French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, and Film Style (December 1974)

41 artificielle, chaque jour restreinte, n'indnode plus les scénes théatrales, ni les loges particuLiepe: J’ une Que inestette il au publique? .0. 4 On ge baignera-t-il dans l'illusion décorative, dans le romanesque, dans la grande vie, le monde, la féerie inépuisable? Au cinéma. Seul le cinéma dépense, gaspille, détruit ou édifie miraculeusement, mobilise des figurations fourmillantes, déchire des étoffes brodées, @éclabousse de sang ou d'tencre des robes de cinquante louis, et vous y venez qu'en effet un gentilhomme cravaté de blane ne regarde pas 4 trois cents francs de frac, Guard) 71 e¢ x0 collette avec un bandit--et triomphe, en Llodues.* For a variety of reasons, then, the cinema remained popular even during the war. Given this popularity, it is not surprising that Some avant-gardists found cinema as attractive as musichalls, cafe-concerts, and vaudeville. Film's mass audience was dignified by Apollianire, who in 1916 wrote in an article on "les tendances nouvelles" that the cinema was the modern equivalent of the epic poem chanted to an assembled people.<1 Moreover, Apollianire's sympathetic attention signals the particular interest which poets began to take in this mass medium as a source not only of new subjects but also of new styles. For example, in Apollinaire's journal Soirées Ge Patis¢ofei6 April 1914, Max Jacob published his poem, "Printemps et cinématographe melés." In this work, film provides material for the poet's collage aesthetic; in describing an evening at the cinema, the narrator mixes elements drawn from film melodrama into a stream-of-consciousness, as in this €