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Film and Poetry. 1930/40s
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The 1930s werecharacterised by theeffects of the worldwideGreat
Depression andby the related rise offascism in Germany.Adolf Hitler
becameChancellor in 1933. Manyartists, fearing for theirlives,
began to leaveEurope for the US.
Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother'depicts Florence Owens
Thompson, amother of seven children, age 32, inNipomo, California,
March 1936.
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The depression hit Parislate. The activities of theModernist
Avant-Gardecontinued in all fields
Dance, Theatre, Music,Ballet, Literature. In Film,Luis Bunuel
made LAgedOr continuing themes of
sexual repression from LeChien Andalou. JeanCocteau made Blood
of aPoet
The Cubist Garden at the home of Charles,Vicomte de Noailles who
financed both LAgedOr and Cocteaus Blood of a Poet(with onemillion
Francs) as birthday presents for his
wife.
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For example, the Chinesecombined a picture of amouth and a
picture of a birdto create the abstract concept
"to sing". In the same way, Eisenstein
would cement two seeminglyunrelated film shots in anattempt to
depict various
intellectual and emotionalconcepts (i.e. via
intellectualmontage).
A lonely crowOn leafless bough,
One autumn eve.
There are two shots, the crow
and the leafless bough,combining to form apsychological,
physicallyundepictable concept, theautumn eve. Eisenstein cites
several more of these'montage phrases' in 'TheCinematographic
Principleand the Ideogram.'
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Cocteau worked his wayinto bohemian Parissociety. He met
Russianballet-master Sergei
Diaghilev whochallenged him to write ascenario for a
ballet.Astonish me he said.Apparently Cocteau did.He thought of
himself asa poet, first andforemost.
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In 1918, Cocteau had metand fallen in love withRaymond Radiguet,
whodied in 1923. Cocteau
became an opium addict.His saw the role of thePoet as travelling
to otherworlds and bringingback news. He presentsartistic effort as
a dark,dangerous act ofsuffering.
In the film, a young artist isdrawing faces. One of the
mouths
rubs off onto his hand. He smears itonto a statue and jumps into
a
mirror. The actress is Lee Miller,photographer from New
York.
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Cocteau enjoyed the use oftrick photography, anduses it to
create odd andanachronistic spaces. Thefilm was delayed for a
yearby a rumour that it wasanti-Christian. (It was tiedin with
Bunuels LAgeDOr, which definitely
was). He was threatenedwith excommunication bythe Church. He
made twosequels, in 1950 and 1960.
In the mirror world, the artist peersthrough keyholes of a
series of doors
and witnesses strange acts.
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Cocteau described itsdisturbing series ofvoyeuristic tableaux as
"adescent into oneself, away of using themechanism of the
dreamwithout sleeping, acrooked candle, often
mysteriously blown out,carried about in thenight of the
humanbody."
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During the secondInternational Congress onIndependent Cinema,
heldin Brussels in December1930, recognising thepolitical
developments inEurope, Hans Richter,German film-maker calledfor
political activism rather
than aesthetic and formalexperiment. He wantedfilms about people
andtheir lives...
Richters peace postermade in 1919, calling for
demobilisation.
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Grierson built-up a filmunit within the GPO andbegan to make
ambitiousfilms. Night Mail, made in
1936 describes the journeyof the mail from London toGlasgow, and
includes asection at the end by poet
W.H. Auden, accompaniedby Modernist music byBenjamin Britten.
The filmis a classic.
Scott Anthony writing about the film forthe BFI claims it was
partly made to keepup morale in the Post office, which was
threatened with privatisation.
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Griersons GPO unit wasabsorbed into thepropaganda effort, as
theCrown Film Unit, at the
breakout of WW2.Humphrey Jennings, aCambridge Surrealist,made a
series of filmsdocumenting thewhispering heroism thatmade the
British appearstoical and dignified.
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Listen to Britain, madein 1942, dispenses withcommentary
altogether.The subject is the sights
and sounds of wartimeBritain over a period oftwenty-four
hours.Jennings focuses on theemotions of the peopleinvolved. The
theme ofthe film is the oneness ofthe British people
The film depends heavily on its editing.Jennings and his editor
Stewart
McAllister understood the lessons of theSoviet montage experts
Eisenstein,
Kuleshov and Vertov.
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...blended together in onegreat symphony is the musicof Britain
at war. The eveninghymn of the lark, the roar of
the Spitfires, the dancers inthe great ballroom atBlackpool, the
clank ofmachinery and shunting
trains... The trumpet call offreedom, the war song of agreat
people. The first surenotes of the march of victory,as you, and I,
listen to Britain.
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Marguerite "Peggy"Guggenheim was an
American art collector wholived in Paris from 1920.
After WW2 broke out, shebought many pieces ofavant-garde work
andspirited them away to New
York along with several of
the artists. She marriedMax Ernst, after she forgeddocuments to
free himfrom a concentration camp.
The Angel of the Hearth or theTriumph of Surrealism, Max
Ernst,
1937.
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New York City quicklybecame the newinternational headquartersfor
the arts and the
orphaned artists spent muchof their their summers inthe
Hamptons, on LongIsland. A torch was passedhere from the
Surrealists to
the Expressionists.Duchamp spent longafternoons playing
chesswith Robert Motherwell.
Group photograph of Artists in Exile, in PeggyGuggenheims New
York apartment, 1942. Front Row:
Stanley William Hayter, Leonara Carrington,Frederick Kiesler,
Kurt Seligmann. Second Row: Max
Ernst, Amedee Ozenfant, Andre Breton, FernandLeger, Berenice
Abbott. Third Row: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy
Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp, PietMondrian.
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Maya Deren, an exile fromMoscow, (Her fatherstudied at the
sameinstitute as Dziga Vertov),
was a New York film-maker
who spent time with thegroup. She was fascinatedby Cocteau and
worked
with Marcel Duchamp.Hans Richter encouragedher to make films.
Shemade her first film,Meshes of the Afternoon,ironically, in
Hollywood
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This film is concernedwith the interiorexperiences of
anindividual. It does notrecord an event which
could be witnessed byother persons. Rather, itreproduces the way
in
which the subconscious ofan individual will develop,interpret,
and elaborate anapparently simple andcasual incident into acritical
emotionalexperience. Maya Deren
Sometimes the meaning of a certain point mightbe ambiguous. This
ambiguity, as far as a goodpoet is concerned, is used to bring
deeper, more
personal meaning to the work. Ambiguitypermits the reader to
project their own meaning
into the poem, elevating it to art. ClaudeMathews, 1975.
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I had been a poet up until then, and the reason that Ihad not
been a very good poet was because actuallymy mind worked in images
which I had been trying totranslate or describe in words;
therefore, when I
undertook cinema, I was relieved of the false step oftranslating
images into words, and could workdirectly so that it was not like
discovering a newmedium so much as finally coming home into a
world
whose vocabulary, syntax, grammar, was my mother-tongue; which I
understood, and thought in, but, likea mute, had never spoken Maya
Deren
