Category Archives: surrealism

Surrealism and cinema

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDu9EEIJltI&]

Funeral Parade of Roses is a 1969 Japanese film directed by Toshio Matsumoto.

Tip of the hat to Girish:

The first, historic path of surrealism and cinema must be (according to AM) broadly defined to include not just officially acknowledged ‘classics’ by René Clair, Germaine Dulac & Antonin Artaud, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, etc., but also certain films by Robert Benayoun, Ado Kyrou, Nelly Kaplan, Walerian Borowczyk, Toshio Matsumoto, Jean Rouch, etc. –Girish

I am currently reading Le Surréalisme au cinéma, which is often mentioned as the standard work on surrealist cinema.It is an excellent introduction to cult cinema tout court. Perhaps more on this later.

Scherzo infernal

Scherzo infernal (1984) – Walerian Borowczyk

Scherzo infernal (1984) is a short animated French film by Walerian Borowczyk narrated by Yves Robert and produced by Anatole Dauman‘s Argos Films. Beware when watching the current Youtube version of this film, the descriptive text has gotten mixed up with the descriptive text of Michel Follin‘s Ligeti documentary. In reality, the score of this short was composed by Bernard Parmegiani.

On whimsy and monochromatics

Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit

My previous post on Cohl led me to the French avant-garde of the 1880s and 1890s. Above is what is now generally held to be the first monochrome painting, rendered here in an appropriated version by Allais.

Here is the background:

Paul Bilhaud (born in Allichamps, December 31, 1854 – Avon, 1933) was a French poet and dramatist who belonged to the avant-garde group the Incoherents. He is the author of an all-black painting called Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night.

On October 1 1882 the “Exposition des Arts Incohérents” in Paris featured a black painting by the poet Paul Bilhaud titled Combat de nègres dans une cave pendant la nuit, which was appropriated in 1887 by the French humorist Alphonse Allais, in an album of monochrome pictures of various colors, with uniformly ornamental frames, each bearing a comical title. Allais called his all-red painting Tomato Harvest by Apoplectic Cardinals on the Shore of the Red Sea.

Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night predates Malevich‘s, Black Square on a White Field by 31 years.

Compiling this documentation, I stumbled on Il Giornale Nuovo’s post on Allais: Primo-Avrilesque and on Monochrome (une enquête) by L’Alamblog.

Introducing Surreal Documents

Valter’s Surreal Documents is an excellent blog on subversive surrealism as professed by Georges Bataille and the Acéphale group. Recent subjects have included Alice Coltrane, Coffin Joe, books acquired and Nico. The blog can now be accessed from my blogroll.

I quote from the Acéphale post:

… the Jean Rollin who participated in this issue of “La Revue Acéphale” is of course not Jean Rollin, who was born in 1938 and couldn’t possibly have contributed any articles to this “La Revue Acéphale” (I just corrected the error in Wikipedia).

In fact, it was the filmmaker’s father who contributed to the publication. The father was also called Jean Rollin. Jean Rollin’s mother, Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, had an (extramarital) relationship with Georges Bataille from october 1939 to the end of 1943.

Tohill and Tombs’ “Immoral Tales. Sex & Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984” suggest that years later Jean Rollin (the filmmaker, that is), would remember the bedtime stories that Bataille told him, about ‘Monsieur le Curé’, a wolf dressed in the robes of a priest.

How I would like to have heard those stories!

More on Denise Rollin-Le Gentil:

On 2 October 1939, [Georges Bataille] meets Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, who is 32 and married with a young son, Jean. Surya writes, ‘She was beautiful, a beauty that would be described as melancholy if not taciturn. She spoke little or, for long periods not at all’. She joins him at his flat in October; thereafter, Bataille will spend time in her flat at 3 rue de Lille.

[In 1945, Maurice] Blanchot commences an apparently largely epistolatory affair with Denise Rollin, which will continue until her death in 1978.–Spurious and more at Google books.

