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EXPERIMENTAL FILM 183
upon a funeral procession. The procession moves first through an amusement park in slow motion, then gathers momentum, and eventually races after the hearse, which, now entirely on its own, rushes headlong through the streets and down a country road. [Illus. 34] The impression of dizzying speed results from an ingenious "montage" which combines cutsin of a roller coaster ride with a mingling of treetops and bits of the road —a sequence matched only by the "beautiful visual frenzy"15 of the merrygo-round episode in Epstein's Cozur fidele (released shortly befoie Entr'acte). Once again, the interest here lies with the creation, through cinematic devices, of slow and fast movements and the rhythmical sensations they provide.
And how does Clair proceed to convey these rhythms? The important thing is that, in order to represent them, he does not use abstract forms in obedience to then common avant-garde demands but actually avails himself of real-life material; in other words, he subordinates his formative urges to the exigencies of the realistic tendency. Reminiscent of the chases in French and American silent film comedies, the sequence of the racing funeral procession acknowledges physical reality in toying with it. One might also say of this sequence that it depicts a special mode of reality— reality as perceived by those who are moving at extreme speed. The playfulness of the film's first part, then, is of a piece with the realism of the second.
For the rest, Entr'acte has all the traits of an exercise. It almost looks as if in this film Clair had deliberately tried out everything that can be done within the medium in terms of fantasy and technique. He would later greatly profit by the experience thus gained.
Emphasis on rhythm
VISUAL MUSIC
The fact that Eggeling, Richter, and Ruttmann called their first abstract productions Diagonal Symphony, Rhythm 21, and Opus 1 respectively intimates that they aspired to a sort of visual music. It was an aspiration common to many French avant-garde artists. As early as 1920, even before the Eggeling-Richter films had appeared, Louis Delluc exclaimed: "I have . . . seen an admirable technical phenomenon. I have seen cadence."16 Henri Chomette on his part spoke of a new film genre the images of which "follow each other in the manner not of phrases of a narrative but phrases of a musical suite."17 "There is the symphony, pure music," asserted Germaine Dulac and then asked: "Why should the cinema not also have its symphony?"18 A declared partisan of cinema pur,