest of the dream—the 

"principal clause"—then develops. Freud's point is that the seemingly 

disjointed segments of a dream can nevertheless exhibit the 

logic of causality. In Un Chien andalou the prologue metaphor acts 

as such a dependent clause positing the initial condition of castration-division-absence 

that the principal clause of the subsequent figures—and 

the diegesis that flows out of these figures—attempts to 

deny. 

Still more may be said about the principal clause of the final metaphoric 

series ending with the androgyne. The androgyne herself is 

a dominantly feminine version of the contradictory gender traits of 

the dominantly masculine cyclist. Her feminine skirt is countered 

by short hair, angular body, and tailored jacket, just as the cyclist's 

suit and tie are countered by feminine frills. The cyclist and androgyne 

are also linked by their mutual possession of the diagonally 

striped box, which in one instance contains a necktie and in another 

becomes the receptacle for the severed hand. In the first instance 

the box appears to let out its secret: the necktie as substitute phallus 

and fetish working to deny a feared castration. In the second instance 

it functions as the container for the countersecret: the receptacle 

for the severed hand, which because it is once again a reminder 

of castration must be hidden away. 

Taken together these figures establish a symmetrical pattern of assertion 

and denial, the basic terms of which are presence and absence. 

The prologue metaphor of cutting posits a gap-split-absence, 

which the metonymy of the fetish garments attempts to disavow. 

"'No' seems not to exist so far as dreams are concerned. . . . Dreams represent any element 

by its wishful contrary so there is no way of deciding at a first glance whether any element 

that admits of a contrary is present in the dream-thoughts as a positive or a negative. 

Interpretation of Dreams, p. 353. 

85


The hole in the hand posits a similar gap-split-absence, which the 

following series of metaphorically similar shapes even less successfully 

disavows. The desire of the text thus mirrors the desire of 

the (male) subject. It seeks perpetually and impossibly to fill in, 

cover over, and to otherwise deny an original loss. If castration is 

one meaning of the prologue metaphor, it is itself, as Lacan has 

said, also a metaphor for difference, for the fundamental lack-inbeing 

that marks the entrance into the Symbolic and structures 

desire. 

Thus the intense figural activity of this first part of the film offers a 

conscious imitation of the rhetorical form of the discourse of the 

unconscious. The dream work carried out by condensation and displacement 

in actual dreams is closely imitated in Un Chien andalou 

by the Surrealist use of metaphor and metonymy in which the 

meaning of the'text is generated entirely through its figures. Only 

by putting off the initial impulse to interpret these figures on the 

micro-level of their relation to the immediate diegetic situation 

have we been able to discover the latent text consisting of the repeated 

assertion-denial of castration in the context of awakening 

sexual desire. These Surrealist figures intentionally frustrate our attempts 

at interpretation based on the relation of the figure to the 

diegesis that surrounds it, because the discourse of this film is carried 

out by and large on the level of its figures. This is the final reason 

for the disturbed hierarchy between diegesis and figure noted 

earlier. The desire expressed by this film cannot be directly named 

or diegetically presented: it can only be generated by a hidden discourse, 

which like the discourse of the unconscious in dreams, 

Freudian slips, or bungled actions disturbs and rearranges the memory 

traces, logical speech, and action of our daily lives. 

Sexual Pursuit. When the cyclist observes the death of the androgyne 

on the street below, his response is mounting excitement 

(captured beautifully by his breath fogging the window through 

which he gazes). This excitement immediately becomes overt sexual 

desire for the woman who has been observing the scene below 

with him. Until this point his relations with her have been mostly 

filial and passive. Suddenly, in direct response to the death of the 

androgyne, he is on the verge of raping her. One interpretation of 

86 


his reaction would be to see the death of the androgyne as at least a 

temporary resolution of the castration fear and the fetishistic impulses 

this fear engenders. This resolution allows a progression toward 

desire for the opposite sex. From this point on, the woman is 

no longer a mother substitute, whose absence of a penis is a source 

of disturbance to the male child; now she has become a woman, 

whose difference becomes the object of his desire—his first act is to 

grab for her breasts. 

In the second half of this film, the intensely Surrealistic figurations 

examined above give way to more conventional symbols. Desire 

here becomes a conscious pursuit of a concrete love-object. But 

it should be clear from the preceding analysis that this love-object is 

herself nothing but another substitute for the fundamental lack-inbeing 

posited by the castration metaphor of the prologue. 

Turning from the window from which he has witnessed the death 

of the androgyne, the cyclist begins a comic cat-and-mouse pursuit 

of the woman. On the sound track a jaunty Argentine tango alternates 

with the ponderous and passionate Liebestod from Wagner's 

Tristan und Isolde. 

Momentarily catching the woman, the cyclist caresses her breasts 

over her clothes. A dissolve reveals the same hands caressing entirely 

nude breasts. A close-up of the cyclist's face shows that he, 

too, has undergone a transformation. His face is contorted, his eyes 

roll up so that the pupils are no longer visible, and from the side of 

his mouth drips a bloody drool. This transformation begins a pattern 

of association linking passion with the paroxysms of violence 

and death. This is a frequent association in a great many of Bunuel's 

films, in which sexual desire is never beautiful but always that 

which dirties, mutilates, or profanes its object and subject. In most 

cases this excessive passion represents the pursuit of an impossible 

and absolute union that death alone can finally offer. 

In the love-death scene in question, when the cyclist begins to 

caress the woman's breasts, his passion immediately evokes a reaction 

that approximates death: his eyes roll up into his head and drool 

drips from his mouth. Love and death are inextricably connected, 

because only the transgression and separation of death can accomplish 

the ultimate union of love. Bataille points out that in French 

orgasm is often referred to as a petite mort (little death), a brief 

87

1. The cyclist caresses the woman's breasts over 

her dress. 

2. The breasts are suddenly nude. 

3. The breasts become buttocks. 


moment in which an individual transgresses the separate discontinuities 

of daily life to dissolve into continuity with the rest of the 

universe. He also notes that such eroticism can place the very existence 

of human consciousness in question. 39 Un Chien andalou is 

precisely such a questioning of the self and of the illusion of the 

unity of the self through eroticism. Unlike the Wagnerian Liebestod, 

this love-death is not a romantic affirmation of the transcendent 

power of love that finds its ultimate fulfillment in death. The 

Wagnerian references, like the similar references in L'Age d'or, are 

ironic, as the musical alternation between the ponderous and passionate 

Liebestod and the jaunty Argentine tango suggests. 40 Where 

Wagner's Liebestod is a transcendent unity, Bunuel and Dali emphasize 

the impossibility of ultimate consummation. Just as masculine 

signifiers evoke feminine signifiers, so also desire evokes 

death. For Bunuel and Dali it is the process of the movement between 

these poles that holds our attention, not their transcendent 

merging. 

The cyclist's passion begins when he caresses the woman's breasts 

through her clothes. On a dissolve the breasts are suddenly nude; 

then they are clothed again. In a repeat of this sequence, when the 

hands caress the alternately clothed and nude breasts, the mounds 

of flesh turn out to be not breasts but buttocks. The switch from 

breasts to buttocks comprises a movement from sexual orthodoxy to 

relative perversion—a transgression that obviously heightens the 

cyclist's passion. It is also a transgression that presents a similar flux 

of male and female signifiers observed in the first part of the film. 

The breasts belong to the woman's body and the buttocks seem to 

also. But in the context of being caressed and substituted for breasts, 

these buttocks tend to suggest the perversion of a normal male desire 

for different body parts (breasts or vagina) into an abnormal male 

desire for similar body parts (buttocks or penis). Whether the buttocks 

are male or female, we tend to read them as yet another variation 

on the frequent assertion-denial of sexual difference begun by 

the figural castration of the prologue. 

At this point the woman runs away. The cyclist chases her around 

George S. Bataille, Erotisme (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1957), p. 34. 

At the film's first public screening, Bunuel stood behind the screen with a record player. 

In i960 this same music was placed on the soundtrack of the film. 

89


the room and across the bed. Grabbing a tennis racket that is hanging 

on the wall, she fends the cyclist off. Against such resistance the 

cyclist has recourse to more subtle stratagems, sublimating his energetic 

desire into a more socially acceptable form. Retreating a bit he 

casts about for some alternative. Finding two ropes on the floor he 

grabs them and resumes his movement toward the woman pulling a 

rope over each shoulder, evidently pleased to have found "the solution." 

The frame does not immediately reveal just what is attached 

to the ropes, although it is clear that the weight must be enormous. 

Even before we know what the cyclist is pulling, the action of 

pulling alone is a fairly clear imitation of the process of sublimation. 

The energy for one (sexual) purpose is channeled into another; direct 

movement toward the woman is balanced by the weight on the 

other end of the ropes. Subsequent shots of what he pulls reveal the 

various forms taken by his sublimation: ropes and corks at the beginning 

suggest the accoutrements of fishing and the notion of entrapment. 

Next the two Marist brothers dragged along by the ropes 

seem to represent the smug piety of religious sanctions, the religious 

weight and authority that impedes and transforms the cyclist's initial 

desire. The same can be said of the two grand pianos which follow, 

except that this sublimation is cultural. On top of it all, mocking 

these religious and cultural pretensions is the dead, rotting flesh of 

two asses, one on top of each piano. Their exposed teeth are an 

echo of the pianos' keyboards, and their blinded, oozing eye-sockets 

are a reminder of the prologue eye-cutting as well as a prefiguration 

of the gouged eye-sockets of both man and woman in the final tableau. 

The rotting asses are a reminder that the ultimate end of all 

desire can only be death and decay. Thus the castration of the prologue 

blinding gives way in these later blindings to the general symbolic 

meaning of death. Here sex and death begin to approach each 

other in a different way. The asses' blinded eyes signify an absence of 

desire. Associated with death, they are an ironic mockery of the 

cyclist's sexual energy, and their dead weight slows him down to the 

extent that the woman manages to slip away into the next room. 

The next room is exactly the same as the one she has just left, 

down to the last detail of a tennis racket and sailor hat hanging on 

the wall. Indeed, everything that takes place in this scene is a kind of 

repetition or doubling of what has come before, from the repetition 

90


of the room itself to the repetition of the hole-wifh-ants in the hand, 

to the appearance of an actual double who knocks on the door. As 

the woman escapes into the next room and closes the door against 

her pursuer, his wrist is caught in the door. In a prolonged and agonizing 

struggle, the pressure of the door grotesquely squeezes the 

ants out of the hole that has suddenly reappeared in his hand. The 

cyclist on the other side of the door reacts in agony. The escape to 

another identical room, along with the return of the previous image 

of ants-and-hole in hand suggests a regression to a former state, as 

the subsequent rediscovery of the cyclist dressed in his frills on the 

bed seems to affirm. 

Certainly the trauma of a hand caught in a door is analogous to 

the vulnerability to castration of an erect penis. This is especially so 

in the context of the earlier metaphoric series begun by the same 

image of the hole in the hand. But while the first appearance of the 

hole and ants emphasized the fear that women have undergone castration, 

the excruciation of this same hand caught in a door emphasizes 

the more present and direct agony of undergoing dismemberment. 

From the apparent danger of this aggressive acting-out of 

sexual desire, the cyclist regresses back to a fear of castration, resulting 

in a return to the fetish-attachments of the beginning of the 

film. As the woman is still engaged in her struggle to close the door 

against her pursuer, she glances around and sees that "he" is now 

lying on the bed in his former frills, the striped box around his neck. 

Once again the cyclist resorts to the infantile attempt to cover over 

the possibility of sexual difference through disavowal by the fetish. 

At this juncture a stranger wearing a hat rings the doorbell. The 

stranger quickly enters the room, imperiously orders the cyclist off 

the bed, roughly pulls off his frills and box. Then, going to the window, 

he throws them all out one by one. During this entire sequence 

the stranger's back is to the camera; we never see his face. 

He places the cyclist face-to-the-wall with hands out to form a cross. 

Thus far the stranger's actions have indicated an authoritarian 

role—either father or teacher. These functions correspond with 

Freud's concept of the super-ego, a censuring agent of self-observation 

that measures the self against a social ideal. 

As the stranger turns around, we discover that he is the cyclist's 

double. This resemblance confirms the interpretation of the dou- 

92


ble's function as super-ego—another, idealized, aspect of the self. 41 

But the stranger is something else as well. When he rips off the 

fetish garments and throws the box and its cord out the window, he 

becomes a threat to the cyclist's tenuous sexual equilibrium. It is as 

if the cyclist has retreated to this infantile stage to protect himself 

against the stranger's feared punishment: castration. 

But immediately the stranger's aspect changes. When he turns to 

face the camera for the first time in a slow-motion shot with a 

gauze-effect, his assertive manner gives way to a gentle sadness, as if 

overwhelmed and dismayed by the spectacle of what, by virtue of 

his resemblance to the cyclist, we now see to be his own youth. He 

walks over to a school child's desk that has suddenly appeared in the 

center of the room, picks up two books, and clasps them to his chest 

in a manner reminiscent of the way in which the androgyne clasped 

the box to her chest just before she was hit by a car. He puts a book 

in each of the cyclist's hands and moves away. 

Suddenly the books become revolvers. 42 Now it is the super-ego's 

turn to raise his hands, a tremendously hurt and martyred expression 

on his face. When the cyclist shoots, the super-ego begins his 

slow-motion fall in the room and ends it outside in the meadow. As 

he completes his fall, his hand grazes the length of the naked back 

of a woman seated in the meadow. Again a moment of extreme agony 

coincides with a moment of sensual bliss. The lyrical beauty of 

the nude woman seated in the meadow, whose image slowly disappears 

after the super-ego has fallen, combines with the paroxysm of 

his death and the final gesture of grasping for,,but never possessing, 

a fleeting image of desire: another instance of the interdependence 

of passion and death. 

The death of the- super-ego double marks an important phase in 

the successive stages of psycho-sexual development thus far portrayed. 

With this death and the funeral procession that follows it, 

the film for once lets a passion play itself out. In the only restful 

moment in the entire film, the claustrophobic and intense enigmas 

41 Kelman refers to the super-ego function of this personage in "The Other Side of Realism," 

p. 115. Durgnat refers to the stranger as an authority figure in Luis Bufiuel, p. 35. 

4 The books-into-revolver theme is typical of Surrealist images. Andre Breton, in his second 

manifesto (Manifestoes of Surrealism, p. 125), had written that the simplest Surrealist act 

would be to go out on the street and shoot at random at a crowd. 

94 


of the male-female sexual games give way here to a kind of irrelevant 

denouement—a man dies in a field, and a group of strangers 

discover and carry off his body in a series of increasingly "epic" 

long shots, at the end of which they all disappear. The funereal 

commemoration this death receives marks it as a significant loss. 

Though the death of the super-ego frees the cyclist from the social 

forces that have attempted to sublimate his sexual energy, it also 

leaves him insufficiently socialized and, as far as the woman is concerned, 

irrelevant. At this point the focus of the film begins to move 

away from the desires and fantasies of the male and increasingly toward 

those of the female. 

After the funeral procession we return once again to the room. 

The woman enters slowly, leans against the door, and looks intently 

at the opposite wall. The wall is blank. A second shot of the same 

wall reveals a small black spot. A closer shot reveals that the spot is 

actually a moth with a death's head on its back. A close-up of the 

death's head alone completes the series. As in many of the previous 

instances of metaphoric formulation, the death's head is an extremely 

formal variation of round shapes evolving out of a character's 

subjective glance. This, however, is not a metaphor but, rather, 

a conventional symbol of death. 

Suddenly the cyclist appears in the room as well. In a rapid 

movement he puts his hand over his mouth and takes it away. His 

mouth has disappeared. The woman looks at him disdainfully. As if 

to assert her own possession of an oral orifice, she rouges her lips 

defiantly. In the next shot of the man, a tuft of hair "grows" where 

his mouth once was. This last outrage seems to have a desired shock 

effect upon the woman, who, looking with surprise at her underarm, 

discovers that the hair is gone; it has moved to the cyclist's face. 

Scornfully she sticks out her tongue at the man—a second assertion 

of her possession of an oral orifice—and leaves the room forever. 

This particularly enigmatic scene can be understood only in relation 

to all the slicings, dismemberments, and holes that have preceded 

it and of which it is a direct reversal. Up until this point, 

physical mutilation has functioned as, among other things, a symbol 

of psychic interiority. Penetration of the flesh has corresponded 

to an analogous penetration of ordinarily repressed realms of the unconscious. 

Now, however, this final appearance of the cyclist closes 

95


1. The cyclist. 

2. The cyclist places his hand over his 

mouth. 

3. His mouth disappears. 

4. A tuft of hair appears where his 

mouth was. 

5. The woman discovers her underarm 

hair missing. 

96 


and seals the flesh, not the grotesque wounds generated throughout 

the film, but a perfectly natural orifice: the mouth. It then covers 

this newly closed orifice with alien underarm hair. 

Thus the last moments of the film seal and cover the inferiority 

that the beginning of the film so grotesquely opened. Unnatural 

cutting is followed by equally unnatural closing. Though an epilogue 

follows, this final scene between the cyclist and the woman 

truly ends the revelation of psychic inferiority begun by the prologue. 

Once the literal and figural openings have been sealed, 

nothing more can pass between them. 

This reversal of cutting images also brings an end to the accompanying 

castration theme, but it does so in a peculiar way. When 

the underarm hair appears on the space that was once the cyclist's 

mouth, the effect of this triangular patch of hair is rather startlingly 

that of a misplaced patch of pubic hair. 43 Since the hair has 

sprouted over a sealed orifice, we know that it cannot conceal female 

genitalia. But neither does it cover male genitalia, for there is 

no protruding phallus. This particular displacement of body parts 

contradicts all previous instances of the assertion of masculine 

and/or feminine sexual traits. It represents the decidedly neutral absence 

of any sexual signifiers, even through it provides their natural 

context (pubic hair). In other words, displaced hair sets up an expectation 

for the signifiers of sexuality, which the sealed mouth denies. 

In this context the protrusion of the woman's tongue connotes a bit 

more than the usual disdain. Like her previous lip rouging it asserts 

her own possession of orifices (and thus of gender) and the man's 

pathetic lack (of gender, virility). Her tongue is a phallic protrusion 

that he can no longer emulate. 

The woman now leaves the cyclist. The role of the woman, 

which began passively, now becomes active. Up until this point, 

events have tended to happen to her. Her role has been that of an 

object responding to the cyclist's initiatives: maternally to his bicycle 

fall and fearfully to his sexual advances. Now, in the face of his lack 

of initiative, she asserts her own desire to pursue the new man on 

43 In a 1934 canvas that later appeared on the cover of Andre Breton's Qu'est-ce que le 

Surrealisme? (Brussels: R. Henriquez, 1934), Rene Magritte created a similar figure. Entitled 

Le Viol, it is a portrait of a woman in which breasts take the place of eyes, a navel is the nose, 

and a triangle of pubic hair is the mouth. 

97


the beach. But, although the woman's own desires now come into 

focus for the first time, these desires are not of the repressed, unconscious 

variety that have dominated the rest of the film. Even when 

she does find and win over the new man, this new relationship 

serves only as a comment on the deterioration of the former. This 

happens in the following way. 

Before the woman leaves the room, she opens the door and waves 

to someone off-screen while a breeze blows her hair. In the next 

shot a new man in golf clothes turns around to face her. From the 

Parisian apartment she steps immediately onto the beach. The man 

in golf clothes at first shows her his watch as if to reproach her for 

tardiness, but he soon succumbs to her charms. In a close-up we see 

the side of the woman's face on the left of the frame, and the man's 

hand and watch horizontally on the right. This shot echoes the first 

part of the prologue in which a close-up of the woman's face and 

another male hand figured prominently. Smiling, the woman puts 

her hand over the watch and pulls the man's hand down out of the 

frame. When she does this, a horizontal white fence in the background 

bisects her face at exactly eye level, recalling the same visual 

motifs that culminated in the prologue's eye-cutting. But this man's 

hand holds no razor and the fence that bisects the eye leads to no 

cutting. Here the latent meanings that underlay the initial cutting 

metaphor—castration, fear, and denial; psychic interiority; filmic 

creation—have been exhausted. 

The subsequent discovery on the beach of the broken and abandoned 

box, cord, and frills functions similarly; but here it is through 

a metonymy placed in paradigm, much like the pince-nez in Potemkin. 

The single image of the box and frills evokes the cyclist with 

whom it was associated earlier. But the added feature of deterioration 

of the box and frills comments metaphorically on the reduced 

status of the cyclist in the woman's affections, on the present absence 

of any desire. The useless box is kicked away by the new man, 

while the woman picks up the frills and cord. She laughingly gives 

them to the man, who throws them away one by one, in a manner 

that recalls the similar gesture of the super-ego double when he 

threw these objects out the window. 

