Week of 9/22 - Le Sang d'un Poète

Our readings only briefly describing surrealism and my previous understanding of surrealist cinema being David Lynch wholly unprepared me for Le Sang d'un Poète. I really enjoyed everything we screened this week, but that film absolutely blew me away; it was one of the most fascinating, beautiful things I've watched in so long, and it surprises me how apathetic many of my peers are about it. I found it interesting to compare this film to two specific elements of the readings: in Le Grice the notion of the decline of religion in art and worldview, and the subsequent turn to observation; and in Baldwin the notion of surrealism as a overthrowing authority and reinventing the self.

A common thread throughout this film, that ties in with those notions, was a divine view of the human. The film is bookended by two men, one white and one black, whose beautiful, near-perfect bodies are quite exposed as they take upon godlike tasks. The artist at the beginning finds himself in turmoil; unable to deal with the fact that, through art, he is God. He creates life, albeit unintentionally. To me this scene speaks interestingly about religion, in that there's a skepticism of divinity's intentions or even existence. His race speaks to the flaws in the Western, whitewashed, Christian interpretation of creationism. 

Conversely, the black "guardian angel" at the end appears, unnoticed, just to salvage and heal; to absorb the literal negativity of the dead child, and to right the cheating player's wrongs. This speaks of the unexpected, deeply-hidden truths of our fates and morality; salvation exists, but it is not in the form of God, as there is not God; there is only man. Goodness, therefore, cannot exist without violence and destruction, as they are an essential part of humanity.

Week of 9/15 - Strike

Strike was a film that, as I mentioned in class, meant something very different to me upon this second viewing. Although on this second viewing I was much more engaged and understood the pacing of the film better, the same images stuck out to me both times. While, upon this viewing, I appreciated much more thoroughly the cinematography and the general representation of proletariat experience, I felt most intrigued by Eisenstein’s message of purity versus corruption. I feel that Eisenstein illustrated this through two sets of figures: the cherubic child juxtaposed against his father and his murderer, and the baby animals against the slaughtering of the cats and bull.

While these images were not ever pitted against each other in the edit in literal montage, I do think that there’s still some element of “intellectual montage” used here. In his essay, Eisenstein fleshes out (or attempts to? I find this essay somewhat incomprehensible, but maybe that’s just me) how all art is derived from conflict, and how a viewer interprets meaning from conflicting concepts. Eisenstein’s note that this can be present in edit, cinematography or stage design, or even in character psychology points to this further. Both times I watched Strike the appearance of frolicking animals was a welcome reprise in such a dark industrial film, and their soft, carefree image made the appearance of dead cats and a slaughtered bull that much more horrifying. Similarly, the arc of the blonde child’s relationship with his striking father and the abuse he faced as the strike dragged on shows, to me, two things: first being the innocence that is lost upon being exploited by the bourgeois, and the second being the stark contrast between the purity and acceptance of the young proletariat, and the disgusting corruption of the businessmen.

Week of 9/8 - Expressionism and Caligari

Our viewing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the second time I'd watched the film. I wasn't excited to watch it again, as sitting through it in 272 (over two years ago) was a total bore, but I actually let go and rode with the experience this time, in a way that I previously resisted. There is one theme that especially stuck with me: the emphasis on sleep, and similarly what I can only think to describe as the "heaviness" of the several scenes showing characters in their beds. Kracauer wrote of the heightened architecture of the film in relation to tyrannical authority, as in the towering furniture in the police station and the asylum, but didn't mention this concept in the domestic setting. To me, at least, there's something so dense about the architecture of their rooms; the blankets looked heavy and all-enveloping, emphasizing a false sense of safety that actually leads to entrapment. The rooms themselves heavily contrasted in light and shadow, even in, supposedly, the middle of the night. This lighting visually carves out the irony of these character's faux sanctuaries, in spirit of Kracauer's note, and general knowledge, of the light and set-dressing in expressionism representing the internal state.

On the other hand, Cesare sleeps in a coffin, which furthers this representation, and also furthers Kracauer's note of Cesare as the victim of corrupt authority. His sleep is interrupted by forced violence, and, although he doesn't sleep in the state of ominous heaviness of his victim's, he also doesn't get any sense of safety or comfort, even if false. Sleeping in a coffin represents a deadening of the soul and of free will. He no longer has the basic semblance of safety and pleasure of those who haven't been exploited by (or perhaps even just disillusioned from?) the system of power. Being in this position is dangerous, but also has a certain element of comfort with it.