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EXPERIMENTAL FILM 179
stead of recognizing the new aesthetics inherent in the Lumiere brothers' camera, she argues, one was content with subordinating it to traditional aesthetics: "One set out to group animated photographs around an external action . . . rather than studying, for its own sake, the conception of movement in its brutal and mechanical visual continuity . . . one assimilated the cinema to the theater." In conclusion, Mme Dulac accuses those who imprison cinematic action in a narrative of a "criminal error."6 It was logical that Assassination of the Due de Guise, the first film d'art and the archetype of all theatrical films to come, should be rediscovered by the avant-garde and exhibited in their moviehouses to the accompaniment of music ridiculing it.7
LIMITED RECOGNITION OF THE STORY
Despite the deprecation of the story film, however, many avant-garde film directors refused to dispense with a story— partly for the simple reason that the industry insisted on it as a prerequisite of appreciable box-office returns.* Abel Gance, Marcel L/Herbier, and Jean Epstein experimented within the framework of commercial films. Of special interest is a group of avant-garde story films which includes, for instance, Delluc's Fievre, Germaine Dulac's The Smiling Madame Beudet, Cavalcanti's En rade, and Kirsanov's Menilmontant. These films had a characteristic in common which sets them apart: unlike the contrived plots of the contemporary screen, their tenuous intrigues were in the nature of real-life episodes. That dedicated representatives of the movement thus endorsed the episode, clearly suggests that they believed it least to interfere with what they considered pure cinema.** Yet it will suffice here to mention these excursions into story-telling in passing. Within the present context the emphasis is not so much on them as on the non-story film which was the avant-gardes chief concern after all.
Cinematic language
Determined to strip film of all theatrical and literary elements that threatened to overlay its substance, the artists of the 'twenties conceivably
* In 1925, Rene Clair, who never fully endorsed cinema pur anyway, expressed himself in favor of compromises with the commercial cinema. He jesuitically suggested that the avant-garde film director should introduce, "by a sort of ruse, the greatest number of purely visual themes into a scenario made to satisfy everyone." (Clair, Reflexion faite, p. 104. See also Brunius, "Experimental Film in France," in Manvell, ed., Experiment in the Film, pp. 89-90.)
** For the episode film, see chapter 14.