These paradigmatic evocations of previous metaphors and metonymies 

function much more traditionally than their initial for- 

98 


mulation in earlier parts of the film. Unlike these earlier figures, 

they do not generate the diegesis but only comment contrastingly 

upon previous developments, primarily upon the wearing down of 

desire that once generated so much of the discourse. As the new 

man walks along the beach with the woman, the banality of the 

final "happy ending" of united lovers rings false. It has no traditional 

integrating effect because the rest of the film has not functioned on 

this level. 

The final tableau, with the words "in the springtime" written at 

the top of the frame and the new man and woman buried up to their 

chests in sand, blinded and devoured by insects, further mocks the 

happy ending. This frozen image of the putrefying carcasses of the 

two characters is one of final exhaustion, a remarkable precursor of 

Beckett's similar stage image fifty years later in Happy Days." But 

here it is the unnatural stillness of the image that is significant. The 

effect is of a painted tableau with real people stuck in the sand like 

dead flowers. The tableau effect gives none of the violence of the 

previous surreal images in spite of the fact that the two figures have 

hollowed eye-sockets and are eaten by insects. 45 Rather, it is a worndown, 

exhausted image of death that includes the previous element 

of blindness/castration as well as a new suggestion of return to the 

womb in the half burial 46 that resembles the corpse planted in a garden 

in Eliot's Waste Land.' 17 

The title "in the springtime" is also an ironic mockery of rebirth, 

fertility, and energy (another resemblance to Eliot's Waste Land). 

What purports to be a beginning is really an end. Just as the beginning 

images (preceded by the fairy-tale "once upon a time") opened 

the semantic paradigm "romance" through the insistence of moon, 

balcony, man, and woman and then subverted this paradigm 

Samuel Beckett, Oh, les beaux jours (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1963); id., Happy Days 

(London: Faber & Faber, 1962). 

I should add that, although these details are indicated in the scenario, 1 have yet to see a 

print in which they are very noticeable. The eyes simply look dark and hollow. Neither is it 

very clear that the man in the tableau is the man from the beach, although the scenario so 

indicates. 

In his essay "The Uncanny," Freud notes that dreams of burial often express a desire to 

return to the womb. Complete Psychological Works, 17:217-52. 

' "Stetson! You sho were with me in the ships of Mylae / That corpse you planted last 

year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?" T. S. Eliot, Selected 

Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), p. 53. 

99


through the metaphor of the eye-cutting, so the final image of the 

man and woman united on the beach opens up a similar semantic 

paradigm of "happy ending to romance," which the content of the 

final tableau disrupts. Such are the tensions that structure the entire 

film. From a metaphoric blindness that is also a figure for a new 

kind of sight, the film moves to the final blindness of death, from 

which no further vision ensues. 

Secondary Revision. Throughout much of Un Chien andalou there 

is rather scrupulous attention to the classic rules of film editing and 

mise en scene. Early in the film, when the woman leaves her apartment 

to run downstairs, the filmic transition is careful to show a 

sample of every step of her journey, across the room, down the 

steps, and out the door to the street. But these details are established 

only so that, at a later point in the film, when she leaves the apartment 

for good, the abruptness of the transition from Parisian apartment 

to seaside will be felt. 

These transgressions of filmic conventions modeled on the distortions 

of the unconscious in dreams or fantasies register as such only 

if the laws transgressed are first established. In other words, a process 

at work in this film tries to satisfy our conscious expectations of 

intelligibility. But this intelligibility is only a semblance analogous 

to another agency of dream formation, which Freud has described 

as secondary revision. 48 

As Freud defines it, secondary revision is contemporaneous with 

the process of dream formation. It is a form of censorship that covers 

up the illogicality of dreams. Freud compares it with the false 

semblance of coherence encountered in the enigmatic inscriptions 

that entertained the readers of a popular journal of his day. These 

inscriptions were "intended to make the reader believe that a certain 

sentence—for the sake of contrast, a sentence in dialect and as 

scurilous as possible—is a Latin inscription. For this purpose the 

letters contained in the words are torn out of their combination into 

syllables and arranged in a new order. Here and there a genuine 

Latin word appears." 49 To read the real text the reader must actually 

48 Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 539. 

49 Ibid. 

100 


disregard the semblance of Latin, looking only at the letters and not 

at their ostensible arrangement. In a similar way Un Chien andalou 

creates the illusion of obeying the codes of filmic narrativity. But, 

like the spurious Latin text of Freud's example, it does so only to 

transgress them. 

This process is a further refinement of the way Surrealist film imitates 

what Artaud calls the "mechanics" of the dream—its textual 

procedures. As in the early screenplays of Apollinaire, Desnos, and 

Artaud, the quality of surreality is not achieved by the "liberation" 

of pure imagination. It is achieved rather through the tension between 

the categories of the Imaginary and Symbolic. Thus," if the 

transgressions of the Imaginary are to be felt, it is necessary for the 

film to first set up certain diegetic expectations, which the intrusion 

of the Imaginary then transgresses. Secondary revision is thus ultimately 

a set-up for an eventual rupture of the very codes it pretends 

to obey. This rupture occurs either through the eventual nonobservance 

of the diegetic code itself (as when the woman exits from 

Parisian apartment to the seashore with no transition) or through the 

disturbed hierarchy between diegesis and figure occurring at significant 

points throughout the film. 

Physical Violence/Textual Violence. I have already shown the very 

subtle ways in which the relations between figure and diegesis are 

transgressed in this film, but I have not yet commented on the way 

in which this textual violence is also connected with a very physical 

violence. Violence is not as gratuitous an element in this film as at 

first appears. Physical violence is used as a catalyst for even more 

radical forms of textual violence, to cue a textual progression to a 

greater inferiority of vision (or envision). This envision could be 

more usefully rechristened Mindscreen after Bruce Kawin's book of 

the same name. 50 Mindscreen is a filmic visual field that presents 

itself as the product of a mind. Often associated with self-reflexive 

works, it is a concept developed to explain a general textual subjectivity 

that is not confined to the more limited notion of subjective 

camera and point of view (which imitate the activity of a character's 

physical eye). Mindscreen can thus be used to describe the visual 

50 Bruce Kawin, Mindscreen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 

101


workings of film texts in which there is no fictionalized character 

whose mind is visualized—works in which the text itself projects the 

workings of a mind. This occurs in films as diverse as The Cabinet 

of Dr. Caligari, Persona, and Un Chien andalou. 

We have seen how the physical violence of the eye-cutting of the 

prologue opens up a literal and figural gap out of which the rest of 

the film's exploration of unconscious sexual fantasy spills, just as the 

gelatinous fluid spills out of the eye. This is the first pattern-setting 

instance of an act of physical violence that triggers the textual violence 

of mindscreen. In this initial instance the mindscreen is the 

whole balance of the film considered as an unconscious reaction to 

the fear of castration. 

But within this basic structure are many smaller repetitions of the 

progression from physical violence to mindscreen. If the overwhelming 

violence of the prologue triggers the mindscreen of the 

rest of the film, subsequent moments of violence trigger localized 

progressions to mindscreen that can be read as the subjective fantasies 

and unconscious projections of individuals within the initial 

mindscreen: mindscreens within mindscreens.' 1 Thus the violence 

of the mutilated hand (another gap) leads to a metaphoric progression 

that is a mindscreen for the flux of male and female signifiers. 

Or a violence to eyes and face in the breast-caressing scene triggers 

another mindscreen of the nude breasts that become buttocks. And, 

finally, the more conventional murder of the super-ego leads to another 

mindscreen in the image of the nude woman seated in the 

field. 

Physical violence on the Symbolic level of the diegesis consistently 

leads to a new level of textual violence—the rupture of the 

diegesis and a progression to Imaginary fantasy. Thus, even when 

physical violence does not lead to a specifically metaphoric elaboration 

as it does in the prologue metaphor or the mutilated-hand series 

of metaphors, the effect is quite similar: physical violence on the 

diegetic level triggers a textual violence that moves the film to a different 

level of discourse altogether. Each of these new levels or 

mindscreens entails a visual elaboration of the opposition between 

male and female signifiers. Both the violence in the diegesis and the 

51 Bunuel develops this procedure extensively in his later films—Belle de jour. The Dis 

creet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. 

102 


violent rupture of the diegesis are ways in which the film overcomes 

the censorship usually imposed on sexual obsessions. It is therefore 

another way in which the diegetic codes (and sexual taboos) of the 

Symbolic are transformed by the workings of the Imaginary. 

But if, as we have seen, Un Chien andalou is about sexual desire 

(and the accompanying fear of castration), it is not about a love affair 

whose consummation is thwarted by the intervention of society. 

I state this because, even though some critics who have dealt with 

the film proclaim the enigmatic presence of unconscious meanings, 

they still tend to read it in terms of a love affair that is never consummated 

due to moral and social circumstances.5 2 In fact, to speak of 

sexual consummation at all in this film is misleading. Un Chien 

andalou focuses on the unconscious oppositions that structure sexual 

desire rather than on a psychological love affair that either is, or 

is not, consummated. 

The principal oppositions that structure sexual desire in the film 

are, in their most abstract and schematic form, male-female, lovedeath, 

and sight-blindness. These oppositions are in continual flux 

in many different and complex ways throughout the film, finally 

coming to rest in complete stasis at the end. For example, the assertion 

of passion in the scene in which the cyclist caresses the 

woman's breasts leads directly to an apparent contradiction of this 

passion in the death throes that follows. A similar, though reverse 

order, pattern occurs during the love-death of the super-ego. In this 

instance murder leads to a passionate caress as his dying hand grazes 

the naked woman's back. Finally, in the frozen tableau of the 

two dead lovers buried up to their chests in sand, love and death 

coincide. 

Sexual desire manifests itself in this context as an energy that 

transgresses and dissolves the constituted forms of social life. But 

only insofar as these forms are constituted can transgression have 

value. Because transgression is forbidden, it is by definition a violence 

to the established order. This quality of violent transgression 

marks Bunuel's portrayal of sexual desire in all his most Surrealist 

films. These transgressions are the search for an impossible unity 

that only death can finally offer. Thus death, violations, and mutila- 

"Man is not free to approach the woman he loves. He carries around with him a whole 

load of moral and social circumstances." Buache, Cinema of Luis Bunuel, p. 12. 

103


tion express a complicity with the very law that forbids them. Love 

evokes death and death evokes love in a fascinating structure of opposition. 

Sight and blindness are opposed in similar ways. 

If Un Chien andalou pushes these transgressions to their limit, it 

does not do so to negate one or the other pole. Death does not 

negate love, neither does blindness negate sight. As in a dream, 

negation and contradiction do not exist. As Freud observed above, 

there is no "no" in dreams.5 3 The film does not assert or deny any 

one truth about desire; it simply reveals the opposing elements that 

structure it and the rhetorical figures that enact it. 

"' Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 353. 

1. A cyclist appears on a deserted 

Paris street. 

2. The woman places the cyclist's frills 

on the bed and adds the box. 

104 

3. The severed hand is prodded with 

the stick. 

4. The cyclist and woman observe the 

scene in the street below. 

5. The policeman puts the hand in the 

box. 

6. The policeman admonishes the an 

drogyne.

BLOCK 3 

SOWJETUNION – KINO DER MONTAGE

Chapter 13 

The Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s 

Mark Joyce 

• Introduction: why study the Soviet cinema? 418 

• Historical background 418 

• Pre-revolutionary Russian cinema 419 

• Soviet cinema and ideology: film as agent of 

change 420 

• Economics of the Soviet film industry 421 

• Form: montage 422 

• Other features of the Soviet montage cinema 425 

• The key Soviet montage film-makers of the 1920s 425 

• Case study 1: Lev Kuleshov, The Extraordinary Adventures 

of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) 426 

• Case study 2: Sergei Eisenstein, Strike (1924); Battleship 

Potemkin (1925); October (1927); Old and New (1929) 428 

• Case study 3: Vsevolod Pudovkin, The Mother (1926); 

The End of St Petersburg (1927) 437 

• Case study 4: Alexander Dovzhenko, Arsenal (1929); 

Earth (1930) 441 

• Case study 5: Esfir Shub, The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty 

(1927) 443 

• Audience response 443 

• Theoretical debates: montage versus realism 444 

• Postscript to the 1920s 445 

• Notes and references 446 

• Further reading 448 

• Further viewing 449 

• Resource centres 450

N A T I O N A L 

The Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s 

See Chapter 4 for further 

discussion of film form. 

Soviet cinema 

This will refer to films 

made in the Soviet Union 

between October 1920 

and 1991, although for 

the purposes of this 

chapter most Soviet 

films discussed will be 

confined to the 1920s. 

ideology 

There are two key definitions 

of this term, one 

provided by the nineteenth-century 

German 

philosopher, Karl Marx, 

the other by the twentieth-century 

French 

Marxist philosopher, 

Louis Althusser, drawing 

on Marx's original ideas. 

For Marx, ideology was 

the dominant set of 

beliefs and values existent 

within society, which 

sustained power relations. 

For Althusser, 

ideology consisted of the 

representations and 

images which reflect 

society's view of'reality'. 

Ideology thus refers to 

'the myths that a society 

lives by'. 

See Chapter 5 for 

discussion of ideology in 

relation to spectatorship. 

INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY THE SOVIET CINEMA? 

As the lights went up at the end an emotion-charged silence reigned, broken 

only when Lunacharsky [the Soviet Union's Commissar for Education] jumped 

on his chair and began an enthusiastic speech: 'We've been witnesses at an 

historic cultural event. A new art has been born....' 1 

Anatoli Lunacharsky's response to Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin 

acknowledges the importance of a new wave of film-making. The films made by the 

Soviet directors of the 1920s are considered by many as the most innovative and 

exciting to have been produced in the history of the cinema. The names of these filmmakers, 

such as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov and Kuleshov, are far from forgotten and 

a number of the films and directors from this period consistently score highly in Sight 

and Sound's critics'/directors' choice of the best ten films and directors. 

This decade of intensive experimentation with film form produced techniques that 

have subsequently been widely emulated. In addition, the theoretical debates formulated 

by these film-makers are still relevant today. For these reasons the Soviet cinema 

of the 1920s merits detailed analysis. 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 

The Soviet film-makers of the 1920s reflect the ideology (the values and beliefs) and 

politics of the society in which they were produced. The early 1920s marked the end of 

a period of civil unrest, the causes of which lay in the great divide that separated 

wealthy land-owning Russians from the peasants and workers. 2 For centuries Russia 

had been governed by the single figure of the Tsar who had absolute powers. The 

Russian serfs were not granted freedom from slavery until 1861; this liberation, however, 

did not mean improved conditions, as they continued to live an existence of appalling 

poverty. Attempts had been made prior to the revolution of October 1917 by various 

factions to undermine the Tsarist regime, all of which were unsuccessful. A wave of 

revolutionary activity in 1905 included a mutiny by Russian sailors at Odessa which 

formed the basis for Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. 

The First World War (1914-18) eventually proved to be disastrous for Tsar Nicholas II, 

as it consumed vast amounts of money and resources that were sorely needed at 

home. It was also unpopular with the Russian people as the reasons for fighting were 

unclear. The peasants and the workers were the worst hit by the impact of the war, 

either being killed on the front or starving at home as supplies became depleted. The 

land-owning rich were protected by their wealth and were able to continue in their 

existing lifestyle. 

These conditions provided the catalyst for the revolution of 25 February 1917 which 

resulted in the formation of a liberal provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky 

and later supported by Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary factions. This caused 

Nicholas II to abdicate on 4 March. The provisional government decided to continue the 

war, and for many (especially V.I. Lenin who was in hiding in Zurich) it appeared that the 

new government was in effect continuing the policies of the Tsarist order. 

On 25 October 1917 the Bolsheviks, taking advantage of a situation of confusion 

and competition between the various factions, seized power by storming the Winter 

Palace. 3 The new Bolshevik government agreed to Germany's demands for control of

areas of land previously under Russian administration, and pulled out of the war. 

Almost immediately, however, a fierce civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks 

(known as the Reds) and those still loyal to the Tsarist regime (known as the 

Whites). 4 

By 1920 it was clear that the Bolsheviks had seized ultimate control of the country. 

The new Soviet government under the leadership of V.I. Lenin was faced with the task 

of convincing the population of Russia of the evils of the Tsarist regime and the positive 

points of the new Communist one. 

Selected historical dates 

1905, Jan. First revolution (abortive) 

1914, July 

1917, Feb. 

1917, Oct. 

1918-21 

1922-8 

1922-3 

1924 

1927 

Provides the backdrop for Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin 

General strike organised by the Bolsheviks 

Outbreak of war and the crushing of the political unrest 

The war was a general disaster for the Russians; low morale and 

food shortages in the following years led to uprisings in 1917 

Popular uprisings culminating in the overthrow of the Tsar, and the 

setting up of a provisional government 

The Bolsheviks overthrow the provisional government and seize 

political power 

Civil war between White and Red factions, as well as fighting of 

hostile troops sent from abroad in an attempt to restore the power 

of the Tsar. The continued fighting led to the destruction of trade, 

agriculture, industry and film production 

NEP (New Economic Policy) adopted by Lenin. A brief return to 

controlled forms of capitalism to help to rebuild the shattered 

economy 

Soviet feature film production resumes 

Sergei Eisenstein's Strike completed 

The tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. A number of films 

are made to mark the occasion including: 

October (Eisenstein) 

The End of St Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin) 

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esfir Shub) 

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN CINEMA 

The nature of the Russian cinema 

When discussing the Soviet cinema it is important to have at least an outline of the form 

and content of its antecedent, for although the majority of the Soviet directors had not 

made films prior to 1919, they would certainly have been familiar with the conventions 

of the pre-revolutionary cinema. Significantly, for a number of the Soviet directors, this 

cinema was the antithesis of their new approach to film-making. The Russian cinema 

1907-17 was in fact markedly different from the Soviet cinema of the 1920s. The 

majority of the films that are available for viewing today 5 are between thirty-five and 

seventy minutes long and deal predominantly with the lives of the upper classes, quite 

frequently centring on their relationship with servants and/or the working class. Their 

subject matter, plot and preoccupations are often melodramatic; unfaithful husbands 

and wives, psychological states of mind and death predominate. The form of the films is 

also different, comprising slow-moving scenes containing a limited number of shots, 

with an emphasis on the mise en scene and in particular the expressions of the actors. 

Russian cinema 

This will refer to the 

body of films made in 

Tsarist Russia between 

1907 and 1919. 

mise en scene 

This literally means 

'placed in the scene', 

and it includes all 

elements that are placed 

before the camera such 

as props, actors, 

costume, movement and 

position of actors, etc.

See Chapter 4 for further 

discussion of mise en 

scéne. 

montage 

From the French word 

meaning 'to edit', 

montage means the 

assembling of bits of 

footage to form a whole. 

In film studies it usually 

refers to the style of fast 

editing adopted by the 

Soviet film-makers of 

the 1920s. 

N A T I O N A L C I N E M A S 

A key director working in this period is Evgeny Bauer, who produced a large number of 

films including After Death (1915), A Life for a Life (1916) and The King of Paris (1917). 6 

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 and the civil war that followed had a devastating 

effect on the Russian film industry, which was almost completely destroyed. Very 

few of the Russian directors and stars remained in Russia after 1919, the majority 

having fled to Paris where they continued production. 7 Initially it would seem that the 

Russian cinema had little in common with the Soviet cinema that followed, and there 

appears to have been a clear break in terms of style between the two cinemas after the 

revolution. The figure of Yakov Protazanov, however, provides an interesting example of 

a film-maker who made films between 1911-43. 8 His key films from the pre-revolutionary 

era include, The Queen of Spades (1916) and Satan Triumphant (1917); these 

conform to the conventions of the Russian cinema outlined earlier. His best-known film 

of the 1920s is Aelita (1924), a fantasy concerning a revolution on Mars. Protazanov was 

more concerned with mise en scene than with creating new meanings by juxtaposing 

images. A study of his films reveals that the Tsarist cinema continued into the Soviet 

montage era and was by all accounts successful with the public. 9 

Russian cinema audiences and imported films 

That Russian films had moderate success with native audiences is not surprising. What 

is significant, however, is that before the revolution the most popular films with Russian 

audiences were imported from America, France and Germany. The first Russian film 

studio was not set up until 1907 10 and this can partly account for the success of these 

foreign films as audiences had grown accustomed to watching them. In the 1910s when 

native films vied for audiences with imported films, foreign ones were clearly the more 

successful and were perceived by Russian audiences as being more entertaining and 

having higher production values than Russian films. 