From Surreal Documents’ first post which features a photograph by Boiffard and Valter’s manifesto:

This blog has been inspired by my visit to the exhibition “Undercover Surrealism” at the Hayward Gallery in London. The blog is intended to contain doctrines, fine arts, ethnography, variety. Expect dusty things, ethnographies of one-man-Cthulhu Cults, confused concepts, black and blackened musics, untruths.

Checking Valter’s blogroll (show me your blogroll and I will tell you who you are) you will find Jim Woodring, Monster Brains, the Wooster Collective, Esotika Erotica Psychotica, Giallo Fever, Groovy Age Of Horror, Mutant Sounds, Video Watchblog and the recent newcomer Ombres Blanches.

To conclude, some Coffin Joe:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXuVaA63Hbk]

Some positive events in his life

Waiter by Alex van Warmerdam is a superb film by the best Dutch language auteur. The styling of his films always have a retro feel; the interior depicted above reminds me strongly of the Drugstore Cowboy hotel room. In my opinion, Warmerdam deserves an entry in the Sensesofcinema’s directors hall of fame.

See also:

Plot:
Waiter tells the story of Edgar (Alex van Warmerdam), a waiter with a flair for the unfortunate. His wife is sick, his girlfriend Victoria (Ariane Schluter) is overly possessive, customers at work constantly bully him and his neighbours make his life impossible.

Fed up with the way his life is going, Edgar goes to the house of Herman (Mark Rietman), the scriptwriter who invented Edgar and is currently writing his story. Edgar complains about the events in his life that keep getting worse and begs for some positive events in his life, including a decent girlfriend. Herman decides to create Stella (Line Van Wambeke), but soon Edgar realises that Stella will only complicate his life more. Meanwhile Herman is pestered by his pushy girlfriend Suzie (Thekla Reuten), who constantly tries to change the script. Driven to insanity by Edgar and Suzie constantly trying to interfere with his story, Herman decides to make the story more extreme and violent…

Thematically related films:
The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) and Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002)

Dutch fabulist

The Dutch fabulist continues to build his own contemporary Northern European mythology, following up on the 2003.

The uncompromising, innovative writer-director himself plays Edgar, the put-upon middle-aged man of the title. Edgar waits tables at the decrepit, cunningly named restaurant The West, where he is abused by his patrons. He is tired of his wife, his demanding mistress and his belligerent neighbours. He goes to the home of Herman (Mark Rietman), the man responsible for writing the story of his life, and begs the author for a change. Much of the blame for his misery lies with Herman’s meddling wife, Suzie (Thekla Reuten), who interferes in her husband’s work by steering Edgar’s life in disagreeable directions.

Van Warmerdam is a master of the theatre of the absurd, as singular a slapstick performer as he is a director. He plays Edgar as a phlegmatic, sullen character who grimly attends to the needs of the patrons at the torpid and soulless restaurant – a space that becomes more and more abstract as Herman loses control of Edgar’s universe.

Van Warmerdam has said that a character whose destiny is completely in another’s hands is necessarily tragic, and he mines this fruitful conceit for all it is worth. His surreal film is a witty and constantly surprising take on fate, creativity and power, taking as its tormented protagonist a man doomed to a life of servitude – not just to his customers, but to the conventions of literary fiction as well. –Dimitri Eipides

A modern character

Van Warmerdam hanteert niet alleen een creatief zwartkomisch scenario, ook maakt hij een knipoog naar de wereld van het scenarioschrijven. Als Edgar aan Herman vraagt waarom die het toch zo slecht met hem voor heeft, antwoordt de gefrustreerde Herman slechts dat hij een ‘modern personage’ is. Een hip, modern filmhuisfilmpersonage, denkt Herman, is een lijdend voorwerp, geen interessante, succesvolle persoon. Van Warmerdam laat Edgar deze opgelegde troosteloosheid met verve aanvechten. Toch loopt Ober nogal abrupt af, alsof Van Warmerdam met eenzelfde writer’s block te maken had als Herman. Hoe graag Edgar zijn leven ook een positieve wending wil geven, de auteur blijft de baas, niet de personages. –René Glas

More Dutch language reviews:
Hyperrealism and surrealism in perfect balance. [Dutch]
Nieuwe Van Warmerdam scoort aardig bij critici [Dutch]

My name, I believe, is Robert Jones

I am, that is to say I was, a great man, but I am neither the author of Junius nor the man in the mask, for my name, I believe, is Robert Jones, and I was born somewhere in the city of Fum-Fudge.

