Stubs - Le Ballet Mécanique

Le Ballet Mécanique (1924) Starring Alice Prin aka Kiki of Montparnasse. Directed by Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy. Written by Fernand Léger. No Producer Credited. Run time: 19 minutes. Black and White/Color. France. Experimental, Silent, Short.

Filmmakers have been experimenting with celluloid almost as long as the technology has existed. One of the earlier examples is Le Ballet Mécanique (1924), a French film with American input released and mostly credited to Fernand Léger, although American Dudley Murphy was also involved in the filmmaking.

The film they made is, to quote The Silent Era review, a montage “of live action cinematography, shots of geometric shapes, colors, odd found items, commercial product photography, observations through a mirrored prism, image repetition, household items and machinery in movement, fairground attractions, and stop-motion animation.”

There appears to be some controversy over who made the film. Some critics write that while Dudley Murphy was the driving force behind the film and that Léger did a better job promoting the film as his creation. Others believe that the film was Léger’s brainchild, as the imagery used in the film was more in line with the subjects of his artwork.

A painter and sculptor, Léger was a cubist painter but evolved his own form, called “tubism”, in which he employed cylindrical, tubular, and spherical forms in vivid colors to suggest movement and dynamism. Consider it a precursor to Pop Art, an art movement of the 1950s.

Léger's Railway Crossing in an example of Tubism.

Born on February 4, 1881, Léger moved to Montparnasse in 1909. An area south of Paris and on the left bank of the Seine, Montparnasse was known as an artistic hub. In Montparnasse, Léger would have met such artists as Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay. Also there, were Ezra Pound, an American poet, as well as Man Ray, an American-born, French-naturalized visual artist, known for his contributions to the Dada and Surrealist movements. Both Pound and Ray would contribute to the movie as well.

Alice Prin modelled for Man Ray's Le Violon d'Ingres.

Also, in Montparnasse was Alice Prin, a model, who adopted the single name “Kiki” and became a staple at Montparnasse, modeling for various artists, including Sanyu, Chaïm Soutine, Julien Mandel, Tsuguharu Foujita, Constant Detré, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Arno Breker, Alexander Calder, Per Krohg, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo and Tono Salazar. But perhaps her most famous image is Le Violon d'Ingres, a photo by Man Ray, who was also her companion throughout much of the 1920s. So prominent was Prin in the social and artistic scenes, she would also be known as the Queen of Montparnasse. She would appear in the film as the Smiling Woman.

Dudley Murphy was an American filmmaker, born in 1897 to artists Caroline Hutchinson (Bowles) Murphy and Hermann Dudley Murphy, both accomplished Modernist landscape painters. Murphy began making films in the early 1920s and Ballet Mécanique was his eighth film.

Music was written for the film by George Antheil, an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor. His music is known for exploring the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the early 20th century. Antheil, at the encouragement of his idol Igor Stravinsky to move to Paris. There he met Boski Markus, a Hungarian and niece of the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, who became his companion and whom he married in 1925.

The couple lived in a one-bedroom apartment above Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Beach described him as "fellow with bangs, a squished nose and a big mouth with a grin in it. A regular American high school boy.” She was very supportive, and introduced Antheil to her circle of friends and customers including Erik Satie, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, and Ernest Hemingway.

His collaboration on the film is somewhat mysterious. His composition, Ballet Mécanique, was originally conceived to be accompanied by the film. However, before the film was finished, the director and composer agreed to go their separate ways. It became a piece of music Antheil played in concert, but when it premiered in 1925, the film was not shown. The film only ran 16 minutes, while the composition ran 30. Parts of the composition were still synchronized with the film and the music piece’s original, and somewhat futuristic, instrumentation utilizing 16 player pianos, airplane propellers, electric bells, sirens, etc. seem to be right for the visuals.

The film, which was made in 1923 and 1924, with Man Ray credited as cinematographer, was premiered as a silent film on September, 24 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna presented by Frederick Kiesler. Kiesler organized the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik and arranged the world premiere of the 16-minute film, though the version we watched is supposedly only 13 minutes.

Léger's Charlot Cubiste.

Léger was also known for Charlot Cubiste, a cubist cartoon form of Charlie Chaplin, which Léger created with the idea of making it into a short film. However, those plans never happened. However, Charlot Cubiste opens the film and appears a few times in Ballet Mécanique as well. In fact, the film's French title was "Charlot présente le ballet mécanique" as seen on the original print. So, Charlot Cubiste is sort of a main character of the film.

 

A woman on a swing.

After Charlot Cubiste, there’s a woman on a swing. This almost looks like a home movie, but later we’ll see her again, as well as from above and in odd angles.

Whisks in motion shot with a kaleidoscope view.

But inanimate objects take up the focus of the film. Egg whisks are one example, in which we see three in close up, which emphasizes their shape and then later spinning fast in a kaleidoscope view. Léger is interested in shapes and what different angles do to an object. This fits in with the Cubist form of the film.

Léger used very basic elementary shapes, like a triangle and a circle.

Léger also used very basic elementary shapes, like a triangle and a circle, flashing as they transition between shapes and then back again. They first appear in green, but later also appear in red, blue and even yellow, with the shapes also transitioning from one color to the next, as in a yellow circle transition into a blue square and then back to a yellow circle.

The smiling woman (Alice Prin).

Shots are repeated, like the smiling woman (Alice Prin), whose dark lips transition to a smile several times throughout the film. We are also treated to an older woman climbing an outdoor staircase over and over and over again. I’ll admit I lost track of how many times this brief shot was repeated. We’re also treated to several repeated views of Prin’s short hair as she moves her face slowly from side to side.

Woman climbing the stairs in Ballet Mécanique.

Perhaps it’s my modern short attention span, but sometimes shots were repeated too many times. In comedy, there’s the rule of three, but in cubism and dadaism, the rule must be to repeat to frustration. Even though there is no story, you will find yourself wanting it to move forward or at least show you something new.

If you’re looking for a plot, you will definitely be disappointed. True to its dadaist roots, the film challenges accepted definitions of art. There is no story, just images under which is an eccentric sound track that seems to repeat itself as well.

Watching the film, you are both intrigued but at the same time left somewhat dissatisfied by the fact that it doesn’t tell a story or follow accepted forms of art. The film is basically a blueprint of sorts for films like Koyaanisqatsi (1983), though this film seems to be far more experimental in trying to convey its post-cubism and dadaism roots.

The key question is whether it's worth seeing. For the casual fan of silent films, perhaps this is not a film you may like. If you’re new to watching silent films, this is probably not a great place to start. Le Ballet Mécanique is not for the faint of heart and even though I wanted to watch the film and share it with others, it is easy to get bored with it. If you’re not transfixed by objects in motion, kaleidoscope photography and repeated scenes, you may not enjoy it. However, this can be seen as a visual artist trying to move his artistic ideals into a new medium. And whether or not you appreciate the effort, it is still interesting from that perspective.