SOVIET CINEMA AND 

CHANGE 11 

IDEOLOGY: FILM AS AGENT OF 

The October Revolution was the first successful revolution made in the name of Karl 

Marx (1818-83). For Marx, the key fact about any society was how it produced its livelihood. 

He saw capitalism as an economic system, which, just like every other previous 

economic system, was based on exploitation. In capitalism the class with power was 

the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, and the class subject to their 

power was the proletariat or working class. In addition, the bourgeoisie's economic 

strength was protected by the state and sustained by ideology. However, as capitalism 

developed, the workers, who survived by selling their labour for wages, would be 

squeezed more and more as competition between capitalists intensified. At the same 

time they would become aware that they would have everything to gain by replacing an 

economic system based on the ownership of private property with one based on the 

non-exploitative communal ownership of productive property. This awareness, or classconsciousness, 

would eventually produce a revolution. The October Revolution was 

seen as such a proletarian revolution in Russia and was celebrated as such by the films 

of the key Soviet film-makers of the 1920s. 

The revolution, however, was only the beginning of a process of radical social 

change, called the era of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' because it involved the 

proletariat, or in this case its representatives, the Bolshevik Party, establishing its dominance. 

V.I. Lenin writing in Pravda outlined the situation: 

Theoretically, there can be no doubt that between capitalism and communism there lies a definite 

EC

S O V I E T M O N T A G E C I N E M A M A R K J O Y C E 

transition period which must combine the features and properties of both these forms of social 

economy. This transition period has to be a period of struggle between dying capitalism and 

nascent communism - or, in other words, between capitalism which has been defeated but not 

destroyed and communism which has been born but is still very feeble. 12 

The transition to communism referred to by Lenin would have been a monumental task 

at the best of times, but the Bolsheviks had seized control of a country whose industry 

and agriculture were relatively underdeveloped. Also they had to confront internal and 

external opposition, civil war and famine. In such a situation artists and film-makers 

were perceived as having a special role as proponents of propaganda cinema. Lenin 

declared in 1922 that 'of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important'. 13 Prior to 

this, trains highly decorated with Soviet flags and paintings had been sent into the 

countryside in an attempt to educate and inform the peasants. 14 Short agitational films 

called agitki were made. Pre-revolutionary newsreels and foreign fiction films were also 

shown, with a Soviet commentator giving a 'new' reading to the material. Later most of 

the energy went into the making of new feature films that reflected the ideals of the new 

regime. Anatoli Lunacharsky (the People's Commissar for Education) had stated in 

1924: 

There is no doubt that cinema art is a first-class and perhaps even an incomparable instrument for 

the dissemination of all sorts of ideas. Cinema's strength lies in the fact that, like any art, it imbues 

an idea with feeling and with captivating form but, unlike the other arts, cinema is actually cheap, 

portable and unusually graphic. Its effects reach where even the book cannot reach and it is, of 

course, more powerful than any kind of narrow propaganda. The Russian Revolution, which is 

extremely interested in exercising the broadest possible influence on the masses, should long since 

have turned its attention to cinema as its natural instrument. 15 

The enthusiastic, young, educated film-makers, who attempted to fulfil 

Lunacharsky's ideal of revolutionary cinema, responded by making innovative films, 

revolutionary both in content and in form. 

ECONOMICS OF THE SOVIET FILM INDUSTRY 

The pre-revolutionary Russian film industry had previously imported its film stock from 

abroad, and during the civil war most of the Russian film-makers had fled to White-held 

areas (or abroad) taking their equipment with them. The reality facing the film-makers of 

the newly formed state was that there was little in the way of film stock or equipment. 16 

The Soviet government initially attempted to ban the showing of all American and 

European films, as they were concerned about the public being exposed to films that 

reflected the values of capitalist societies. The Soviets had little option, however, but to 

show these films as they had no native film industry to produce their own. The cinema 

was seen by the new government as a means of keeping the public entertained at a 

time of hardship and general civil unrest. 

From a western perspective it is easy to underestimate the importance of imported 

films in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Denise Youngblood (1992: 944-71), in Movies for 

the Masses, states that 'Foreign films accounted for almost two-thirds of the titles 

screened in the twenties.... Nearly as many American as Soviet films were shown in this 

period'. She continues: 'Sovkino's head, K.M. Shvedchikov, claimed in 1927 that 

Sovkino would be bankrupt were it not for the success of its import policy.' 17 

The 1920s could be characterised as a period in which American and European 

propaganda cinema 

A terms used pejoratively 

with reference to 

any film that consciously 

attempts to persuade an 

audience towards 

certain beliefs and 

values. 

See Chapter 7, 

pp. 219-24 for discussion 

of propaganda and 

British cinema during the 

Second World War.

422 N A T I O N A L CI N E M A S 


pp. 110-13, for reference 

to Kuleshov's 

experiments with 

editing, and for discussion 

of editing in 

mainstream narrative 

cinema. 

narrative films were in effect directly subsidising the dramatic experimentation with film 

form undertaken by the Soviet film-makers. 

Innovation and experimentation frequently come from a lack. In the Soviet Union the 

lack of film stock (and even film cameras) meant that certain groups of film-makers 

worked on re-editing existing films (often European/American films and old Russian 

newsreels) to make them conform to the values of the Soviet state. Other film-makers 

experimented with creating films from the small amount of negative available, which 

often only came in short lengths. Out of this experimentation came Soviet montage 

cinema. 

FORM: MONTAGE 

The roots of Soviet montage 

The innovative use of montage in film by the Soviet film-makers had its roots in art 

forms such as painting, literature and music from pre-revolutionary Russia. David 

Bordwell, in The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film', states that by 1910 a group of 

Russian painters had already experimented extensively with 'montage': 'the Russian 

futurists declared that conventional art must be destroyed and that a new art, appropriate 

to the machine age, must be created. Hence the futurists took their subjects from 

modern life and exploited a technique of shocking juxtapositions.' 18 Poetry, in particular 

that of Mayakovsky, 19 was also 'shattering words and reassembling them into brutal 

images'. 

The question needs to be asked: why didn't the Russian film-makers of the 1910s 

experiment with montage earlier? This lack of explicit montage experiment in the 

Russian cinema compared to that taking place in other art forms can perhaps be attributed 

to economics. The crucial difference between film and- many of the other arts at 

the time was that the small groups of experimental artists, writers and musicians were 

often privately funded by rich patrons. The film industry, however, was not. 20 The revolution 

of October 1917 provided the right conditions for experimentation with film to take 

place. It is ironic that this experimentation had its roots in the elitist art forms of prerevolutionary 

Russia. 

The Kuleshov effect and its consequences 

The montage technique is based on the theory that when two pieces of film are placed 

side by side the audience immediately draws the conclusion that the two shots must be 

directly related in some way. In other words, the audience try to create meaning by 

combining the two separate images. The experimentation along these lines by Lev 

Kuleshov, a young Soviet film-maker, culminated in what became known as the 

Kuleshov effect. Vsevolod Pudovkin outlined the experiment in a lecture given at the 

London Film Society in February 1929: 

Kuleshov and I made an interesting experiment. We took from some film or other several close-ups 

of the well-known Russian actor Mosjukhin. We chose close-ups which were static and which did 

not express any feeling at all - quiet close-ups. We joined these close-ups, which were all similar, 

with other bits of film in three different combinations. In the first combination the close-up of 

Mosjukhin was immediately followed by a shot of a plate of soup standing on a table. It was 

obvious and certain that Mosjukhin was looking at this soup. In the second combination the face of 

Mosjukhin was joined to shots showing a coffin in which lay a dead woman. In the third the closeup 

was followed by a shot of a little girl playing with a funny toy bear. When we showed the three 

combinations to an audience which had not been let into the secret the result was terrific. The 

public raved abut the acting of the artist. They pointed out the heavy pensiveness of his mood over


the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead 

woman, and admired the light, happy smile with which he surveyed the girl at play. But we knew 

that in all three cases the face was exactly the same. 21 

Kuleshov carried out further experiments using editing in which he cut together 

separate shots of a walking man, a waiting woman, a gate, a staircase and a mansion. 22 

When the shots were combined the audience assumed that the different elements were 

present at the same location. Kuleshov had discovered the cinema's ability to link 

entirely unrelated material into coherent sequences. He termed the technique 'creative 

geography'. 

Kuleshov's discoveries about the nature of the cinema medium provided a number 

of film-makers with a new set of ideas about how film could manipulate and deceive an 

audience. Perhaps the most vital consequence of the Kuleshov effect, however, for later 

directors, was its recognition that the audience were not merely passive recipients. 

Soviet montage cinema 

In the 1920s a number of the film-makers carried out further experiments with editing 

techniques along the same lines as Kuleshov. It was discovered that when two shots 

were joined together meaning could be made by emphasising the difference between 

shots, that is, instead of trying to cover up graphic dissimilarities between shots, as in 

the Hollywood cinema, the difference could be emphasised and indeed become the 

main way in which meaning could be created. This 'montage' cinema which demanded 

that audiences continually searched for the meanings created by the juxtaposition of 

two shots can thus be seen as alternative to the continuity editing-based Hollywood 

cinema. One of the Soviet film-makers who developed this idea into both a theory and a 

practice of film-making was Sergei Eisenstein. 

Eisenstein believed that maximum impact could be achieved if shots in a scene were 

in conflict. This belief was based on the general philosophical idea that 'existence' can 

only continue by constant change. In other words, everything surrounding us in the 

world is as a result of a 'collision' of opposite elements. The existing world is itself only 

in a temporary state until the next collision of elements produces a completely new 

state. It is only through this 'collision' that change can be effected. This method of 

creating meaning from such collision of opposites is termed dialectical. When applying 

this idea to film, Eisenstein proposed the view that when two shots are combined a 

completely new meaning is formed. For example, shot A combined with shot B does 

not produce AB but the new meaning C. The formulation can also be presented as: 

thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis. 

Vsevolod Pudovkin, another key Soviet film-maker, was opposed to the theoretical 

ideas of Eisenstein, although they both used innovative forms of montage in their films. 

Pudovkin, like Kuleshov, believed that shots could be likened to bricks in the sense that 

they could be used as building blocks to construct a scene. Pudovkin then did not see 

his shots as being in conflict. In Pudovkin's formulae shot A + shot B = AB rather than 

C. Pudovkin aimed at linkage rather than conflict in his scenes. 

The montage technique was not only confined to fiction film-making. Soviet 

documentary film-makers such as Dziga Vertov and Esfir Shub used montage 

extensively in a range of films in the 1920s, including Vertov's well-known The 

Man with a Movie Camera (1929). For Vertov much of the power of cinema came 

from its ability to mechanically record events that took place before the camera, 

but he also ensured that the audience was made aware of the constructed nature 

of his films. His films are a whirlwind of conflicting shots which disavow conventional 

ideas of narrative. 

Hollywood cinema 

In classical Hollywood 

cinema, the editing is 

designed to be Invisible'. 

It is intended to 

allow the audience 

closer views and to see 

the point of view of 

different characters. The 

editing is used essentially 

to clarify what is 

taking place in the 

narrative. This type of 

editing had become 

dominant in Hollywood 

film-making by approximately 

1920. 

juxtaposition 

In film studies, this 

usually refers to two 

different shots that have 

been joined together to 

make a contrast. 

alternative 

Alternative cinema is 

defined with reference to 

dominant: it is an alternative 

(both 

economically and 

formally) to the dominant 

form. In any study 

concerning an 'alternative' 

cinema, the films 

would not only have to 

be examined in their 

own right, but also 

compared to contemporary 

dominant Hollywood 

cinema. 

A number of questions 

might have to be posed 

when analysing these 

alternative films: In what 

ways is this group of 

films different to the 

dominant cinema of the 

time? What are the 

possible reasons for the 

difference: cultural? 

economic? social? political? 

Could this 

'alternative' way of 

making films, given the 

right conditions, have 

itself turned into the 

dominant cinema? 

The Soviet cinema of 

the 1920s, when 

compared to the Hollywood 

cinema of the same 

era, certainly could be 

regarded as alternative.

In other words, it offered 

a style of film-making 

that was radically 

different to the mass of 

films that was being 

produced in America. 

See Chapter 4 for 

discussion of continuity 

editing, conventional 

narrative and alternative 

narratives. 

dialectical 

A difficult term to define, 

as it has many different 

meanings. The Collins 

English Dictionary (2nd 

edn., 1986), for example, 

defines it a 'disputation 

or debate, esp. intended 

to resolve differences 

between two views 

rather than to establish 

one of them as true'. The 

crucial factor to grasp in 

the context of 

Eisenstein's thinking, 

however, is the notion of 

change and the creation 

of a new order. 

Eisenstein would have 

defined dialectic with 

reference to Marxist 

philosophy, which 

believed that society was 

contradictory and in 

need of change. 


pp. 215-16, for further 

discussion of Vertov and 

his contribution to documentary 

film. 

non-diegetic 

Refers to any element 

that remains outside the 

world of the film, such as 

voiceovers, credits and 

mood-setting music, that 

does not originate from 

the world of the film. 


The montage technique for the majority of the Soviet film-makers could also provide 

sequences with a sense of rhythm and momentum, which could be used to increase or 

decrease the speed of the action. Eisenstein, for example, frequently increases his rate 

of cutting prior to the climax of a scene. Violent actions couid also be emphasised by 

using a succession of short conflicting shots from different viewpoints. Montage, the 

film-makers discovered, could further be used to either compress or expand time, 

which could heighten the effect of certain actions or events. 

Four different types of film montage 23 

The first two categories of montage outlined below are frequently, although not exclusively, used in Soviet film; the last 

two categories deal with montage techniques that are often to be found in mainstream films: 

• Intellectual montage (also called dialectical montage or discontinuity editing) 

• Linkage editing (also known as constructive editing) 

• Hollywood montage 

• Fast cutting 

Intellectual montage 

In this type of editing, shots are placed together to emphasise their difference. They are in 'collision' with each other. For 

example, in October a shot of a mechanical golden peacock is placed next to a shot of a man (the peacock does not 

form part of the world of the film, that is, it is non-diegetic). The audience draw the conclusion that the man is vain. In 

this type of editing the audience are not passive as they play an active part in producing meaning from the film. 

Linkage editing 

Mainly used by Pudovkin, who proposed a theory of montage based on this principle. In linkage editing individual shots 

are used to build up scenes. The shots are not in collision with each other, but are used as fragments or parts of a whole 

scene. The technique can be seen in The Mother and The End of St Petersburg. 

Hollywood montage 

Often used to show a quick succession of events over a period of time. For example, in Raging Bull (1980) Martin 

Scorsese shows the successful career of the boxer Jack La Motta by combining shots (mostly still photographs) taken 

from a number of different fights interspersed with home movie footage of La Motta's home life. The shots are clearly 

intended to flow into each other rather than to be in conflict. The music played on the soundtrack over the images rein 

forces the sense of continuity. 

Fast cutting 

In which editing is used primarily to build suspense or tension. For example, in the gunfight at the climax of The Good, 

the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Sergio Leone creates a dramatic effect by using a combination of music, tighter and tighter 

close-ups of the three characters and a shortening of shot length. 

Statistical analysis of Soviet films 

Soviet films, because of the use of the montage technique, contain many more shots 

than Hollywood films of the same period. David Bordwell 24 claims that the Soviet films 

of the 1920s contain on average between 600-2,000 shots, whereas the films made in 

Hollywood between 1917 and 1928 contain on average 500-1,000 shots. He further 

suggests that Hollywood films had an average shot length of five to six seconds and the 

Soviet films had an average shot length of two to four seconds. The comparison 

provides concrete evidence of the unique nature of the editing used in the Soviet films 

in this period.

OTHER FEATURES OF THE SOVIET MONTAGE CINEMA 

Aside from editing, these films have other features which separate them from the dominant 

Hollywood cinema. In keeping with a Marxist analysis of society, plots frequently 

do not centre on the individual; for example, in Eisenstein's Strike, October and 

Battleship Potemkin, individual heroes are replaced by a mass of people. The only characters 

that are individuated are those that wield power or have wealth. Events in the 

narrative therefore are not motivated by individuals. Films such as Pudovkin's The 

Mother and The End of St Petersburg and Dovzhenko's Earth do have central characters, 

but it is made clear that these characters are representative of the masses. The 

audience is not interested in the details of the heroes, only what they represent. A 

number of the Soviet film-makers (including Eisenstein and Pudovkin) also used nonactors 

to play key parts, believing that the external appearance of the character was 

vital to the performance. This idea is termed 'typage'. 

The montage style also means that Soviet cinema relies more heavily on the use of 

the close-up than Hollywood cinema. Not only are there more shots overall in a scene, 

but a greater proportion of them are close-ups. A number of Soviet films also rely on 

high levels of symbolism to achieve their aims. The audience must be culturally and 

politically aware to be able to decode the messages that are being presented. In 

Eisenstein's October, for example, great demands are made on the audience to create a 

'reading' of the film which does justice to Eisenstein's political thinking. It may seem 

that many of the film-makers ran the risk of making films that were not understood by 

their audience. 

Several of the montage film-makers combined the montage principle with other 

techniques that they believed would revitalise the cinema. Lev Kuleshov, for example, 

placed great emphasis on the gestures and movement of actors. FEKS (Factory of the 

Eccentric Actor), formed by film-makers Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, had 

similar concerns about the role of the actor, but also paid great attention to mise en 

scene. 

THE KEY SOVIET MONTAGE Fl LM-MAKERS OF THE 

1920s 

Fiction 

Lev Kuleshov 

Sergei Eisenstein 

Vsevolod Pudovkin 

FEKS (Kozintsev and Trauberg) 

Alexander Dovzhenko 

Documentary 

Dziga Vertov 

Esfir Shub 

A film directed by Eisenstein probably provided most viewers' first experience of Soviet 

montage. The history of the Soviet cinema of the 1920s, however, involves more than 

the work of this one director. In this section, although the work of Eisenstein is 

discussed in detail, the vital importance of Eisenstein's contemporaries is recognised by 

analysing the work of such directors as Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Kozintsev and Trauberg, 

Dovzhenko, Vertov and Shub. 

Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970) 

Shortly after the revolution, Kuleshov was recruited as a teacher by the State Film 

dominant 

Refers to both economic 

strength and also to the 

dominant form or 

convention, which is 

realism: dominant 

cinema in film studies is 

assumed to be 

Hollywood. 

symbolism 

The means by which a 

film-maker can assign 

additional meanings to 

objects/characters in a 

film. For example, in 

Dovzhenko's Earth and 

Eisenstein's Old and 

New, the tractor is a 

symbol of progress.

Key films 

Engineer Prite's Project 

(1918) 

The Extraordinary 

Adventures of Mr West in 

the Land of the 

Bolsheviks (1924) 

The Death Ray (1925) 

By the Law (1926) 

For comparison and 

contrast see Chapter 6 

for a discussion of the 

star in Hollywood 

cinema. 


School where he set up an experimental film workshop. Kuleshov and his students 

carried out a number of experiments related to editing, partly inspired by a lack of 

raw film stock. One of these experiments included re-editing D.W. Griffith's 

Intolerance (1916), a film that had impressed Kuleshov because of its innovative use 

of editing. The experiments resulted in the formation of a number of principles of 

film-making that the group adopted. The underlying belief for Kuleshov was that 

'Film-art begins from the moment when the director begins to combine and join 

together the various pieces of film'. 25 Kuleshov's ideas about how editing should 

work are similar to those of Pudovkin in that his shots, rather than being in conflict, 

can be seen as blocks out of which a scene can be constructed. Significantly, 

Kuleshov's students included Vsevolod Pudovkin and for a brief time Sergei 

Eisenstein. In Eisenstein's films and theoretical writing the influence of Kuleshov can 

clearly be seen. 

Kuleshov's experimentation was not confined to editing, however, but also involved 

acting. He believed that theatre-trained actors, in particular those from the Moscow Arts 

Theatre 26 were not suitable for the cinema. He also rejected the idea of using nonactors 

or 'types' chosen for their visual suitability for a role. He set up an acting 

laboratory dedicated to developing a style of acting tailored specifically to the requirements 

of the cinema and he carefully recruited would-be film actors who were 

'endowed with natural beauty, good health, and the ability to show expediency and 

purpose on the screen without "acting" or "recreating", unaided by makeup, wigs, and 

props, of course'. 27 

The techniques that Kuleshov adopted emphasised gesture and movement, the 

exact nature and timing of which had been practised rigorously in rehearsals. This style 

of acting was combined with great attention to the composition and framing of each 

shot to give maximum impact to the action. Kuleshov's opportunity to apply the principles 

that he had developed came in 1924 when he was assigned valuable imported film 

stock to direct the first feature film of the film school: The Extraordinary Adventures of 

Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. 