The first action of my life was the taking hold of my nose with both hands. My mother saw this and called me a genius:—my father wept for joy and presented me with a treatise on Nosology. This I mastered before I was breeched. ..

Who else but Borges could start a story by introducing a character who is unsure of his own name? The answer is Poe, the story is titled Lionizing (1835). It makes you wonder if there are any precedents of stories with characters who are unsure who they are.

I am currently reading Poe for the first time in my life. I’d written about Poe without ever having read one of his stories. Much like I had written about Baudelaire and Borges (and decided I was going to like them) without ever having read them. Recently, I found a rationale for my behaviour. It came by way of Oscar Wilde who supposedly said: “I never read a book I must review, it prejudices you so.”

I am reading Poe in Dutch, my native language. Poe is really too difficult for non-native speakers. I mean, how many native speakers know what vituperate means? In Dutch this translates as beschimpen, and while not a word I use every day, nor every month, maybe once every year, I do know what to make of it. Nevertheless, I enjoy difficult words and I learn every day. My main site Jahsonic helps me in this by providing context. Yesterday I came across arcane, I look it up at my place and at Wikipedia and at Answers.com. Roughly it means esoteric.

Then I remember Eric Losfeld and his Editions Arcanes:

Losfeld began secret publishing about 1949, and openly in 1952 when he established Editions Arcanes. For the following ten years or so his feet were planted firmly in the fields of both clandestine and open publishing. His open publications were certainly avant-garde and included works by Nelly Kaplan, Claude Seignolle, Boris Vian, Francis Picabia, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues amongst others. —Patrick J. Kearney more…

Back to Poe. Please check this post with a very good illustration of Lionizing. And the superb The Nose by Gogol.

Totally unrelated is a Horace Andy track over at Sly and Robbie’s MySpace.

Excuse the rambling post. My name, I believe, is Jan Geerinck.

He was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog’s death it was that he died

Terence Stamp as Toby Dammit

From Never Bet the Devil Your Head — A Tale with a Moral (1841)  by Edgar Allan Poe:

Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur was a law of the twelve tables, and De mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunction — even if the dead in question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my design, therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog’s death it was that he died; but he himself was not to blame for his vices. They grew out of a personal defect in his mother. She did her best in the way of flogging him while an infant — for duties to her well — regulated mind were always pleasures, and babies, like tough steaks, or the modern Greek olive trees, are invariably the better for beating — but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in. I was often present at Toby’s chastisements, and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in my eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all, and one day when he had been cuffed until he grew so black in the face that one might have mistaken him for a little African, and no effect had been produced beyond that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, I could stand it no longer, but went down upon my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made prophecy of his ruin.

The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months of age he used to get into such passions that he was unable to articulate. At six months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. At eight months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the Temperance pledge. Thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions by bets.

Through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which I had predicted to Toby Dammit overtook him at last. The fashion had “grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength,” so that, when he came to be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without interlarding it with a proposition to gamble. Not that he actually laid wagers — no. I will do my friend the justice to say that he would as soon have laid eggs. With him the thing was a mere formula — nothing more. His expressions on this head had no meaning attached to them whatever. They were simple if not altogether innocent expletives — imaginative phrases wherewith to round off a sentence. When he said “I’ll bet you so and so,” nobody ever thought of taking him up; but still I could not help thinking it my duty to put him down. The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a vulgar one- this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by society — here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act of Congress — here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie. I remonstrated — but to no purpose. I demonstrated — in vain. I entreated — he smiled. I implored — he laughed. I preached- he sneered. I threatened — he swore. I kicked him — he called for the police. I pulled his nose — he blew it, and offered to bet the Devil his head that I would not venture to try that experiment again. —continue reading …

