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EXPERIMENTAL FILM 187
films; rather, they are intended as an extension of contemporary art into the dimension of movement and time. One might still argue that they are cinematic in as much as they implement their underlying intentions with the aid of techniques peculiar to film. But in doing so, they neglect the basic properties of the medium, which definitely take precedence over its technical properties. It is not by accident that such compositions give the impression of photographed paintings, with the time dimension added —especially in case they prefer abstractions to camera explorations. Ballet mecanique with its tinge of cubism seems to come straight out of Leger's canvases. Like the prints of the experimental photographers, films emphasizing rhythm had better be classified as a new branch of the established arts.
Emphasis on content
SURREALISTIC FILMS
In the second half of the 'twenties the emphasis increasingly shifted from rhythm to content. The surrealistic movement then gathered momentum, and under its impact the avant-garde endeavored to transfer to the screen dream sequences, psychological developments, unconscious or subconscious processes, and the like— much of it inspired by Freud and to a lesser extent Marxism. Germaine Dulac's The Seashell and the Clergyman, which centered on a priest in the throes of forbidden sex desires, and Man Ray's L/Etoile de mer, which illustrated a love poem of Robert Desnos by means of distorted and artificially blurred images, marked a transition between rhythmical cinema pur, with its indulgence in abstractions and cinematic language, and what may be called the "surrealistic" trend. The most original and representative surrealistic work of the period was Bunuel-Dali's Un Chien Andalou; its erratic and irrational imagery, which was plainly intended to subject the audience to a shock treatment a la Dada, seemed to spring from, and refer back to, a play of varied impulses in deep psychological layers. Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet, a literary fantasy in pictures, also belongs to this group, his assertion to the contrary notwithstanding.* The trend is so little passe that it has been vigorously revived in America since World War II. Recent experimental films by Maya Deren, Curtis Harrington, Kenneth Anger, Gregory Marko
* At the beginning of 1939, I attended a meeting of the Paris circle of the Amis des Soules, in which, prior to a screening of The Blood of a Poet, a letter by Cocteau was read. Among other things, he declared in it that this film had nothing whatsoever to do with surrealism.