• CASE STUDY 1: LEV KULESHOV, THE 

EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MR WEST IN THE 

LAND OF THE BOLSHEVIKS (1924) 

The film is an action-comedy which uses satire to expose the false attitudes and beliefs 

about the Soviet Union that many in the West held. The action is centred on the fate of 

Mr West, an American visitor to the USSR, whose view of the Bolsheviks as savages is 

formed by reading the New York Times. Mr West falls into the hands of a group of petty 

criminals who frighten him into parting with his dollars by dressing up to look like the 

Bolsheviks that Mr West had seen in his paper. At the climax he is rescued by a 'real' 

Bolshevik who uncovers the deception. Mr West's stereotypical views of the Bolsheviks 

are dismantled and he sends a radio message to his wife telling her to hang Lenin's 

picture in the study. 

The montage technique used in Mr West is largely based on a system of closeups 

of the actors that emphasise facial expressions. Kuleshov frequently cuts from 

an action to a close-up reaction shot of a character's face. He starts the film with a 

separate shot of Mr West juxtaposed with another of his wife; it is only later that we 

see them together. Later in the film Kuleshov cuts between a shot of the 'real' 

Bolshevik and Mr West standing on a balcony and another shot of marching Soviet 

troops taken at a different place and time (the film stock is markedly different).

S O V I E T M O N T A G E C I N E M A • M A R K J O Y C E 

Kuleshov is here using his technique of creative geography to make the audience 

construct a location in their minds that does not actually exist. The film also fulfils 

Kuleshov's ideas concerning acting. The movements of the actors are stylised and 

precise and it is clear that attention has been paid to even the smallest action. The 

comical nature of the action and a plot based on individual characters meant that 

the film was popular with audiences. 28 

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) 29 

Eisenstein, as his age might indicate (he was just 26 when he completed Strike), 

did not emerge from the context of the pre-revolutionary Russian cinema. Prior to 

his film-making career, he had experimented with a number of different art forms, 

including the theatre. In this experimentation, the principles of his work in film 

may be found. In 1923 Eisenstein produced a version of a play by Alexander 

Ostrovky, 30 in which he attempted to communicate the messages of the play to 

the audience using a series of shocks which Eisenstein termed 'attractions': 

'Emotions were expressed through flamboyant physical stunts ... at the finale, firecrackers 

exploded under spectators' seats... [he] explained that the theatre could 

engage its audience through a calculated assembly of "strong moments" of shock 

or surprise.' 31 

Eisenstein quickly abandoned experimentation with the theatre and turned to the 

more popular and accessible medium of film, to which he rigorously applied his 

theatrical principle of 'montage of attractions'. 

• Plate 13.1 The 

Extraordinary 

Adventures of Mr West 

in the Land of the 

Bolsheviks (1924) 

Mr West is duped by the 

false Bolsheviks. 

key films 

Sfrfte(1924) 

Battleship Potemkin 

(1925) 

October (1927) 

Old and New (1929)

• Plate 13.2 Sergei 

Eisenstein (1898-1948) 


• CASE STUDY 2: SERGEI EISENSTEIN, STRIKE (1924); 

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925); OCTOBER (1927); 

OLD AND NEW (1929) 

Strike (192 4) 

Strike was the first of a proposed series of eight films 32 made by the Moscow Theatre of 

the Proletkult, under the general subheading 'Towards the Dictatorship of the 

Proletariat'. Strike is about the repression of a group of factory workers involved in an 

industrial dispute, which ends with the massacre of the strikers and their families by 

government forces. The six-part structure of 'Strike' - (1) 'All Quiet at the Factory', (2) 

'The Immediate Cause of Strike', (3) The Factory Stands Idle', (4) 'The Strike is 

Protracted', (5) 'Engineering a Massacre', (6) 'Slaughter' - is partly due to Eisenstein's 

theatrical background, but it would also have been vital for the film to be contained on 

single reels as many cinemas had only one projector. 

The plot of Strike, as in Eisenstein's later films Battleship Potemkin (1925) and 

October (1927), is not told using individual characters as heroes. Instead, any character 

that is individuated is deemed to be 'bad' or corrupt. The grotesque factory-owner, for 

example, is shown completely isolated in a vast office. The workers themselves, 

however, are seen usually as a group with no one individual standing out to play the role 

of leader. In Part 3 these ideas are combined. The scenes depicting the four stockholders 

of the factory carelessly deciding the future of the strikers are intercut with


images of strikers being attacked by mounted police; the individual concern of the capitalists 

contrasts with the collective concern of the masses. The effect of this montage is 

dramatic, as parallels can immediately be drawn by the viewer between, for example, 

the dishonesty, greed, deviousness and wealth of the management and the poverty and 

honesty of the workers. The political implications of this are obvious. Eisenstein, 

through montage, is seeking to persuade his audience towards a certain view. 

The methods applied by Eisenstein in Strike axe derived in part from a rebellion 

against what Eisenstein termed the 'Bourgeois Cinema' that was still the main form of 

entertainment in post-revolutionary cinemas. Eisenstein explains how this cinema was 

rejected in favour of his own approach: 'We brought collective and mass action onto the 

screen ... our films in this period made an abrupt deviation - insisting on an understanding 

of the masses as hero.' 33 

In terms of the Hollywood cinema it is not difficult to imagine how the plot of Strike 

could have been adapted into a mainstream film: the story of one individual's fight 

against authority. The comparison may be trite, but it does emphasise the difference in 

approach and purpose between the two different modes of representation. Eisenstein's 

decision not to use individual heroes is of course deliberate; the film registers a political 

ideology that enshrines the notion of collective strength. 

In Strike Eisenstein applies his principle of 'montage of attractions' to the editing. He 

believed that by creating visual 'jolts' between each cut, the viewer would be 'shocked' 

into new awarenesses. In most sequences this approach involves juxtaposing shots 

that are in conflict with each other in some way, either cutting between different actions 

taking place in a scene or emphasising the importance of certain actions or events by 

fragmenting them into a number of shots taken from different viewpoints. At various 

points in Strike Eisenstein juxtaposes shots which need to be interpreted by the audience. 

One of the best examples of this type of 'intellectual montage' is in the last part of 

the film ('Slaughter'), in which Eisenstein juxtaposes a non-diegetic image of a bull 

being slaughtered with the shots of the factory workers being systematically butchered 

by government forces. The formula mentioned earlier can be applied: shot A (massacre 

| • Plate 13.3 Strike 

(1924) 

Mounted police enter 

the factory district.

N A T I O N A L C I N E M A S


• Plate 13.4 This sequence from Strike (lasting 25 seconds) illustrates 

Eisenstein's use of intellectual montage. An inter-title ('Rout') 

is inserted between shots 2 and 3.

432 N A T I O N A L C I N E M A S 

• Plate 13.5 Battleship 

Potemkin (1925) 

Drama on the quarterdeck 

(the firing squad). 

of the workers) + shot B (bull being slaughtered) = NEW MEANING C (that the workers 

are being killed cold-bloodedly like animals in a slaughterhouse). It is the audience that 

is creating meaning here from the juxtaposition of the shots, thus becoming active political 

interpreters. 

Battleship Potemkin (1925) 

Eisenstein's second film Battleship Potemkin is based on the true story of a mutiny that 

took place on board the Potemkin in 1905. 34 As in Strike, Battleship Potemkin is split 

into a number of distinct parts: (1) 'Men and Maggots', (2) 'Drama on the Quarter Deck', 

(3) 'Appeal from the Dead', (4) 'The Odessa Steps', (5) 'Meeting the Squadron'. 

The central scene of the film, 'The Odessa Steps', consisting of parallel lines of 

soldiers marching down the steps leading to the harbour systematically shooting the 

onlookers, provides a vivid example of the effectiveness of Eisenstein's montage technique. 

35 A close examination of the sequence reveals that Eisenstein, by using montage 

to repeat certain key events, has expanded time. 36 The effect is to heighten the horrific 

nature of the slaughter as well as to hold the audience in suspense as the pram finally 

begins its descent. The furious and shocking climax to the scene demonstrates how 

Eisenstein is able to use montage to manipulate audience expectations and to shock 

with violent juxtapositions and graphic images. 

In the last part of the film in which the sailors aboard the Potemkin are nervously anticipating 

an attack by the rest of the Russian Fleet, Eisenstein builds up tension by increasing 

the number of cuts in a montage finale that maintains a consistently high rate of shots per 

minute. The scene provides an excellent example of the way in which montage could be 

used to create an event that did not exist as a whole, as according to Eisenstein the shots of 

the 'Russian' squadron were taken from 'old newsreels of naval manoeuvres - not even of 

the Russian Fleet'. 37 It also reveals how montage can be used for rhythmic effect, as the 

fast cutting between the different elements gives the scene a sense of urgency which 

would be impossible to achieve using any other method. 

The opposition of critics at the time ironically stressed the difficulties of understanding 

Potemkin's experimental form; ironic because it was through film form that 

Eisenstein hoped to make his political points. It was also declared that Potemkin was 

pitched far above the intellectual level of most peasants, a damning indictment for any 

propaganda/revolutionary piece. However, although Potemkin was not successful as a

• Plates 13.7,13.8 and 13.9 

Battleship Potemkin (1925) 

Immediately after the massacre on the Odessa Steps, the sailors on the battleship take their revenge by shelling the 

headquarters of the generals. As part of this sequence, Eisenstein juxtaposes three images of stone lions in 

different stages of awakening as a symbol of the awakening of the Russian people to political ideas and action. 

piece of popular propaganda, it did, like Strike before it, mark a major step in the 

progress of revolutionary cinema. It also represented the first film that gave recognition 

and acclaim to Soviet cinema. The claim that the experimental nature of Potemkin was 

not solely to blame for its unpopularity, and that it was badly let down 'by Sovkino's 

methods of distribution, is a view that should certainly be considered. 

October (1927) 

October, made for the Tenth Anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution, depicts 

the build-up to the October Revolution, ending with the storming of the Winter Palace by 

the Bolsheviks. It is considered the most experimental of Eisenstein's films, especially in its 

increased use of 'intellectual montage', which demands that the audience think critically 

and constructively about important political issues. A demonstration of this type of 

montage can be found in the scene in which both Kerensky and General Kornilov are 

depicted as Napoleons. By intercutting between the two men and the plaster cast figures 

of Napoleon, Eisenstein effectively exposes both the vanity and essentially the lack of any 

• Plate 13.6 Battleship 

Potemkin (1925) 

The Odessa Steps.

diegetic 

The elements of a film 

that originate from 

directly within the film's 

narrative. For example, a 

popular song that is 

being played on the 

soundtrack would be 

diegetic if it was clear 

that it was coming from 

a source within the 

world of the film such as 

a car radio. 

• Plate 13.10 October 

(1927) 

Lenin's arrival at the 

Finland Railway Station. 


power within the characters themselves to form a separate identity. 38 Eisenstein's 'intellectual 

montage' also involves diegetic material. For example, early in the film, shots of a 

soldier cowering in a trench are juxtaposed with low-angle shots of a vast cannon being 

unloaded elsewhere. The combination of shots initially points to the soldier being physically 

crushed, but then swiftly the assumption is reached that the war is oppressive, 

degrading and without purpose for the ordinary troops. 

Eisenstein also combines montage techniques with visual puns and symbolism for 

political effect. At one point, in order to degrade the power of the church, he swiftly cuts 

from the image of one deity to another, starting with a magnificent statue of Christ, and 

ending up with a primitive wooden idol, demonstrating that all religions essentially 

worship crude man-made objects. Eisenstein's use of such techniques was considered 

by many to be obscure, inaccessible in meaning and elitist. Victor Shklovsky, writing in 

Novyi Lef in 1927, records the responses of a man connected with the cinema: 

After viewing some Eisenstein sequences a man who is intelligent and conversant with cinema said


to me, That is very good. I like that a lot but what will the masses say? What will the people we are 

working for say?' What can you say to that? 39 

Indeed, an examination of contemporary criticism of October reveals that far from being 

popular among Soviet audiences, the film was met with derision and apprehension. 

Old and New (1929) 

The adverse reaction to October prompted Eisenstein to produce Old and New, a film 

more readily understood by audiences. Despite employing a number of the techniques 

• Plate 13.11 October 

(1927) 

• Plate 13.12 Old and 

New (1929) 

The new tractor is eventually 

delivered to 

Martha's co-operative.

key films 

The Mof/ier(1926) 

The End of St Petersburg 

(1927) 

Storm Over Asia (1928) 


used in October, Eisenstein presents them in a simplified form. Juxtapositions, for 

example, are more obvious and on a less symbolic level. 

The narrative of Old and New, concerned with the collectivisation of agriculture, is, 

unlike Eisenstein's previous films, bound together by a central character or heroine 

'Martha'. Despite its more conventional narrative form, the film contains one of 

Eisenstein's most effective montage sequences in which a cream separator is delivered 

to the collective farm. The new machine is eyed suspiciously by the peasants as milk is 

poured into it. In an ever-quickening flow of images, Eisenstein cuts between the glittering, 

spinning parts of the machine, the changing faces of the peasants and 

non-diegetic shots of fountains of water which symbolise the future flow of cream from 

the separator. The film is fascinating to study in the context of Eisenstein's earlier work 

and marks an attempt to address problems of understanding associated with October. 

Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953) 

Editing is the language of the film director. Just as in living speech, so, one 

may say, in editing: there is a word - the piece of exposed film, the image; a 

phrase - the combination of these pieces. 

(Pudovkin) 40 

Pudovkin believed that the power of cinema comes from editing. In the above quotation 

he claims that a 'shot' (or image) which is the equivalent of the single word in language 

has very limited meaning. However, when a number of words are combined together 

they form a 'phrase' which is dense with meaning. Pudovkin's equivalent of a 'phrase' 

was a number of shots edited together. He went further to support his claim by 

contending that: 

every object, taken from a given viewpoint and shown on the screen to spectators, is a dead object, 

even though it has moved before the camera.... Only if the object be placed together among a 

number of separate objects, only if it be presented as part of a synthesis of different separate visual 

images, is it endowed with filmic life. 41 

It would seem initially that Pudovkin's theoretical position regarding the effectiveness 

of editing was in tandem with his contemporary Eisenstein. There are, however, important 

differences in the specific way each director thought editing should be used. 42 

Pudovkin did not agree with Eisenstein's system of montage, which created visual 'jolts' 

between cuts. Instead, Pudovkin believed greater impact could be made by linking 

shots in a constructive way. Shots were to be used as individual building blocks, made 

to fit together exactly. Though seemingly theoretically opposed to Eisensteinian 

montage, Pudovkin made extensive use of devices such as 'intellectual montage' in The 

Mother and The End of St Petersburg. Pudovkin's juxtapositions, however, are much 

less symbolic, more clearly related to the diegetic world of the film and less intent on 

creating conflict than those of Eisenstein. Leon Moussinac, a French historian, summed 

up the differences between the two directors: 'An Eisenstein film resembles a shout, a 

Pudovkin film evokes a song.' 43 

Pudovkin, like Eisenstein, cast according to 'type' and was concerned about the 

problem of 'stagey acting'. He stated: 

I want to work only with real material - this is my principle. I maintain that to show, alongside real 

water and real trees and grass, a property beard pasted on the actor's face, wrinkles traced by


means of paint, or stagey acting is impossible. It is opposed to the most elementary ideas of 

style. 44 

Unlike Eisenstein, however, Pudovkin uses individual characters that are cast in the role 

of hero or heroine to carry the narrative, and although he discouraged the use of professional 

actors some of his lead parts were played by professional actors of the Moscow 

Arts Theatre. 45 

• CASE STUDY 3: VSEVOLOD PUDOVKIN, THE MOTHER 

(1926); THE END OF ST PETERSBURG (1927) 

The Mother (1926) 

The scenario for Pudovkin's The Mother is based on the earlier play by Gorky of the 

same name. The plot is concerned with the political awakening of a mother after she 

betrays her son to the police, in the belief that he will be dealt with justly. The action is 

set (as in Battleship Potemkin) in the revolutionary context of 1905, with strikes, mass 

protests and a final brutal massacre of the workers. 

With its focus on individuals, the film offers an interesting contrast to Eisenstein's 

approach to revolutionary cinema. In The Mother, the role of the individual is reinstated 

and emphasised. The mass struggle is thus registered through the lives and fates of 

separate characters involved in that struggle. It is important to note that the individual 

characters are not highlighted in such a way that the general struggle itself becomes 

obscured. The audience is encouraged to make connections between individual fate 

and the fate of the masses. Pudovkin is thus using individual characters to make his 

political points, believing that the audience would be able to relate better to separate 

identities than to an anonymous mass. 

Pudovkin's use of 'linkage' editing (shot A + shot B = AB) can be illustrated in the 

trial scene at the mid-point of the film. The scene is composed of a large number of 

shots which tend to centre on single characters or pairs of characters. The fragmentation 

allows Pudovkin to draw direct comparisons between, for example, the 

uninterested and uncaring attitude of the judges, the accused Pavel, his mother and 

several of the gossiping onlookers. Close shots of the soldiers guarding the courthouse 

are also inserted in order to demonstrate that 'justice' is being upheld by a substantial 

force. Pudovkin clearly reveals the judges to be vain and self-interested by highlighting 

their overriding concern with attire and pictures of horses, rather than the proceedings 

of the trial. If the same scene had been shot by Eisenstein the vanity of the judges might 

have been indicated in a similar way to that of Kerensky in October (that is, juxtaposing 

him with a shot of a peacock). 

The End of St Petersburg (1927) 

Made to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution, The End of St 

Petersburg, based on Andre Bely's 1916 symbolist novel Petersburg, 48 also uses individual 

characters to deal with the events preceding the revolution. One is a young 

peasant boy who has come to St Petersburg to seek work, as his family can no longer 

support him at home. Despite initial involvement with strikebreakers, the boy quickly 

becomes aware of the corruption and injustice of the Tsarist regime. His political awakening, 

however, lands him in prison and then he is forced to volunteer into the Tsar's 

army, where he is exposed to the horrors of trench warfare. 

Using montage, Pudovkin draws a contrast between the suffering of the soldiers 

who are fighting for the Tsar and the greed of those who are benefiting financially from 

the war. Horrific images of dying soldiers in mud at the front-line trenches are intercut

• Plate 13.13 The End 

of St Petersburg (1927) 

One of Pudovkin's 

central characters, a 

young peasant boy, is 

seen here demanding 

justice from the authorities. 

Key films 

The Adventures of 

Oktyabrina (1924) 

The Cloak (1926) 

The New Babylon (1929) 


with scenes at the St Petersburg stock market. As the fighting gets worse and worse at 

the front, the higher the value of the shares becomes - thereby enforcing the point that 

people are making money out of suffering. The old order, by supporting and being 

supported by the stock market, is seen to be inhumane and preoccupied with the 

wrong values - the acquisition of wealth at whatever cost. Pudovkin at one point intercuts 

between the image of a soldier slashing ferociously at an opponent with his 

bayonet and the image of a stock market figure frenetically dealing at the stock 

exchange. He thus likens the barbarities of war to the barbarity inherent in the centre of 

the capitalist structure. Earlier Pudovkin intercut between the images of death at the 

front and the words 'In the name of the Tsar, the fatherland, and the capital'. This is 

clearly ironic as the soldiers have no idea what they are fighting for - certainly not for 

the Tsar. 

In the final part of The End of St Petersburg, in the storming of the Winter Palace 

sequences, Pudovkin intercuts the images of the advancing Bolsheviks with both fastmoving 

clouds and crashing waves. This emphasises the power and inevitability of the 

revolution - revolution is unstoppable. Earlier in a Bolshevik's speech at the Lebedev 

factory, images of slowing down machinery are intercut with the speaker to point to the 

power of his words upon the workers. 

Eccentrism of the FEKS: Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid 

Trauberg 

FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor), formed in December 1921 by a small group of 

theatre actors and directors, shared the common aim of reforming the traditional theatre 

and incorporating into their experimental work elements of the circus, music hall and 

puppet theatre. On 9 July 1922 FEKS published a manifesto which stated their aims as 

a group. 47 The poster shown on page 439 shows just a small sample of the material 

contained within the manifesto.