This post inspired by the ever excellent Ombres Blanches who notes:

When approached for the Edgar Allan Poe omnibus Histoires Extraordinaires (Spirits of the Dead) Fellini was initially reluctant to do it, but Toby Dammit turned out to be the film’s finest episode … Fellini chose to transpose Poe’s source story Never Bet the Devil Your Head to a contemporary setting …

Histoires Extraordinaires aka Spirits of The Dead (1968) – Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, Federico Fellini [Amazon.com]

Ombres Blanches points us to this wonderful clip of the Fellini short with an OST by Nino Rota. The live band are the Rutles. The scene is euro chic felliniesque.

Surrealism avant la lettre

Bizzarie di varie figure

Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) – Giovanni Battista Bracelli

Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) – Giovanni Battista Bracelli

Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) – Giovanni Battista Bracelli

Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) – Giovanni Battista Bracelli

 

Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) – Giovanni Battista Bracelli

I quote the Giornale Nuovo:

I’ve mentioned Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s book Bizzarie di Varie Figure before. It was originally published in Livorno, in 1624. One would assume the book was not a success, as it exerted no influence, and attracted very little notice until its rediscovery in Paris ca. 1950. Its rediscoverer, Alain Brieux, published a limited facsimile edition of the book in 1963, with a preface by Tristan Tzara. –source

More on bizar here.

 

Make it my thing

 

DimDamDom.jpg

Screen capture of French television series Dim Dam, Dom

 

Rose Hobart (1936) – Joseph Cornell

  1. In recent comment exchanges between Andrej ‘Ombres Blanches’ Maltar and myself, we stumbled upon some Youtube footage I do not want to withhold from you, dear reader.
  2. Joseph Cornell’s ‘film remix’ Rose Hobart [Youtube]
  3. Ado Kyrou directed some episodes of Dim Dam Dom though not this one [Youtube] starring Gainsbourg. But one senses definitely his influence. Other director’s of this series were Eric Kahane (Girodias’s brother) and Jean Loup Sieff. –Andrej Maltar
  4. “When watching a film I inevitably perform an act of will on it, hence I transform it, and from its given elements make it my thing, draw snippets of knowledge from it and see better into myself… I could not begin to explain the reasons why since, contrary to Duchamp’s objects, I am not at all sure that these films, generally extremely bad ones, can have an objective value; or then I would have to work on them, make some changes in the montage, cut, accentuate, or tone down the soundtrack, finally interpret them before my subjective vision could be objectified.”–Ado Kyrou
  5. The Dim Dam, Dom video extracts were posted by Youtubian SpikedCandy who also treats us this superb piece of schmaltz.
  6. “This is the dialectic — there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” –Douglas Sirk’s nobrow quote via Andrej Maltar

It is my honour to declare war on you

In search of the editors of surrealism

Eric Losfeld (photocredit unidentified)

Eric Losfeld gives a good indication of his surrealist approach to life early in his memoirs. When on his military service in the 1930’s, he writes to Adolf Hitler:

“Sir, I am a Belgian soldier who is bored in a garrison in a city called Namur. I hold you personally responsible for this. Subsequently it is my honour to declare war on you”. [translation mine]

There is no record of what reply, if any, was received from Berlin . –Patrick J. Kearney via here.

When Kearney refers to Losfeld’s memoirs, he must be quoting from Losfeld’s autobiography Endetté comme une mule: Ou, La Passion d’éditer (1979) which costs a prohibitive amount of money at Amazon.com, is unavailable at [FR],and costs even more at [UK], so if anyone knows how to read this cheaply, please let me know. BTW, the title roughly translates as — please correct me if I get this wrong: Indebted for life, or, the passion for publishing.

Entirely off-topic: this and this is dedicated to my girls.