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EXPERIMENTAL FILM IN FRANCE
white pattern of a musical score, not excluding the demi-semiquaver rests. In 1927 still, when I was working with Rene Clair on the cutting of Un Chapeau de Paille <T Italie (The Italian Straw Hat), every time we were tired of sticking little bits of celluloid together we allowed ourselves an interlude for amusement while we read Dr. Paul Ramain's articles to each other.
This excessive concern with rhythm inevitably led to a neglect of the film's content. The painter Marcel Gromaire wrote:
'What extraordinary beauty lies in this movement, this cadence of moving plastic! In La Roue, by Abel Gance, in the midst of the most appalling scenario, there were wheels of a locomotive, signals, rails, possessing such beauty. There was an astonishing merry-go-round, too, in Epstein's Cceur Fidele?
'But up to now these achievements have merely been tacked on to a story, and what a story it often is! Presumably a story must be invented, the cinema is popular and the populace likes a story. But to imagine that the public likes none but stupid stories is an odd misconception.'
The Role of the Musical Accompaniment
It was in about 1924 that the blind pianist's unobtrusive vamping in the cinema of my childhood gave way to a musical score adapted for each film, played by a symphony orchestra at least, and conducted by some maestro from a corner, or even an opera-house. The results have been both for better and for worse — usually for worse. The ensuing discussions would still be instructive for those composers, who are nowadays allowed irrevocably to engrave upon the sound-track the inopportune explosions and redundancies with which they persist in burdening the slightest moment of tension. All we ask of them is to be part of the atmosphere, but they will insist on telling the story. It is as though the writers were incapable of moving us with their dialogue and plot, the directors with their directing, the cameramen with their lighting, the editors by their sense of dramatic movement, and above all the players by their acting. Or are they all conscious of their inability to express themselves to the point
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