S O V I E T M O N T A G E C I N E M A • M A R K J O Y C E


• Plate 13.14 The New Babylon (1929) 

The extract makes it clear that FEKS valued the bold, dynamic and popular elements 

of circus and cinema posters. It was with these elements that they proposed to revitalise 

the theatre. Two of the founding members of the group, Grigori Kozintsev and 

Leonid Trauberg, became interested in the cinema, making a number of short experimental 

films between 1924 and 1927, including The Adventures of Oktyabrina (1924) 

and The Cloak (1926). The films primarily emphasised the artificial nature of the mise en 

scene and the stylised nature of the acting rather than the editing. 

Kozintsev and Trauberg are perhaps best known for their 1929 film, The New 

Babylon, based on the events building up to the Paris Commune of 1871. As in their 

previous films, artificial mise en scene combined with stylised acting were employed, 

but also extensive use was made of camera movement. At one point in the film the 

camera moves swiftly enough to blur the image, thus conveying the sense of confusion 

present in the scene. The response to the film was unfavourable, as audiences failed to 

understand its form.


• CASE STUDY 4: ALEXANDER DOVZHENKO, ARSENAL 

(1929); EARTH (1930) 48 

Inspired by the creative and political possibilities of film, Dovzhenko had approached 

the Odessa film studio in 1926. At this point he had little knowledge of cinema, but 

within a few years he had made an outstanding contribution to Soviet revolutionary 

cinema with such films as Arsenal and Earth which, in addition to revolutionary fervour, 

displayed poetic qualities and provided a demonstration of his love for the Ukraine and 

its people. 

Arsenal surveys the devastating impact of the First World War and the political struggles 

between the Social Democrats and the Bolsheviks during 1917. The opening 

sequences of Arsenal exemplify Dovzhenko's approach to film-making. There is little 

camera movement or use of establishing shots and, overall, there is less concern with a 

conventional rendering of space and time than with the emotional impact of the flow of 

images. In these opening and further sequences Dovzhenko reveals the loss and 

impoverishment of the people, as well as the unthinking callousness of the social order. 

Arsenal shows that Dovzhenko is not concerned with personalised conflict between 

individuals, but with the ongoing struggle between opposing social forces. This concern 

is pursued further in Earth which deals with class struggle in the countryside, although 

like Arsenal it features a strong attractive male hero, Vasil. The latter is the operator of 

the tractor which will allow the collective farm to effectively rid the village of the selfseeking 

and more prosperous peasants, the kulaks. In the end Vasil is shot by Khoma, 

the son of a kulak, although what he stands for will not be defeated. Vasil's father, hitherto 

hostile to the young revolutionaries of the village, commits himself to the cause of 

collectivisation and rejects a religious burial in favour of the village youth singing songs 

about the new life to come. The film, then, presents a strong case for the recently instigated 

policy of the collectivisation of agriculture. Commentators on the film, however, 

• Plate 13.15 Earth 

(1930)


Key films 

Film Truth (Kino-Pravda) 

(1922) 

Kino_Eye (1924) 

A Sixth of the World 

(1926) 

The Man with a Movie 

Camera (1929) 

Enthusiasm (1931) 

See Chapter 7, pages 

215-for further 

discussion of Vertov's 

contribution to documentary 

film. 

have argued that the formal and poetic qualities of the film actually undermine the political 

message. Denise J. Youngblood, for example, states that: 

Dovzhenko's Earth (1930) is a much more curious example of the collectivisation film - the politically 

correct story of a handsome young village Party activist murdered by an evil and dissolute 

kulak opposed to collectivisation is undercut by a deeply subversive subtext related to its form. The 

lyrical imagery and slow rhythms of this film, totally unlike Ejsenstein's, belie the purported theme 

and in effect serve as a paean to a way of life soon to be no more. 49 

The opening sequence in which Vasil's grandfather dies would certainly seem to 

bear out this interpretation. He dies contented, his last act being to enjoy a pear, a 

product of the fruitful Ukrainian earth. Next to him a baby plays and a boy eats an 

apple, while the adult members of the family await the inevitable. This portrait of 

pastoral abundance and peacefulness with its allusions to the cycle of life and death 

seem to undermine the necessity for revolutionary change, but it is made clear by the 

old man's friend Petro that his has been a life of hard work - 'Seventy-five years behind 

a plough'. 

Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) 

Dziga Vertov 50 (pseudonym of Denis Kaufman) was interested in the idea that the film 

camera had the potential to capture 'truth'; the camera could be seen simply as a 

mechanical device that was capable of recording the world without human intervention. 

Vertov led a group of film-makers called Kinoki ('cinema-eye') who stated in their 1923 

manifesto: 

I am the Cine-Eye. I am the mechanical eye. 

I the machine show you the world as only I can see it. 

I emancipate myself henceforth and forever from human immobility. / am in constant motion. I 

approach objects and move away from them, I creep up on them, I clamber over them, I move 

alongside the muzzle of a running horse, I tear into a crowd at full tilt, I flee before fleeing 

soldiers, I turn over on my back, I rise up with aeroplanes, I fall and rise with falling and rising 

bodies. 51 

Vertov believed that the fiction film could not be used to reveal the 'truth' about a 

society. His films were based on documenting events around him; nothing should be 

artificially set up or staged for the camera. In 1922 Vertov had stated: 'WE declare the 

old films, the romantic, the theatricalised etc., to be leprous.' 52 

Vertov's techniques were based on experimentation caused by the general scarcity 

of film stock and also, when available, the short lengths of the negative film. His experiments 

included using old newsreels as part of his films, and he found that new 

meanings could be created by the conflict produced by the old material and the new. 

Vertov soon discovered that the conflicts produced by montage were a vital element in 

the construction of meaning in his films. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting features of Vertov's films is that great effort is 

taken to ensure that the audience is made aware of cameraman, editor and the whole 

process of producing a film. In The Man with a Movie Camera, for example, Vertov 

shows the cameraman shooting the scenes that we see before us, and later we see


shots of this same film being edited. This technique of acknowledging the nature of the 

film-making process can be linked to documentary film-making practice in the 1970s 

and 1980s (in the films of Emile de Antonio and Jean-Pierre Gorin, for example) which 

went against the fly-on-the-wall practice and attempted to show the presence of the 

film-crew and camera and the fact that the audience are watching a manufactured film 

rather than 'reality'. This style of film-making which draws attention to its own process 

is often termed 'self-reflexive'. 

Esfir Shub (1894-1959) 

Esfir Shub is an interesting female figure in a period of film-making dominated by 

men. She was initially employed by the Soviet government to re-edit foreign films 

to make them conform to the ideology of communism. Shub also re-edited old 

Tsarist newsreels to show the corrupt nature of the old order. Shub's practice of 

reassembling parts of existing films culminated in the adoption of the montage 

technique. 

• CASE STUDY 5: ESFIR SHUB, THE FALL OF THE 

ROMANOV DYNASTY (1927) 

Shub's first feature-length film, The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, constructed entirely 

from old newsreels, was made to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of the October 

Revolution and it is claimed that 60,000 metres of film had to be examined in order to 

finish the project. 53 Shub provides new commentary on existing material by inserting 

intertitles between shots. By juxtaposing sequences of shots from different newsreels 

she also makes the audience draw new conclusions about the material. For example, 

she contrasts shots of an aristocratic gathering with shots of workers digging ditches. 

The intertitle reads 'by the sweat of your brow'. The intertitles and the juxtaposition of 

the images encourage the audience to assign an aberrant decoding to the original 

shots. In other words, the audience can deliberately 'misread' the images. Shub uses 

images which emphasise the pomp and splendour of Tsarist Russia, which in the 

context of the film look absurd and out of place; the audience is forced to be critical of 

this obvious display of wealth. 

Although the film in principle uses montage in a similar way to Eisenstein or 

Pudovkin (in particular the way in which the audience are placed as active participants 

in the text), Shub does not make use of its rhythmic possibilities. Although the pace of 

the film is on the whole sedate it does put its political messages across in a powerful 

and convincing way. Recently, there has been a call for a re-evaluation of Esfir Shub by 

Graham Roberts, who claims that Shub's contribution to the Soviet cinema has been 

undervalued. 54 

AUDIENCE RESPONSE 

Viewers in the West may possibly already have an idea of the nature of the Soviet 

cinema after seeing extracts from films discussed previously such as Sergei Eisenstein's 

Battleship Potemkin or October. They may have wondered how many films such as 

these were made and how they were received by Soviet audiences that had only a few 

years previously gone through the upheaval of civil war. They may have pitied or even 

envied the Soviet cinema-goer - were these the only films that the Soviet cinema-goer 

fly-on-the-wall 

A term associated with a 

style of documentary 

film-making which 

attempts to present 

events as though the 

presence of the camera 

and film crew had not 

influenced them in any 

way. 

Key films 

The Fall of the Romanov 

Dynasty (1927) 

The Great Road (1927) 

The Russia of Nicholas II 

and Lev Tolstoy (1928)

For further discussion of 

realism and Bazin, see 

Chapter 4, p. 106-7. 


could see on a Friday night? How could a largely uneducated population have coped 

with sophisticated material like this? 

Recent research into the Soviet cinema of the 1920s has encouraged new ideas. In 

the past, attention has focused on a number of key directors such as Pudovkin, 

Eisenstein and Vertov, whose films in the Soviet Union and later in the West were 

received with critical acclaim. We must examine, however, new evidence that points to 

the fact that Russian audiences were far more likely to be watching the Soviet 1920s 

equivalent of Jurassic Park than the likes of Battleship Potemkin, Strike and October. 

Richard Stites, in Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900, 

reveals that the majority of Soviet directors were making mainstream films that were 

conventional in form and content. The montage film was the exception rather than the 

rule: 

The most popular movie genres of the revolutionary period were the same as the foreign and prerevolutionary 

Russian ones: costume drama, action and adventure, literary works adapted for the 

screen, melodramas, and comedy. Those who patronized them were not merely the nepmanskaya 

auditoriya, that is the bourgeoisie, alleged to be addicted to lurid sex films. Working-class clubs 

sponsored by the Communist Party also had to show some entertainment films or risk losing their 

audience. 55 

Soviet audiences also favoured foreign films which were imported in large numbers 

throughout the 1920s. 

But why were the Soviet propaganda films relatively less successful? Why would 

audiences rather see foreign and conventional Soviet genre films? Were foreign films 

perceived as being more exciting or exotic? Denise Youngblood, in Movies for the 

Masses, cites an interview conducted in 1929 with a Soviet cinema manager that 

recorded audience response: 

He noted that 'the public watched [Dovzhenko's Arsenal] with great difficulty,' and that attendance 

dropped to 50 percent of normal when his theatre screened New Babylon, Kozintsev and Trauberg's 

famous picture about the Paris Commune. Asked about the reaction to Vertov's The Man with the 

Movie Camera, he replied sarcastically, 'One hardly need say that if New Babylon didn't satisfy the 

spectator's requirements and 'lost' him, then The Man with the Movie Camera didn't satisfy him 

either.' 56 

The problem is clear. The Soviet propaganda films that were intended for the 

masses, from the illiterate peasant upwards, simply were not being understood by 

Soviet audiences, whereas the clear hero-led narrative structure of the foreign and 

Soviet genre films were far more straightforward and appealing. It is well documented 

that the American version of Robin Hood proved more successful in Soviet cinemas on 

all counts. The film-makers involved in Soviet propaganda production, although 

committed to the ideals of communism, were also committed to experimenting with film 

form. The experimentation in this case clearly did not culminate in a popular cinema 

that appealed to the masses. 

THEORETICAL DEBATES: MONTAGE VERSUS REALISM 

The montage technique has been widely acknowledged as a powerful means of expression 

and to many cinema theorists montage is the essence of cinema. The technique, 

however, does have its opponents, among them the French film critic and theorist 

Andre Bazin. 57 Bazin was concerned with the cinema's ability to record 'reality'. He saw

in cinema a means of capturing a record of events before the camera with minimum 

mediation. Bazin regarded the montage cinema of the Soviets (among others) as essentially 

non-realist because scenes could be manipulated and altered in many different 

ways. He claimed that the audience of montage cinema was essentially passive, 58 as 

the director forced the audience towards certain meanings. 

Bazin saw montage cinema as being in direct opposition to a style of film-making 

associated with realism. Realism is a term often associated with the Hollywood cinema, 

but Bazin used it to refer to a style of film-making adopted by certain film-makers such 

as Jean Renoir, a French director, who felt that the power of cinema came not from 

editing, but from mise en scene. The realists, unlike the montage film-makers, took 

great pains to hide the artificial constructed nature of film. The long take, for example, 

was frequently used as it made editing unnecessary. The use of the long take supported 

the claim that what was being watched was unmediated and therefore more 'realistic'. 

Bazin cited further devices that could enhance the 'reality' of a scene, such as the use 

of deep-focus, wide-angle lenses, the long shot and a highly mobile camera which all 

meant that the film-maker could preserve real time and space in individual scenes. 

POSTSCRIPT TO THE 1930s 

The 1930s and after: the decline of experimentation in 

the Soviet cinema 

In the 1930s the Soviet authorities, under the guidance of Stalin, reacted to the unpopularity 

of many of the Soviet films by issuing strict guidelines on how films should be 

made. This set of 'rules', essentially demanding hero-led narratives and concerned with 

realistic subject matter, was termed 'Socialist Realism'. The head of the Soviet film 

industry outlined why such a policy was necessary in 1933: 'A film and its success are 

directly linked to the degree of entertainment in the plot... that is why we are obliged to 

require our masters [the film-makers] to produce works that have strong plots and are 

organised around a story-line.' 59 

The policy of 'Socialist Realism' was combined with a complete ban on imported 

foreign films. By removing these positive representations of capitalism Stalin had also 

effectively made the Soviet film industry a monopoly; audiences could either see Soviet 

films or not see any films at all. 

The direct interest that the Soviet state took in the film industry reveals its perceived 

importance, but also had drastic consequences for many of the directors. It was noted 

by the authorities, for example, that several of these directors were not actually 

Communist Party members. (This might explain perhaps why they were more interested 

in form or technique than making positive films about communism that were easy to 

comprehend.) The film-makers of the 1920s discussed in this chapter were mostly not 

successful in the 1930s and 1940s. Eisenstein, for example, continued to make films, 

but the majority were either suppressed or had their funding withdrawn. 

However, the decline of montage cinema could possibly be the consequence of 

another factor: technology. In October 1929 the first Soviet sound films were released 

and with this advance in cinema technology came the almost immediate downfall of 

film-making practices that relied on either complex camera movement or rapid editing, 

as sound cinema initially required non-movable cameras and fixed microphones in 

order to record dialogue. 

The legacy of the Soviet cinema: its influence on 

modern cinema 60 

The impact of the Soviet films of the 1920s on the analysis of film and film-making itself 

For further discussion of 

realism and documentary 

film, see Chapter 7, 

pp. 212-15.

was immediate and continues to this day. The films, however, have not so much 

provided a model for successive film-makers as been an inspiration for their work. The 

British Documentary Movement of the 1930s, for example, was influenced by Soviet 

montage as well as impressed by the idea that films could be a force for education. The 

film-makers in this movement, however, did not conceive of films having a revolutionary 

role or even the rale of questioning contemporary inequalities. Other film-makers have 

been inspired by the Soviet cinema because of its rejection of the forms and conventions 

of the dominant Hollywood entertainment cinema. Jean-Luc Godard, for example, 

demanded that audiences participate in the construction of meaning in his films and so 

engage directly with social and political questions. The achievements of Eisenstein 

continue to impress film editors as well as contemporary film directors. The editor, 

Ralph Rosenblum, for example, states in his discussion of Battleship Potemkin that 

'[although the movie is filled with stunning moments, the massacre on the Odessa 

steps outweighs them all; it remains for editors everywhere the single most intimidating 

piece of film ever assembled.' 61 

Direct references to Eisenstein's films are numerous, ranging from Bernardo 

Bertolucci's subtle allusions to Strike in his Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (Italy/US 1981) 

through Brian de Palma's opportunistic reworking of the Odessa Steps sequence in The 

Untouchables (US 1987) 62 to Zbiginiew Rybczynski's use of the same sequence in 

Steps (US/UK/Poland 1987) 63 in order to satirise cultural attitudes including the veneration 

of Battleship Potemkin as a work of art. 64 Dovzhenko's influence has not been a 

direct political one, but the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, at one time a pupil of Dovzhenko, 

and a film like My Childhood by the Scottish film-maker Bill Douglas, exhibit a similar 

emotional intensity. 

1 Quoted in Yon Barna, Eisenstein (Seeker & Warburg, 

London, 1973) p. 102. 

2 The term peasants is used to describe those who worked 

on the land in the country, and the term workers describes 

those who worked within cities. 

3 This was a planned attack by a relatively small force, not a 

mass uprising as chronicled by Eisenstein in his 1927 film 

October. 

4 An unusual account of this period told from the point of 

view of the White side can be found in Mikhail Bulgakov's 

1926 novel, The White Guard (available in the UK as a 

Flamingo paperback). 

5 The British Film Institute has released a number of early 

Russian films on video (in ten volumes). 

6 See list of selected Russian films in Further viewing. 

7 The history of what happened to the migrant Russian filmmakers 

and stars is an area worthy of study in its own right. 

8 Protazanov was not in the Soviet Union for the full duration 

of this period; he emigrated briefly to Paris in 1920-3. 

9 For more information on Protazanov, see Ian Christie and 

Julian Graffy (eds), Yakov Protazanov and the Continuity of 

Russian Cinema (British Film Institute/NFT, London, 1993). 

For more information on the Russian cinema, see Jay 

Leyda, Kino, 3rd edn (George Allen & Unwin, London, 

1983); and Paolo Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Carlo Montanaro 

and David Robinson (eds), Silent Witnesses (British Film 

Institute, London, 1989). 

10 The first Russian studio was set up by Drankov in 1907. 

11 The first half of 'Soviet Cinema and Ideology: Film as Agent 

of Change' is by Danny Rivers (Film Studies Lecturer, West 

Kent College). 

12 V.I. Lenin, in Pravda (No. 250, 7 November 1919), reprinted 

in Lenin: Economics and Politics in the era of the 

Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Progress Publishers, 

Moscow, 1978) p. 3. 

13 The context of this remark can be found in Leyda, Kino, p. 

161. 

14 The Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) has recreated 

the cinema carriage of an Agit Train complete with 

commentator, although the Soviet films being shown are 

from the period 1924-30. 

15 Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds), The Film Factory: 

Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939 

(Routledge, London, 1988) p. 109. 

16 The civil war also resulted in trade barriers being set up 

which prevented the importation of film stock and cinema 

equipment into the Soviet Union. This had a dramatic effect 

on the film industry as the Soviet Union initially had no 

means of producing its own film stock and lenses.

S O V I E T M O N T A G E C I N E M A • M A R K J O Y C E 447 

17 Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses (Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, 1992) p. 51. 

18 Cinema Journal (Vol. 11, No. 2, 1972). 

19 Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930). 

20 The team effort involved in the production of a feature film 

would clearly cost a great deal more than an individual 

artist producing a painting. The Russian film industry, 

although economically successful, needed to produce films 

that would appeal to a wide audience. The desire to experiment 

with film form, when the existing genres were popular, 

was therefore limited. 

21 From Vsevolod Pudovkin, 'Types instead of Actors', in his 

Film Technique and Film Acting (Gollancz, London, 1929). 

22 The mansion was in fact the White House. 

23 Adapted from Bruce Kawin, How Movies Work (Collier 

Macmillan, London, 1987) pp. 99-101. 

24 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Routledge, 

London, 1986). Bordwell uses a technique pioneered by 

Barry Salt in his article 'Statistical Style Analysis of Motion 

Pictures', Film Quarterly (Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 1974-5). 

25 Quoted by Pudovkin at a lecture given at the London Film 

School in 1929. 

26 The Moscow Arts Theatre under the direction of Konstantin 

Stanislavski developed a method of acting which required 

the actor to attempt to 'become' the character. 

27 Quoted in Neya Zorkaya, The Illustrated History of Soviet 

Cinema (Hippocrene Books, New York, 1989) p. 52. 

28 This can be inferred from the fact that Goskino made thirtytwo 

prints of the film. 

29 For fuller details and a chronology of the life of Eisenstein 

see Bordwell 1993. 

30 A well-known Russian playwright (1823-86). 

31 David Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, p. 6. 

32 The other seven films were never made. 

33 Quoted at further length in Leyda's Kino, p. 181. 

34 Eisenstein bends historical fact in the film as the sailors on 

board the Potemkin, instead of persuading the Russian 

Fleet to join the struggle, were captured and the mutiny 

suppressed. 

35 The scene has been much copied by recent film-makers: 

see the section on the 'Legacy of the Soviet cinema: its 

influence on modern cinema', on pp. 445-6. 

36 See Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, p. 74, for an 

excellent analysis of the sequence. 

37 Quotation cited by Leyda in Kino, 1983, p. 195. Leyda also 

points out that the same sequence caused 'an anxious 

debate in the German Reichstag on the size of the Soviet 

Navy'. 

38 Bordwell, in The Cinema of Eisenstein, p. 85, claims that 

the peacock could be seen as a diegetic image as it forms 

part of the treasures contained within the Winter Palace. 

Yuri Tsivian, in 'Eisenstein's October and Russian Symbolist 

Culture' (Christie and Taylor 1993), puts forward the view 

that 'Eisenstein was hoping to attain the effect of Kerensky 

entering the peacock's asshole'. 

39 Taylor and Christie (eds), The Film Factory, p. 182. 

40 Quoted in V. Perkins, Film as Film (Penguin, London, 1972) 

p. 21. 

41 Ibid., p. 22. 

42 Pudovkin's films, like those of Eisenstein, were based on a 

body of theoretical writing. 

43 Quoted by Richard Taylor, The Politics of the Soviet 

Cinema, 1917-1929 (Cambridge University Press, 

Cambridge, 1979) p. 142. 

44 Lecture given by Pudovkin at the London Film Society, 

1929. 

45 The theatre was founded in 1898 by Konstantin 

Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. 

46 Published in the UK by Penguin (London, 1983). 

47 The manifesto was reprinted in 1992 in a limited edition of 

500 copies by Aldgate Press, London. 

48 Section on Dovzhenko written by Danny Rivers (West Kent 

College). 

49 Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, p. 169. 

50 Vertov in Russian is derived from the Russian word for 

'rotation' and was thus a reflection of his approach to the 

arts. 

51 Quoted in Taylor and Christie (eds), The Film Factory, p. 93. 

52 Ibid., p. 69. 

53 Soviet montage cinema tended to put the stress on the 

importance of the director (auteur) and work in postproduction, 

rather than scriptwriting and the screenplay. 

This became a source of dispute in the 1920s when there 

was greater concern with efficiency and a more elaborate 

division of labour. See Thompson's 'Early Alternatives to 

the Hollywood Mode of Production', Film History: An 

International Journal (Vol. 5, No. 4, December 1993). 

54 See 'Esfir Shub: A Suitable Case For Treatment', Historical 

Journal of Film, Radio and Television (Vol. 11, No. 2, 1991). 

55 Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and 

Society Since 1900 (Cambridge, Cambridge University 

Press, 1992) p. 56. 

56 Youngblood, Mow'es for the Masses, pp. 18-19. 

57 Bazin was also editor of the French film journal Cahiers du 

Cinema. 

58 Eisenstein rigorously opposed this view claiming that the 

audience for his films played an active part in the text. 

59 The head of Sovkino at this time was Boris Shumyatsky. 

The quotation is taken from Richard Taylor, 'Boris 

Shumyatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: Ideology 

as Mass Entertainment', Historical Journal of Film, Radio 

and Television (Vol. 6, No.1, 1986) p. 43. 

60 This section was written by Danny Rivers (West Kent 

College). 

61 From Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen, When the 

Shooting Stops... the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story 

(Da Capo Press, New York, 1979). 

62 A statistical analysis of both scenes in terms of shot 

length/shot type reveals that they are also very similiar in 

form. 

63 A co-production of KTCA-TV Minneapolis and ZBIG Vision 

Ltd in association with Channel Four, London. 

64 Woody Allen in Love and Death (US 1975), also makes 

reference to this sequence.

Key texts 

Aumont, J. Montage Eisenstein (British Film Institute, London, 

1987) 

Bordwell, D. The Cinema of Eisenstein (Harvard University 

Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993) 

Christie, I. and Taylor, R. (eds) Eisenstein Rediscovered 

(Routledge, London, 1993) 

Eisenstein, S. A/ofes of a Film Director (Dover Publications, New 

York, 1970) 

The Film Sense (Faber & Faber, London, 1986) 

(Film scripts of The Mother, Earth and Battleship Potemkin have 

been published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1973.) 

Kepley, V., Jr In the Service of the State: The Cinema of 

Alexander Dovzhenko (University of Wisconsin Press, 

Madison, 1986) 

Leyda, J. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, 3rd edn 

(George Allen & Unwin, London, 1983) 

Michelson, A. (ed.) Kino Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov 

(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984) 

Taylor, R. Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany 

(Croom Helm, London, 1979) 

The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1929 (Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, 1979) 

Taylor, R. and Christie, I. (eds) The Film Factory: Russian and 

Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939 (Routledge, 

London, 1988) 

(eds) Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian 

and Soviet Cinema (Routledge, London, 1991) 

Youngblood, D. Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and 

Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge University Press, 

Cambridge, 1992) 

Books 

Barna, Y. Eisenstein (Seeker & Warburg, London, 1973) 

Barron, S. and Tuchman, M. (eds) The Avant-Garde in Russia, 

1910-1930: New Perspectives (Los Angeles County 

Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1980) 

Birkos, A. Soviet Cinema: Directors and Films (Archon, Hamden, 

CT, 1976) 

Bordwell, D. Narration in the Fiction Film (Routledge & Kegan 

Paul, London, 1986) 

Christie, I. and Giliett, J. (eds) Futurism/Formalism/FEKS: 

'Eccentrism' and Soviet Cinema 1918-1936 (British Film 

Institute (Film Availability Services), London, 1978) 

Christie, I. and Graffy, J. (eds) Yakov Protazanov and the 

Continuity of Russian Cinema (British Film Institute/NFT, 

London, 1993) 

Dickinson, T. and de la Roche, C. Soviet Cinema (The Falcon 

Press, London, 1948) 

Goodwin, J. Eisenstein, Cinema and History (University of Illinois 

Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1993) 

Kenez, P. Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953 (Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, 1992) 

Lawton, A. The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet 

Cinema (Routledge, London, 1992) 

Marshall, H. Masters of the Soviet Cinema (Routledge & Kegan 

Paul, London, 1983) 

NATIONAL CINEMAS 

Petric, V. Constructivism in Film: The Man with the Movie 

Camera - A Cinematic Analysis (Cambridge University 

Press, Cambridge, 1987) 

Rosenblum, R. and Karen, R. When the Shooting Stops...the 

Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story (Da Capo Press, New 

York, 1979) 

Schnitzer, J., Schnitzer, L. and Martin, M. (eds) Cinema in 

Revolution, trans. D. Robinson (Seeker & Warburg, London, 

1973; reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York, 1987) 

Stites, R. Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society 

Since 1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992) 

Taylor, R. (ed.) S.M. Eisenstein: Writings 1922-1934 - Selected 

Works vol. 1 (British Film Institute, London, 1988) 

(ed.) Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein - 

Selected Works vol. 4 (British Film Institute, London, 1995) 

Taylor, R. and Glenny, M. (eds) S.M. Eisenstein: Towards a 

Theory of Montage - Selected Works vol. 2 (British Film 

Institute, London, 1994) 

Tsivian, Y. Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception 

(Routledge, London, 1994) 

Usai, P., Codelli, L., Montanaro, C. and Robinson, D. (eds) Silent 

Witnesses: Russian Films 1908-1919 (British Film Institute, 

London, 1989) 

Youngblood, D. Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935 

(UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Ml, 1985) 

Zorkaya, N. The Illustrated History of Soviet Cinema (Hippocrene 

Books, New York, 1989) 

Chapters in books 

Bordwell, D. Narration in the Fiction Film (Routledge, London, 

1990) pp. 234-73. 

Cook, P. (ed.) The Cinema Book (British Film Institute, London, 

1985) pp. 34-6 and 218-19. 

Dudley, A. The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (Oxford 

University Press, Oxford, 1976) Chs 3 and 4, pp. 42-101. 

Giannetti, L. Understanding Movies, 6th edn (Prentice Hall, 

Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993) pp. 135-47 and 373-83. 

Giannetti, L. and Eyman, S. Flashback: A Brief History of Film, 

2nd edn (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991) pp. 

82-90. 

Gomery, D. Movie History: A Survey (Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 

1991) pp. 135-60. 

Henderson, B. Toward a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style', in B. 

Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods (University of California 

Press, Berkeley, 1976) pp. 422-38. 

Kawin, B. How Movies Work (Collier Macmillan, London, 1987) 

pp. 264-75. 

Kenez, P. The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of 

Mass Mobilization 1917-1929 (Cambridge University Press, 

Cambridge, 1985) Ch. 9, pp. 195-219. 

Perkins, V. Film as Film (Penguin, London, 1972) p. 21. 

Robinson, D. World Cinema 1895-1980 (Methuen, London, 

1981) pp. 123-42. 

Thompson, K. and Bordwell, D. Film Art: An Introduction, 4th 

edn (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993) pp. 466-9. 

Film History: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, New York, 

1994) pp. 128-55.


Tudor, A. Theories of Film (Viking Press and Seeker & Warburg, 

London, 1973) pp. 25-58. 

Articles 

Bordwell, D. 'The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film', 

Cinema Journal (Vol. 11, No. 2, 1972) 

Christie, I. 'From the Kingdom of Shadows', in the catalogue to 

Twilight of the Tsars (Hayward Gallery, London, 1991) 

Hartsough, D. 'Soviet Film Distribution and Exhibition in 

Germany, 1S21-1933', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and 

Television (Vol. 5, No. 2, 1985) 

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (Vol. 11, No. 2, 

1991) - a special issue centred on new research into Soviet 

cinema including: Tsivian, Yuri, 'Early Russian Cinema and 

its Public'; Yangirov, Rashit, 'Soviet Cinema in the Twenties: 

National Alternatives'; Youngblood, Denise, "'History' on 

Film'; Yampolsky, Mikhail, 'Reality at Second Hand'; Listov, 

Viktor, 'Early Soviet Cinema: The Spontaneous and the 

Planned, 1917-1924'; Roberts, Graham, 'Esfir Shub: A 

Suitable Case for Treatment'. 

V = available on video 

16mm = available to hire on 16mm 

Where neither symbol is listed, the film is not available to buy or 

rent 

Selected Russian films of the 1910s 

1908 Sken'ka Razin, Drankov (V) 

1909 A Sixteenth-century Russian Wedding, Goncharov (V) 

1910 The Queen of Spades, Petr Chardynin (V) 

Rusalka/The Mermaid, Goncharov (V) 

The House in Kolomna, Petr Chardynin (V) 

1912 The Brigand Brothers, Goncharov (V) 

The Peasants' Lot, Vasilii Goncharov (V) 

1913 Twilight of A Woman's Soul, Evgeny Bauer 

Merchant Bashkirov's Daughter, Larin (V) 

1914 The Child of the Big City, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

Silent Witnesses, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

1915 After Death, Evgeny Bauer 

Daydreams, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

Happiness of Eternal Night, Evgeny Bauer 

Children of the Age, Evgeny Bauer 

1916 The 1002nd Ruse, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

The Queen of Spades, Yakov Protazanov (V) 

Antosha Ruined by a Corset, Eduard Puchal'ski (V) 

A Life for a Life, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

1917 Safari Triumphant, Yakov Protazanov 

The King of Paris, Evgeny Bauer 

Grandmother of the Revolution, Svetlov 

The Revolutionary, Evgeny Bauer 

For Luck, Evgeny Bauer (V) 

1918 Jenny the Maid, Yakov Protazanov 

Still, Sadness, Still, Petr Chardynin 

Little Ellie, Yakov Protazanov 

Kepley, V, Jr 'The Origins of Soviet Cinema: A Study in Industry 

Development', Quarterly Review of Film Studies (Vol. 10, No. 

1, 1985) 

Kepley, V, Jr and Kepley, B. 'Foreign Films on Soviet Screens 

1922-1931', Quarterly Review of Film Studies (Fall 1979) 

Screen (Vol. 12, No. 4, Winter 1971-2) - a special issue centred 

on Soviet film of the 1920s including translations from: LEF, 

Novy LEF, Brik, Kuleshov, Shklovsky, Vertov, Mayakovsky 

Film Scenarios. 

Stites, R. 'Soviet Movies for the Masses and Historians', 

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (Vol. 11, No. 

3, 1991) 

Taylor, R. 'Boris Shumyatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 

1930s: Ideology as Mass Entertainment', Historical Journal 

of Film, Radio and Television (Vol. 6, No.1, 1986) p. 43. 

Thompson, K. 'Early Alternatives to the Hollywood Mode of 

Production', Film History: An International Journal (Vol. 5, 

No. 4, December 1993) 

Selected Soviet films of the 1920s-40s 

1922-5 Film-Truth, Dziga Vertov (a series of newsreels) 

1924 The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of 

the Bolsheviks, Lev Kuleshov (16mm) 

Strike, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 16mm) 

Aelita, Yakov Protazanov (16mm) 

Kino-eye, Dziga Vertov 

Cigarette-Girl from Mosselprom, Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky 

1925 Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 16mm) 

The Death Ray, Lev Kuleshov 

1926 The Mother, Vsevolod Pudovkin (V, 16mm) 

A Sixth of the World, Dziga Vertov (16mm) 

1927 The End of St. Petersburg, Vsevolod Pudovkin (V, 16mm) 

October, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 16mm) 

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, Esfir Shub (V, 16mm) 

The Great Road, Esfir Shub 

1928 Storm Over Asia, Vsevolod Pudovkin (V, 16mm) 

The Russia of Nicholas II and Lev Tolstoy, Esfir Shub 

1929 The New Babylon, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid 

Trauberg (V) 

1930 

1934 

1935 

1936 

1945 

1946 

Old and New or The General Line, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 

16mm) 

The Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov (16mm) 

Arsenal, Alexander Dovzhenko (V, 16mm) 

Turksib, Victor Turin 

Ranks and People, Yakov Protazanov 

Earth, Alexander Dovzhenko (V, 16mm) 

Enthusiasm, Dziga Vertov (16mm) 

Chapayev, Sergei and Georgy Vasiliev (V) 

The Youth of Maxim, Grigori Kozintsev, and Leonid 

Trauberg (16mm) 

Aerograd, Alexander Dovzhenko 

We from Krondstadt, Yefim Dzigan (V) 

Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein (16mm) 

Ivan the Terrible: Part I, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 16mm) 

Ivan the Terrible: Part II, Sergei Eisenstein (V, 16mm)

Availability of Russian/Soviet 

films 

Soviet/Russian films are easily obtained both on video and for 

hire on 16mm. Most of the key 1920s Soviet films have been 

released on video by Hendring and can also be hired on 16mm 

from the BFl at a relatively low cost (on average £25.00 plus 

delivery). For more information about hiring films see the BFI's 

films for hire catalogue, Films on Offer. A large number of the 

Russian films of the 1910s are also available (released by the 

BFl) as a set of ten videos. 


http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Countries/SovietUnion 

This is the Internet Movie Data Base (US) with a listing of 2,380 

Russian films including details of producers, distributors, directors, 

genres, casts, writers, composers of music, and other titles 

by which the film is known. 

http://www.nd.edu/astrouni/zhiwriter/movies.htm 

A Russian cinema/movies website with films, directors, artists, 

critics, distributors, history, historians and Russian Cinema 

WWW Server.

Sergej M. EISENSTEIN: Über die Reinheit der Filmsprache (1934). In: 

Ders.: Schriften 2, Hans-Joachim Schlegel (Hg.). München: Hanser 

1973, S. 141-150. 

Über die Reinheit der Filmsprache 

Es ist bezeichnend, daß man sich inzwischen angewöhnt hat, 

von Filmen als von »Ton«-Filmen zu sprechen. Soll das etwa 

bedeuten, daß das, was man sieht, keinerlei Beachtung verdient? 

Darauf läuft es aber schließlich hinaus. 

141

An dieser Stelle wird man natürlich giftig einwerfen: »Aha, 

alter Teufel, willst uns wieder mit Montage kommen!« 

Ja sicher, mit Montage. 

Für viele sind Montage und »linke«, formalistische Übertreibung 

1 synonym. 

Inzwischen aber... 

Mit all dem hat Montage aber gar nichts gemein. 

Für diejenigen, die etwas davon verstehen: Montage ist das 

stärkste Kompositionsmittel für die künstlerische Realisierung 

eines Sujets. 

Für diejenigen, die von Komposition keine Ahnung haben: 

Montage ist die Syntax des richtigen Aufbaus aller Einzelfragmente 

eines künstlerischen Films. 

Und schließlich für diejenigen, die Filmstücke irrigerweise so 

zusammenfügen, wie man nach gebrauchsfertigen Rezepten 

Medizin zusammenbraut, Gurken einlegt, Pflaumen einmacht 

oder aber Äpfel mit Preiselbeeren einkocht: Montage 

ist schlicht und einfach eine elementare Regel filmischer Orthographie. 

Wenn Knopf, Gürtel und Hosenträger auch mal zum Selbstzweck 

würden, so gäbe das ein ganz schönes Durcheinander. 

Und ich möchte mal die Freiheit der ausdrucksvollen Handbewegungen 

eines Menschen sehen, der im unteren Teil seiner 

festlichen Garderobe dieser Hilfsaggregate entbehren 

müßte. 

Es gibt Filme, in denen man auf einzelne gutgemachte Einstellungen 

stößt, wobei es aber in den jeweiligen Kontexten 

zu einem regelrechten Widerspruch zwischen den verselbständigten 

bildlichen Qualitäten und dem Stellenwert einer Einstellung 

kommt. Einstellungen ohne Verbindung mit einem 

Montagegedanken und der Komposition werden zu ästhetischen 

Spielereien und Selbstzweck. Je besser sie gemacht 

sind, umso mehr läuft der Film Gefahr, zu einer Sammlung 

schöner Phrasen, einem Schaufenster voller bunt zusammengewürfelter 

Dinge oder einem Album schönbebilderter Briefmarken 

zu werden. 

Wir sind keine Verfechter einer »Hegemonie« der Montage 

mehr. Die Zeit ist vorbei, als man aus pädagogischen und 

erzieherischen Gründen taktische und polemische Manöver 

für die allgemeine Etablierung der Montage als eines Aus- 

142 

drucksmittels führen mußte. Es ist aber unsere verdammte 

Pflicht und Schuldigkeit, die Frage nach dem Bildungsgrad 

einer Filmdiktion zu stellen. Es genügt nicht, zu fordern, daß 

die Qualität der Montage, der Filmsyntax und Filmsprache 

nicht hinter der Qualität früherer Arbeiten zurückbleiben 

dürfe. Es gilt vielmehr, über diese hinauszugehen, sie zu 

überflügeln. Das fordert der Kampf für eine hohe Qualität 

der Filmkultur von uns. 

Die Literatur hat es leichter. Wenn man sie kritisiert, so kann 

man ihr Beispiel der Klassiker entgegenhalten. Ihr Erbe und 

ihre Leistungen sind in vielen Fragen bis zu den detailliertesten 

Einzelheiten mit mikroskopischer Akribie erforscht worden. 

Obwohl Andrej Belyj gestorben ist, so steht dennoch 

seine Analyse des Gogolschen Kompositions- und Bildaufbaus 

2 wie ein lebendiger Vorwurf vor jeder Form literarischer 

Leichtfertigkeit. 

[...] 

Kehren wir noch einmal zur Frage nach der Reinheit der 

Filmsprache zurück. Es fällt mir keineswegs schwer, den 

Einwand, die Meisterschaft der Filmdiktion und -ausdruckskraft 

sei noch zu jung und ohne klassische Vorbilder in der 

klassischen Tradition, in der Luft zu zerreißen. Ebenso die Behauptung, 

ich würde jene mißachten und - ohne ihnen positive 

Vorbilder gegenüberzustellen - mich einfach an literarischen 

Analogien orientieren. Viele zweifeln sogar daran, daß 

es in dieser »Halbkunst« (das ist die Filmkunst immer noch 

für viele) überhaupt so etwas geben könne. In einer bestimmten 

Epoche kannte aber unsere Filmkunst immerhin schon 

einmal ein ebenso strenges Verantwortungsgefühl gegenüber 

jeder Einstellung, wie die Dichtkunst gegenüber jeder Strophe 

eines Poems oder die Musik für den gesetzmäßigen Verlauf 

einer Fuge. 

Hierfür könnten genügend Beispiele aus der Praxis unseres 

Stummfilms angeführt werden. Da ich aber keine Zeit habe 

jetzt speziell hierfür andere Beispiele zu untersuchen, erlaube 

ich mir, an dieser Stelle ein Analysebeispiel aus meiner eigenen 

Arbeit anzuführen. Es ist den Materialien meines noch 

nicht fertig gestellten Buches >Regiekunst< 3 entnommen. 

(Teil II: >Mise-en-cadresPotemkin

gen zu können, wähle ich bewußt keine besonders akzentuierte 

Szene, sondern die erstbeste Stelle, auf die ich gerade 

stoße: Vierzehn aufeinander folgende Filmstücke aus der 

Szene, die der Schießerei auf der »Odessaer Treppe« vorangeht. 

Es handelt sich um die Szenen, als die »Herren 

Odessaer« (so titulierten die »Potemkin«-Matrosen die Einwohner 

von Odessa in ihrer Ansprache) Jollen mit Proviant 

zum meuternden Panzerkreuzer schickten. 

Die Begrüßung des »Potemkin« ist aus der deutlichen Überschneidung 

zweier Themen aufgebaut: 

1. Die Jollen eilen auf den Panzerkreuzer zu. 

2. Die Einwohner von Odessa winken. 

Am Schluß verschmelzen die beiden Themen miteinander. 

Im wesentlichen handelt es sich um eine Komposition auf 

zwei Ebenen: Tiefe und Vordergrund. Abwechselnd schieben 

sich diese Themen nach oben, treten in den Vordergrund 

oder schieben sich gegenseitig in den Hintergrund. 

Die Komposition ist folgendermaßen aufgebaut: 

1) auf einer plastischen Wechselwirkung der beiden Ebenen 

(innerhalb der Einstellung) und 2) auf dem Wechsel der Linien 

und Formen von Einstellung zu Einstellung - und zwar 

in jeder der beiden Ebenen (in Montageform). Im zweiten 

Fall wird das Kompositionsspiel durch ein kollidierendes 

oder aber innerlich zusammenhängendes Ineinandergreifen 

des plastischen Eindrucks einer vorhergegangenen und einer 

darauf folgenden Einstellung gestaltet. /(Hierbei handelt es 

sich um eine an rein räumlichen und linearen Merkmalen 

orientierte Analyse. Die rhythmisch-zeitliche Beziehung wird 

an anderer Stelle untersucht). 

Die Kompositionsbeweguhg nimmt folgenden Verlauf (vgl. 

die beigefügte graphische Analyse, Abb., S. 268. 

I. Die Jollen in Bewegung. Gleichmäßige Bewegung, parallel 

zum horizontalen Schnitt dieser Einstellung. Das ganze 

Blickfeld ist vom ersten Thema bestimmt: Ein Spiel kleiner, 

vertikaler Segel. 

II. Intensivere Bewegung der Jollen aus dem ersten Thema 

(das wird auch durch das Aufkommen des zweiten Themas 

bewirkt). Mit dem strengen Rhythmus der vertikalen, 

unbeweglichen Säulen tritt das zweite Thema in den Vordergrund. 

Vertikallinien künden die plastische Verteilung der 

nun folgenden Figuren an (IV, V usw.). Im unteren Teil der 

144 

Einstellung erscheint das plastische Thema des Brückenbogens. 

III. Das plastische Thema des Brückenbogens wächst in 

die ganze Einstellung hinein. Das Spiel der wechselnden Einstellungsfolge 

besteht im Übergang der Vertikallinien in eine 

bogenförmige Struktur. Das Thema der Vertikalen ist in der 

Bewegung der Menschen bewahrt worden, die sich ohne 

heftigere Bewegung von der Kamera wegbegeben. Das Jollenthema 

ist endgültig in die Tiefe verdrängt. 

IV. Das plastische Bogenthema rückt endgültig in den 

Vordergrund. Die Bogenformation geht in eine entgegengesetzte 

Lösung über, die von der kreisförmig zusammengetretenen 

Gruppe angekündigt wird (die Komposition wird 

durch den Sonnenschirm vorausgedeutet). Derselbe Übergang 

in ein Gegenstück findet auch innerhalb des Vertikalaufbaus 

statt: Die Rücken der sich ohne heftigere Bewegung 

in die Tiefe begebenden Menschen werden von unbeweglichen 

und von vorn aufgenommenen Figuren abgelöst. Das 

Thema der Jollenbewegung wird dabei durch deren Augenausdruck 

und ihre horizontale Bewegung in gespiegelter 

Form beibehalten. 

V. Im Vordergrund gibt es eine allgemein übliche Kompositionsvariation: 

Eine gerade Anzahl von Gesichtern wird 

durch eine ungerade ersetzt. Zwei ersetzt durch drei. Diese 

»goldene Regel« eines Mise-en-scene-Wechsels hat ihre Tradition, 

die bis zur italienischen »Comedia dell'arte« (hier 

kreuzen sich noch die Blickrichtungen) zurückreicht. Das 

Bogenmotiv wird erneut gespannt, diesmal aber in umgekehrter 

Biegung: Es wird vom Hintergrund, von der Balustrade 

wiederholt und unterstützt. Das Thema der Jollen: Sie 

sind in Bewegung. Das Thema der Augen: Sie spähen in der 

ganzen Breite der Einstellung in horizontaler Richtung. 

VI. Die Einstellungen I-V bilden den Übergang vom Jollenthema 

zum Thema der Beobachter, das in fünf Montagestücken 

entwickelt wird. Das Intervall von V zu VI bringt in 

abrupter Rückwärtswendung einen Übergang von den Beobachtern 

zurück zu den Jollen. Die Komposition, die sich 

streng an den Inhalt hält, verkehrt alle bezeichnenden Elemente 

abrupt in ihr Gegenteil. Die Balustradenlinie wird aus 

der Tiefe schnell in den Vordergrund gerückt, d. h. durch die 

Bordlinie des Bootes wiederholt. Darüberhinaus wird sie 

145

durch die Berührungslinien von Boot und Wasseroberfläche 

verdoppelt. Die grundlegende kompositionelle Anordnung 

bleibt zwar gleich, ihre konkrete Ausarbeitung aber ist kontrovers. 

V ist statisch. VI wird von der Dynamik der Bootsbewegung 

bestimmt. Die vertikale »Dreiteilung« wird in beiden 

Einstellungen beibehalten. Das jeweilige Zentralelement 

(Frauenbluse, bzw. Segeltuch) ist strukturell verwandt. Die 

jeweiligen Seitenelemente stehen in scharfem Gegensatz: Die 

schwarzen Flecken der beiden Männer neben der Frau und 

die weißen Zwischenräume neben dem Segel. Ebenso konträr 

ist auch die vertikale Aufgliederung: Die drei - durch 

den unteren Rand des Bildes abgeschnittenen - Figuren gehen 

in ein vertikales Segel über, das vom oberen Bildrand 

abgeschnitten wird. Im Hintergrund taucht ein neues Thema 

auf: Der Panzerkreuzer, dessen Bord sichtbar wird, und der 

von oben her abgeschnitten ist (Vorbereitung auf VII). 

VII. Eine erneute scharfe thematische Wendung. Das 

Hintergrundthema - der Panzerkreuzer - wird in den Vordergrund 

gerückt (der Sprung des Themenwechsels von V 

auf VI hat gleichsam die Funktion eines musikalischen Vorschlags 

4 für den Sprung von VI auf VII). Der Blickwinkel 

wird um 180 ° gedreht und ist vom Panzerkreuzer aufs Meer, 

d. h. zurück auf VI gerichtet. Diesmal befindet sich also der 

Panzerkreuzer im Vordergrund, wobei er vom unteren BUdrand 

abgeschnitten wird. In der Tiefe wird das Segelthema 

mit Vertikalen entwickelt. Und auch die Matrosen bilden 

eine Vertikale. Der statische Geschützlauf setzt die Bewegungslinie 

aus der vorhergehenden Einstellung fort. Der 

Schiffsbord erscheint als ein in die Gerade übergehender Bogen. 

VIII. Hier wird VI mit erhöhter Intensivität wiederholt. 

Das horizontale Augenspiel wird in vertikal winkende Hände 

umgesetzt. Und das Vertikalthema rückt aus der Tiefe heraus 

in den Vordergrund, wobei es in verdoppelter Wiederholung 

das Sujet auf die aufmerksamen Beobachter hinüberlenkt. 

IX. Zwei Gesichter aus der Nähe. Übrigens eine unglückliche 

Zusammenstellung mit der vorangegangenen Einstellung. 

Es wäre besser gewesen, eine Einstellung mit drei Gesichtern 

dazwischenzuschalten, etwa Einstellung V mit erhöhter 

Intensivität zu wiederholen. 

146 

Dabei wäre die Bauform 2:3:2 herausgekommen. Darüberhinaus 

hätte die Wiederholung der vertrauten Gruppe aus 

IV und V mit dem neuen Abschluß in IX den Eindruck der 

vorangehenden Einstellung verstärkt. Die Situation wird einzig 

durch eine gewisse Stärkung der Ebene gerettet. 

X. Die beiden Gesichter gehen in ein einziges über. Der 

voller Energie hochgerissene Arm befindet sich außerhalb 

der Einstellung. Es findet ein richtiger Wechsel der Gesichter 

im Verhältnis 2:3:2:1 statt (natürlich unter der angemerkten 

Verbesserung in der Folge VIII auf IX). Das zweite 

Paar wird in bezug auf das erste Paar in der richtigen Dimensionserweiterung 

gezeigt (= richtige Wiederholung mit 

qualitativer Variation). Die Linie der Ungeraden ist quantitativ 

und qualitativ unterschiedlich (bei Beibehaltung des allgemeinen 

Kennzeichens der Ungeraden sind Ausmaße und 

Anzahl der Gesichter verschieden). 

XI. Neuer abrupter Themenwechsel. Ein Sprung, der den 

von V auf VI mit erhöhter Intensivität wiederholt. Das vertikale 

Hochreißen der Hände in der vorangegangenen Einstellung 

wird von dem vertikalen Segel aufgenommen und fortgesetzt. 

Dabei bewegt sich die Vertikale dieses Segels auf der 

Horizontalen. Das Thema von VI wird mit erhöhter Intensität 

wiederholt. Ebenso auch die Komposition von II, allerdings 

mit dem Unterschied, daß das Horizontalthema der 

sich bewegenden Jollen und die Vertikalen der unbeweglichen 

Säulen hier in einer einzigen horizontalen Verschiebung 

des vertikalen Segels zusammenfließen. Die Komposition 

nimmt erneut die Sujetlinie von der Einheit und Zusammengehörigkeit 

der Jollen und der am Ufer stehenden Menschen 

auf (und dies bevor zum Thema der endgültigen, abschließenden 

Vereinigungsthematik übergegangen wird: Zur Vereinigung 

von Ufer und Panzerkreuzer über die Mittlerrolle der 

Jollen). 

XII. Das Segel von XI löst sich in einer Menge vertikaler 

Segel auf, die sich wiederum auf der Horizontalen bewegen 

(= Wiederholung von I mit erhöhter Intensität). Die kleinen 

Segel bewegen sich in entgegengesetzter Bewegung wie das 

große Segel. 

XIII. Nachdem das große Segel in viele kleine aufgelöst 

worden ist, wird es jetzt wiederum zusammengesetzt. Nunmehr 

aber nicht als Segel sondern als Flagge, die über der 

147

»Potemkin« weht. Diese Einstellung besitzt eine neue Qualität: 

Sie ist zugleich statisch und bewegt - der Mast ist vertikal 

und unbeweglich, die Flagge dagegen flattert im Wind. 

In formaler Hinsicht wird XI von XII wiederholt. Gleichzeitig 

aber übersetzt der Segel-Flagge-Wechsel das Prinzip der 

plastischen Vereinigung in eine Verschmelzung von Thema 

und Idee. Es handelt sich hierbei schon nicht mehr nur 

um eine Vertikale, die einzelne Kompositionselemente in 

plastischer Weise vereinigt, sondern um das Banner der 

Revolution, das den Panzerkreuzer, die Jollen und das Ufer 

vereinigt. 

XIV. Von hier aus findet eine natürliche Rückkehr von 

der Flagge zum Panzerkreuzer statt. XIV wiederholt VII. 

Und dies natürlich wiederum mit erhöhter Intensität. 

Diese Einstellung führt eine neue Kompositionsgruppe ein: 

Die Wechselbeziehungen von Jollen und Panzerkreuzer gegenüber 

der ersten Bezugsgruppe Jollen - Ufer. Die erste 

Gruppe drückte das Thema aus: »Die Jollen bringen dem 

Panzerkreuzer Grüße und Geschenke des Ufers«. Die zweite 

Gruppe wird die Verbrüderung von Jollen und Panzerkreuzer 

ausdrücken. 

Der Schiffsmast mit der Revolutionsflagge dient gleichzeitig 

als kompositionelle Wasserscheide und als ideologisches 

Vereinigungsinstrument dieser beiden Kompositionsgruppen. 

Einstellung VII - von XIV, der ersten Einstellung der zweiten 

Gruppe wiederholt - ist eine Art musikalischer Vorschlag 

der zweiten Gruppe und ein bestimmtes Verbindungselement 

dieser beiden Gruppen, so als hätte die zweite 

Gruppe einen »Aufklärertrupp« in die erste Gruppe geschickt. 

In der zweiten Gruppe spielen die Einstellungen mit 

den winkenden Figuren, die zwischen die Verbrüderungsszenen 

von Jollen und Panzerkreuzer eingeblendet wurden, diese 

Rolle. 

Natürlich soll man nicht glauben, daß Aufnahme und Montage 

dieser Einstellungen nach einer solchen - schon a priori 

vorgefertigten - graphischen Tabelle gemacht wurden. Natürlich 

war das nicht so! Aber die Sammlung und zusammenhangbezogene 

Plazierung dieser Filmstücke auf dem Schneidetisch 

war dann schon von den kompositionellen Erfordernissen 

der Filmform streng vorgeschrieben. Diese Erforder- 

148 

nisse diktierten die Auswahl der Filmstücke aus dem gesamten 

zur Verfügung stehenden Material und legten gleichzeitig 

die Gesetzmäßigkeit ihres Wechsels fest. Wenn diese 

Filmstücke natürlich nur unter anekdotischem oder sujetbezogenem 

Aspekt betrachtet werden, können sie freilich in jeder 

beliebigen Anordnung vorgestellt werden. Aber die 

durch sie hindurchlaufende Kompositionslinie würde sich in 

diesem Fall kaum als regelmäßig erweisen. 

Man sollte deshalb nicht gar zu sehr über die Kompliziertheit 

dieser Analyse schimpfen. Im Vergleich mit den Analysen 

literarischer und musikalischer Formen ist unsere Analyse 

noch verhältnismäßig eingängig und leicht verständlich 5 . 

Obwohl wir die Fragen der rhythmischen Abfolge bisher beiseite 

gelassen haben, stellt unsere Analyse irgendwie auch 

eine Analyse des Wechsels von Klang- und Wortkombinationen 

dar. -— 

Eine Analyse der Aufnahmeobjekte selbst sowie ihrer künstlerischen 

Gestaltung durch die perspektivische Verkürzung 

der Kamera- und Lichtbewegungen, die von den Forderungen 

des Stils und des inhaltlichen Charakters eines Filmes 

bestimmt werden, entspräche einer Ausdrucksanalyse der 

sprachlichen Wendungen, Wörter und phonetischen Merkmale 

in einem literarischen Werk. 

Wir sind davon überzeugt, daß die Anforderungen, die die 

Filmkomposition an sich selbst stellt, in keinem Punkt hinter 

den Anforderungen der entsprechenden literarischen und 

musikalischen Disziplinen zurückstehen. 

Am allerwenigsten vermag natürlich ein Zuschauer die Baugesetze 

montierter, aufeinanderfolgender Einstellungen in 

ihrem ganzen Umfang zu erfassen. In seiner Wahrnehmung 

der gesetzmäßigen Montagekomposition wirken aber dieselben 

Elemente, die eine Passage gepflegter Prosa von den Passagen 

eines Grafen Amori, einer Verbickaja oder eines 

Bresko-Breskovskij stilistisch unterscheiden 6 . 

Gegenwärtig reiht sich die sowjetische Filmkunst in den historisch 

richtigen Feldzug für das Sujet ein. Auf diesem Wege 

liegen aber noch eine Menge Schwierigkeiten und das große 

Risiko, die Prinzipien des Sujethaften falsch zu verstehen. 

Das Schlimmste dabei ist die Mißachtung jener Möglichkeiten, 

die uns der zeitweise Bruch mit den alten Sujettraditionen 

eröffnete: 

149

Gemeint ist die Chance, die Grundlagen und Probleme des 

Filmsujets auf neue Weise zu überdenken, 

ferner die Chance, in einer kinematografischen Vorwärtsbewegung 

nicht »zurück« zum Sujet, sondern »vorwärts zum 

Sujet« zu gelangen. 

Obwohl sich schon einige positive Erscheinungen abzeichnen, 

befinden wir uns bislang noch nicht auf den Wegen einer 

strengen künstlerischen Orientierung. 

Aber was auch immer geschieht: In dem Moment, in dem 

wir die exakt erkannten Prinzipien der sowjetischen Sujet- 

Filmkunst beherrschen, müssen wir ihr in der vollen Rüstung 

einer makellosen Reinheit und Kultiviertheit von Filmsprache 

und -rede 7 entgegengehen. 

Unsere großen Meister der Literatur - von Puskin und 

Gogol' bis zu Majakovskij und Gor'kij schätzen wir nicht 

nur als Meister des Sujets. Wir schätzen in ihnen auch die 

Kultur von Meistern der Sprache und des Wortes. 

Es ist an der Zeit, die Frage nach der Kultur der Filmsprache 

wieder in aller Schärfe zu stellen. 

Es ist wichtig, daß hierzu alle Filmschaffenden Stellung 

beziehen. 

Und dies vor allem in der Sprache der Montage und der Einstellungen 

ihrer Filme. 

1934 

Das Organische und das Pathos in der Komposition 

des Filmes >PanzerkreuzerPotemkin< 

Wenn vom >Panzerkreuzer Potemkin< die Rede ist, werden 

gewöhnlich zwei Merkmale hervorgehoben: Die organische 

Harmonie seiner Komposition als Gesamtwerk. Und 

das Pathos des Films. 

150 

Das Organische und das Pathos 

Wir werden diese zwei markantesten Züge des >Panzerkreuzers< 

betrachten und herauszufinden versuchen, mit welchen 

Mitteln sie erreicht worden sind - vor allem auf dem Gebiet 

der Komposition. Den ersten Zug, das Organische, werden 

wir an der Komposition des Films als Gesamtwerk untersuchen; 

den zweiten, das Pathos, an der »Hafentreppen«-Episode, 

wo das Pathos seine größte dramatische Konzentration 

erreicht. 

Unsere Analyse wird sich mit der Frage beschäftigen, wie das 

Organische und das Pathos des Themas speziell mit kompositorischen 

Mitteln erzielt worden sind, so wie wir ja zum 

Beispiel auch untersuchen könnten, wie diese zwei Züge im 

Spiel der Schauspieler, in der Behandlung des Sujets, in der 

Licht- und Farbgebung, in der Darstellung von Massenszenen 

und Landschaft und so weiter realisiert worden sind. 

Das heißt also, wir werden es mit einem begrenzten, speziellen 

Problem der Struktur des Werkes zu tun haben, das natürlich 

keinesfalls eine gründliche Analyse aller Seiten des 

Films beanspruchen kann. 

Nichtsdestoweniger durchdringen gerade in einem organischen 

Kunstwerk diejenigen Elemente, die dem ganzen Werk 

zugrunde liegen, jeden einzelnen Zug des Werkes. Eine einzige, 

einheitliche Gesetzmäßigkeit durchdringt nicht nur das 

allgemeine Ganze und jedes seiner Einzelteile, sondern auch 

jedes Gebiet, das an der Schaffung des Ganzen teilzunehmen 

hat. Ein und dieselben Prinzipien speisen jedes Gebiet, dergestalt, 

daß sie in jedem von ihnen in ihren eigenen qualitativen 

Unterschieden in Erscheinung treten. Und nur wenn diese 

Voraussetzungen erfüllt sind, kann man vom Organischen 

eines Kunstwerkes reden, denn wir verstehen den Begriff Organismus 

hier so, wie ihn Engels in seiner »Dialektik der Natur« 

definiert: »Denn der Organismus ist allerdings die höhere 

Einheit.. .« 1 

Diese Überlegungen führen uns zugleich zum ersten Gegenstand 

unserer Analyse: Zur Frage nach dem »Organischen« 

im Aufbau des >Panzerkreuzer Potemkin

Aber dem Bildinhalt nach scheinen sie alle Herzen ihnen entgegenzutragen. 

In diesem leichtem, beschwingtem Flug von hundert 

geschwellten Segeln erscheint im Bild eine Gruppengebärde, die 

mehr Jubel, Liebe, Seligkeit, Hoffnung ausdrückt, als es das Gesicht 

des größten Schauspielers ausdrücken könnte. Diese Aufnahme 

- eben die Aufnahme und nicht das Motiv! - ist zum Übergehen 

erfüllt von einer überschwenglichen Lyrik, von einer Gleichniskraft, 

von einer Poesie, der kaum eine geschriebene Dichtung 

zu vergleichen ist. 

In dieser verborgenen Gleichniskraft der Bilder - die nichts mit 

»dekorativer Schönheit« zu tun hat - liegt die poetisch-schöpferische 

Möglichkeit des Kameramannes. 

Die Segelboote sehen wir dann vom Schiffsdeck aus. Alle, wie auf 

ein Kommando, lassen gleichzeitig die Segel herunter. Der rationelle 

»Inhalt« der Begebenheit ist, daß die Boote eben stehen bleiben 

vor dem Schiff. Aber die Bildwirkung ist: als wenn die hundert 

Segel, hundert Fahnen, zum Gruß sich neigen würden vor 

dem Helden. In dieser Gleichniskraft der Bilder liegt ihre eigene 

Poesie, jene, die erst im Bild durch die Aufnahme entsteht.« 

23 

Eisenstein attakiert hier Baläzs' Unterscheidung von »Fabelinhalt« 

und »Bildinhalt«, mit der Baläzs praktisch eine Ressortaufteilung 

zwischen Drehbuchautor und Kameramann vornimmt. 

! 

24 

Mit diesem Satz reagiert Eisenstein auf Baläzs' abschließende 

These, a.a.O., S. 235b: »Freilich wird man mir sagen: Die beiden 

Bildeinstellungen in >PotemkinPotemkin< - die Ermordung Vakulincuks 

durch Giljarovskij nach dem Ausbruch des Aufstands - von der 

zeitgenössischen Kritik moniert. Vgl. V. Sklovskij, »Cetvertyi 

242 

fel'eton ob Ejzenstejne«, in: >Za sorok letVersuch einer Psychologie des FilmsDOK 50The Birth of a Nation. (1915) gilt als Paradebeispiel 

der »amerikanischen Montage«. Eisenstein setzt sich mit 

Griffith wiederholt auseinander; vgl. besonders >Dickens, Griffith 

und wirThe ten commandments« (1923), Regie: Cecil de Mill. 

>Über die Reinheit der Filmsprache< 

Erstdruck: >E! O cistote kinojazyka«, in »Sovetskoe kino< 1934/5, 

S. 25-31; jetzt in: >Izbr. proizv.«, Bd. II, S. 81-92. Auszug. Auf die 

Verwendung der zum Teil recht problematischen Übersetzung aus 

dem Amerikanischen unter dem Titel >Filmsprache< wurde verzichtet, 

in: >Vom Theater zum Film«, Deutsch von Marlies Pörtner, 

Zürich 1960, S. 55-70. Übersetzung: Hans-Joachim Schlegel. 

1 Eisenstein setzt sich hiermit von seinen rigorosen Thesen aus 

der LEF-Zeit ab; die LEF stand in enger theoretischer und personeller 

Beziehung zur russischen Formalen Schule und dem russischen 

Futurismus. Vgl. »Montage 1938«, in: »Schriften« 4, »Aleksandr 

Nevskij« (in Vorbereitung). Dort heißt es: »Es gab in unserer 

Filmkunst eine Periode, in der Montage »alles« war. Jetzt geht 

eine Periode zu Ende, in der Montage »nichts« galt.« 

2 Bezieht sich auf die theoretische Arbeit des russischen symbolistischen 

Prosaikers Andrej Belyj (d.i. Boris Nikolevic Bugaev; 

1880-1934): »Masterstvo Gogolja« (»Gogols Meisterschaft«), Moskau 

1934. Eisenstein hatte Belyj im Januar 1933 persönlich kennengelernt. 

3 An dem unvollendeten Lehrbuch »Rezissura« (»Regie«) arbeitete 

Eisenstein von 1933 bis zu seinem Tod. Fertiggestellt wurde 

nur der erste Teil »Iskusstvo mizansceny« (»Die Kunst der mise-enscene«). 

Der hier erwähnte zweite Teil »Iskusstvo mizankadra« 

(»Die Kunst der mise-en-cadre

5 Bezieht sich vor allem auf die literaturwissenschaftlichen 

Analysen der Formalen Schule: J. Tynjanov, B. Ejchenbaum, 

V. Sklovskij, u. a. 

6 Graf Amori (d. i. I. P. Rapgof), A. A. Verbickaja und N. N. 

Bresko-Breskovskij waren russische Boulevardschriftsteller der 

Jahrhundertwende. 

7 s. »Bela vergißt die Schere«, Anm. 19. 

>Das Organische und das Pathos in der Komposition des Filmes 

>Panzerkreuzer Potemkin0 stroenii vescej« 

(>Über den Bau der DingeIskusstvo kinoIzbr. proi'zv.Vom Theater zum FilmDialektik der NaturMEWZur Frage der Dialektik«, in: Lenin a.a.O., 

Bd. 36, 1962, S. 347. 

3 >Platons Timaios, Kritias, Gesetze XProporcional'nost' v architekture< (»Proportionalität 

in der Architektur«), Moskau 1935, S. 33. 

5 Hegel, >Sämtliche Werke«, Hrsg. von H. Glockner, Bd. 8, 

Stuttgart 1929, S. 294: >System der Philosophie«, in: »Encyklopädie 

der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse«. 

6 Ebda, S. 308. 

7 E. K. Rozenov, russischer Musikwissenschaftler, aus dessen 

Werk >J.-S. Bach i ego rod< (>J.-S. Bach und seine GenerationEugen Onegin und andere VerserzählungenVystavka peredviznikov« (»Ausstellung der Pe- 

244 

redvizniki«), in: »Izbrannye socinenija« (»Ausgewählte Werke«), 

Bd. 3, Moskau 1952, S. 59. 

11 Zitiert nach V. Nikolskij, »Tvorceskije processy V. I. Surikova

Dziga VERTOV: Wir. Variante eines Manifestes (1922). In: Franz-Josef 

Albersmeier (Hg.): Texte zur Theorie des Films. Stuttgart 1979, S. 19- 

23. 

DZIGA VERTOV 

Wir. Variante eines Manifestes 

1922 

Wir nennen uns »Kinoki« im Unterschied zu den »Kinematographisten« 

- der Herde von Trödlern, die nicht übel mit ihren 

Lappen handelt. 

Wir sehen keine Bindung zwischen der Gerissenheit und Berechnung 

des Handels und der echten Filmsache. 

In unseren Augen ist das von der Sicht und den Erinnerungen 

der Kindheit belastete psychologische russo-deutsche Kinodrama 

Humbug. 

Dem amerikanischen Abenteuerfilm, dem Film des optischen 

Dynamismus, den Inszenierungen der amerikanischen Pinkertonovscina 

- das Danke des Kinoks für die Schnelligkeit des 

Bildwechsels und für die Großaufnahmen! Gut, aber regellos, 

nicht auf das genaue Studium der Bewegung gegründet. Eine 

Stufe höher als das psychologische Drama, aber dennoch ohne 

Fundament. Schablone. Eine Kopie der Kopie. 

Wir erklären die alten Kinofilme, die romantizistischen, theatralisierten 

u. a. für aussätzig. 

— Nicht nahekommen! 

— Nicht anschauen! 

- Lebensgefährlich! 

- Ansteckend! 

Wir bekräftigen die Zukunft der Filmkunst durch die Ablehnung 

ihrer Gegenwart. 

Der Tod des »Kinematographen« ist notwendig für das Leben 

der Filmkunst. 

Wir rufen dazu auf, seinen Tod zu beschleunigen. 

Wir protestieren gegen die Ineinanderschiebung der Künste, die 

viele eine Synthese nennen. Die Mischung schlechter Farben ergibt, 

auch wenn sie im Idealfall nach dem Farbenspektrum ausgewählt 

worden sind, keine weiße Farbe, sondern Dreck.

20 D. Vertov 

Zur Synthese im Zenit der Errungenschaften jeder Kunstgattung 

— aber nicht früher. 

Wir säubern die Filmsache von allem, was sich einschleicht, von 

der Musik, der Literatur und dem Theater; wir suchen ihren nirgendwo 

gestohlenen Rhythmus und finden ihn in den Bewegungen 

der Dinge. 

Wir fordern auf: 

Weg 

von den süßdurchfeuchteten Romanzen, 

vom Gift des psychologischen Romans, 

aus den Fängen des Liebhabertheaters, 

mit dem Rücken zur Musik! 

Weg 

ins reine Feld, in den Raum der vier Dimensionen (drei + Zeit)! 

Auf zur Suche nach ihrem Material, ihrem Jambus, ihrem 

Rhythmus! 

Das »Psychologische« stört den Menschen, so genau wie eine 

Stoppuhr zu sein, es hindert ihn in seinem Bestreben, sich mit 

der Maschine zu verschwägern. 

Wir sehen keinen Grund, in der Kunst der Bewegung dem heutigen 

Menschen das Hauptaugenmerk zu widmen. 

Die Unfähigkeit des Menschen, sich zu beherrschen, ist vor den 

Maschinen beschämend; aber was tun, wenn uns die fehlerlosen 

Funktionsweisen der Elektrizität mehr erregen als die regellose 

Hetze aktiver und die zersetzende Schlaffheit passiver Leute. 

Uns ist die Freude tanzender Sägen einer Sägemaschine verständlicher 

und vertrauter als die Freude menschlicher Tanzvergnügen. 

Wir schließen den Menschen als Objekt der Filmaufnahme deshalb 

zeitweise aus, weil er unfähig ist, sich von seinen Bewegungen 

leiten zu lassen. 

Unser Weg — vom sich herumwälzenden Bürger über die Poesie 

der Maschinen zum vollendeten elektrischen Menschen. 

Die Seele der Maschine enthüllen, den Arbeiter in die Werkbank 

verlieben, den Bauern in den Traktor, den Maschinisten in 

die Lokomotive! 

Wir. Variante eines Manifestes 21 

Wir tragen die schöpferische Freude in jede mechanische Arbeit. 

Wir verbinden den Menschen mit der Maschine. 

Wir erziehen neue Menschen. 

Der neue Mensch, befreit von Schwerfälligkeit und linkischem 

Wesen, wird mit den genauen und leichten Bewegungen der 

Maschinen ein dankbares Objekt für die Filmaufnahme sein. 

Mit offenen Augen, des maschinellen Rhythmus bewußt, begeistert 

von der mechanischen Arbeit, die Schönheit chemischer 

Prozesse erkennend, komponieren wir das Filmpoem aus 

Flammen und Elektrizitätswerken, begeistern wir uns an der 

Bewegung der Kometen und Meteoriten und den Strahlen der 

Scheinwerfer, die die Gestirne blenden. 

Jeder, der seine Kunst liebt, sucht das Wesen ihrer Technik zu 

erfahren. 

Die erlahmten Nerven der Kinematographie brauchen das 

strenge System genauer Bewegungen. 

Der Jambus, das Tempo, die Bewegungsart, ihre genaue Disposition 

im Hinblick auf die Achsen der Einstellungskoordinaten, 

vielleicht aber auch zu den Weltachsen der Koordinaten (drei 

Dimensionen + die vierte - Zeit) müssen vom Filmschöpfer berücksichtigt 

und untersucht werden. 

Notwendigkeit, Präzision und Geschwindigkeit — drei Forderungen 

an die Bewegung, die der Aufnahme und Wiedergabe 

wert ist. 

Der geometrische Extrakt der Bewegung, gepackt vom Wechsel 

der Darstellungen, ist die Forderung an die Montage. 

Die Filmsache ist die Kunst der Organisation der notwendigen 

Bewegungen der Dinge im Raum und — angewandt — das rhythmische 

künstlerische Ganze, entsprechend den Eigenschaften des 

Stoffes und dem inneren Rhythmus jeder Sache. 

Der Stoff— die Elemente der Bewegungskunst - sind die Intervalle 

(die Übergänge von einer Bewegung zu anderen) und keinesfalls 

die Bewegungen selbst. Sie (die Intervalle) geben auch 

der Handlung die kinetische Lösung. 

Die Organisation der Bewegung ist die Organisation ihrer Elemente, 

d. h. der Intervalle in Sätzen.

22 D. Vertov 

In jedem Satz gibt es einen Aufschwung, Errungenschaft und 

Fall der Bewegung (eine Enthüllung auf dieser oder jener Stufe). 

Das Werk baut sich ebenso aus Sätzen auf wie der Satz aus 

Intervallen. 

Um ein Kinopoem oder eine Sequenz in sich reifen zu lassen, 

muß der Kinok sie genau aufzeichnen können, um ihnen unter 

günstigen technischen Bedingungen das Leben auf der Leinwand 

geben zu können. 

Das vollendetste Szenarium kann diese Aufzeichnung nicht ersetzen, 

ebensowenig, wie das Libretto die Pantomime ersetzen 

kann, ebensowenig, wie die literarischen Erläuterungen zum 

Werk Skrjabins eine Vorstellung von seiner Musik vermitteln 

können. Um auf einem Blatt Papier eine dynamische Studie zu 

entwerfen, bedarf es graphischer Zeichen der Bewegung. 

Wir sind auf der Suche nach dem Filmalphabet. 

Wir fallen und wachsen hoch im Rhythmus der Bewegung verlangsamter 

und beschleunigter Dinge, 

die sich von uns entfernen, neben uns sind, über uns, 

um uns, sich gerade oder in Ellipsenform bewegen, . 

von rechts und links, versehen mit einem Plus und Minus: die 

Bewegungen verkrümmen, korrigieren, teilen, zerschroten, 

multiplizieren sich miteinander, durchschießen geräuschlos den 

Raum. 

Das Kino ist ebenso die Kunst der Erfindung der Bewegung der 

Dinge im Raum, die den Forderungen der Wissenschaft entsprechen, 

die Erfüllung des Traums des Entdeckers, sei dies ein 

Gelehrter, Künstler, Ingenieur oder Zimmermann, die Verwirklichung 

des im Leben nicht zu Verwirklichenden durch die 

Filmsache. 

Zeichnungen in Bewegung. Konstruktionsentwürfe in Bewegung. 

Projekte der Zukunft. Die Relativitätstheorie auf der 

Leinwand. 

Wir begrüßen die gesetzmäßige Phantastik der Bewegungen. 

Auf den Flügeln der Hypothesen stürmen unsere durch Propeller 

angetriebenen Augen in die Zukunft. 

Wir glauben, daß der Augenblick nicht fern ist, da wir Orkane 

Wir. Variante eines Manifestes 23 

von Bewegungen in den Raum schleudern können, die am Lasso 

unserer Taktik hängen. 

Es lebe die dynamische Geometrie, es leben die Abläufe der 

Punkte, Linien, Flächen, Volumina! 

Es lebe die Poesie der bewegenden und sich bewegenden Maschinen, 

die Poesie der Hebel, Räder und stählernen Flügel, der 

eiserne Schrei der Bewegung, die verblendeten Grimassen glühender 

Strahlen. 

Im Namen der ersten konstituierenden Versammlung der 

Kinoki.

Dziga VERTOV: Kinoglaz (1924). In: Franz-Josef Albersmeier (Hg.): 

Texte zur Theorie des Films. Stuttgart: Reclam 1979, S. 39-41. 

DZIGA VERTOV 

»Kinoglaz« 

1924 

Unsere Richtung nennt sich »Kinoglaz« (»Filmauge«). Wir, die 

wir für die Idee des Kinoglaz kämpfen, nennen uns »Kinoki«. 

Den Terminus »Filmkunst« gebrauchen wir möglichst nicht 

ebenso wie jede gebräuchliche oder zufällige Wortzusammensetzung. 

Deshalb benutzen unsere Gegner sie so gern. 

Und wir haben viele Feinde. Anders geht es nicht. Das stört natürlich 

bei der Verwirklichung unserer Ideen, aber dafür stärkt 

es uns im Kampf und schärft die Gedanken. 

Wir treten der künstlerischen Kinematographie entgegen, aber 

sie erweist sich uns hundertmal überlegen. Mit den Geld-Krümeln, 

die vom Tisch der künstlerischen Kinematographie fallen, 

aber manchmal auch gänzlich ohne Mittel, bauen wir unsere bescheidenen 

Filmchen zusammen. 

Der Kinoprawda wurden die Filmtheater verschlossen, aber sie 

konnte nicht aus dem öffentlichen Bewußtsein und aus dem Bewußtsein 

der unabhängigen Presse vertrieben werden. Die Kinoprawda 

erscheint unzweideutig als Wendepunkt in der Geschichte 

der russischen Kinematographie. 

Erfolg oder Mißerfolg dieses oder jenes unserer Filmwerke hat 

nur kommerzielle Bedeutung und ist nur wichtig für die Durchschlagskraft 

unserer Bestrebungen; einen Einfluß auf unsere 

Ideen werden sie nicht nehmen. Für uns sind unsere Filmarbeiten 

- ob sie nun gelungen sind oder nicht - gleich wertvoll, insofern 

sie die Idee des Kinoglaz weiterführen und insofern alle 100 

bis 200 Meter mißlungener Aufnahmen für die nächsten - gelungenen 

- 200 Meter eine Lehre sind. 

Die erste Serie von Kinoglaz ist deshalb von den Kinoki sehr 

richtig Kinoglaz tastet sich vorwärts genannt worden. Damit ist 

die Behutsamkeit der Filmkamera bei der Erkundung des Lebens 

gemeint, denn ihre Hauptaufgabe ist es nicht, sich im

40 D. Vertov 

Chaos des Lebens zu verlieren, sondern sich in der Umgebung 

zurechtzufinden, in die sie geraten ist. 

Die Aufgabe der folgenden Serien wird es sein, diese Erkundung 

des Lebens bis zu einem möglichen Maximum zu steigern 

und die Aufmerksamkeit ununterbrochen im technischen Sinne 

zu vertiefen. 

Alle Menschen sind in einem mehr oder weniger strengen Maße 

- Dichter, Maler, Musiker. 

Oder es gibt überhaupt keine Dichter, Maler oder Musiker. 

Schon der millionste Teil der Erfindungen, die jeder Mensch bei 

seiner alltäglichen Arbeit macht, schließt in sich bereits ein 

Element der Kunst ein, wenn es auch nicht mit diesem Namen 

belegt zu werden pflegt. 

Wir ziehen die trockene Chronik dem konstruierten Szenarium 

vor, wenn wir über die Lebensgewohnheiten und die Arbeit der 

Menschen berichten. Wir mischen uns niemals in das Leben ein. 

Wir nehmen Fakten auf, organisieren sie und bringen sie über 

die Filmleinwand in das Bewußtsein der Arbeitenden. Wir berücksichtigen, 

was die Welt erklärt, was uns klar macht, wie sie 

ist — das ist unsere Hauptaufgabe. 

Kinoglaz stellte sich die Aufgabe, den ausgedehnten Kampf mit 

der bürgerlichen Kinematographie aufzunehmen, und wir bezweifeln 

sehr, daß es in der Folgezeit möglich sein wird, — ungeachtet 

der neuen weltpolitischen Situation - unserem revolutionären 

Ansturm ernsthaften Widerstand entgegenzusetzen. 

Eine andere Gefahr. Die Gefahr der Entstellung unserer Ideen. 

Gefährliche Surrogate und Gegenströmungen, die wie Seifenblasen 

aufquellen, bis sie, wie Seifenblasen, platzen. 

Das ist die Aufgabe aller Arbeitenden — wachsam den einmal 

begonnenen Kampf fortzusetzen, sich immer von Betrug fernzuhalten 

und nie die süßlichen Kopien mit den harten Originalen 

zu verwechseln. 

Aus dem Reglement der Kinoki 

»Kinoglaz« 41 

Allgemeine Hinweise für alle Aufnahmen: die Kamera ist unsichtbar. 

1. Schnappschuß - alte Kriegsregel: Augenmaß, Geschwindigkeit, 

Abdrücken. 

2. Aufnahme von einem öffentlichen Beobachtungsposten aus, 

der von Kinok-Beobachtern vorbereitet wurde. Geduld, absolute 

Stille, im geeigneten Moment — sofortiger Angriff. 

3. Aufnahme vom verborgenen Beobachtungsposten aus. Geduld 

und absolute Aufmerksamkeit. 

4. Aufnahme ohne naturalistische Gesichtspunkte. 

5. Aufnahme ohne künstlerische Gesichtspunkte. 

6. Aufnahme auf Entfernung. 

7. Aufnahme von Bewegung. 

8. Aufnahme von oben.

+ [R] - Gabriele Jutz - Sonance.net

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