PART FOUR 1925-1929
to not know the laws of this newborn world which is free of any slavery to
gravity. I feel a pleasure at the sight of these images which is, too infrequently,
what I seek to awaken in myself-a sensation of musical liberty.
Gallop, canter. How the ascending horizons are inverted and the abyss
finally opens its petals to welcome you into its soothing heart. Become
statue, house, little dog, sack of gold, rolling river of oaks. I no longer
know how to separate you from the midst of your kingdom, 0 huntress
{Diana}.
Sentences cannot long carry illogic in their arms without working themselves
to death. But this series of images which is not bound up with the
old tricks of thought and to which no absolute meaning is attached, why
should it be burdened with a logic?
Blond, you lift your head and your curving hair reveals your face. This
look, this gesture toward the imagined door-I can give them a meaning
of my own. Ifwords had given you life, it would be impossible to preserve
you from their constrictive power; you would be their slave. Images, be my
mistress.
You are mine, dear illusions of the lens. Mine, this refreshing universe
in which I take a bearing on flattering features, according to my taste.
'A reference probably to Professor Edward AdolfSonnenshein (1851-1929), a classical
scholar, whose What is Rhythm? (1925) had just been published by Blackwell's in England.
' Here Clair reverses the meaning of the terms, interior and exterior movement, that
Moussinac and Delluc had established several years before.
RENE CLAIR, "Pure Cinema and Commercial Cinema"
Translated by Stanley Appelbaum in Rene Clair, Cinema Yesterday andToday, ed. R. C. Dale
(New York: Dover, 1972), 99-IOO. Reprinted by permission. The original French version
first appeared as "Cinema pur et cinema commercial," in Cahiers du mois 16/17 (1925), 85)-
90.
THE CINEMA is primarily an industry. The existence of"pure cinema"
comparable to "pure" music seems today too much subject to chance
to merit serious examination.
The question of pure cinema is directly connected with that of"cinema:
art or industry?" To answer this last question, it would first be necessary to
have a precise definition of the concept ofart. Now, our era is not favorable
to such precise formulations. Next, it would be necessary for the cinema's
conditions of material existence to be drastically altered. A film does not
exist on paper. The most detailed screenplay will never be able to foresee
every detail of the execution of the work (exact camera angle, lighting, exposure,
acting, etc.). A film exists only on the screen. Now, between the
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brain that conceives it and the screen that reflects it, there is the entire industrial
organization and its need for money.
Therefore, it seems pointless to predict the existence ofa "pure cinema"
so long as the cinema's conditions of material existence remain unchanged
or the mind of the public has not developed.
Nevertheless, there are already signs of the pure cinema. It can be found
in fragmentary fashion in a number of films; it seems in fact that a film
fragment becomes pure cinema as soon as a sensation is aroused in the
viewer by purely visual means. A broad definition, ofcourse, but adequate
for our era. That is why the primary duty of the present-day filmmaker is
to introduce the greatest number of purely visual themes by a sort of ruse,
into a screenplay made to satisfy everybody. Therefore, the literary value of
a screenplay is completely unimportant....
HENRI CHOMETTE, "Second Stage"
Translated by Stanley Appelbaum in Rene Clair, Cinema YeJterdayandToday, ed. R. C. Dale
(New York: Dover, 1972), 97--98. Reprinted by permission. The original French version
first appeared as "Seconde etape," Cahiers du mois 16/17 (1925), 86--88.
No SOONER had the cinema freed the image from its original immobility
than it began to express itself in disappointing formulas. False
humor, Italian melodrama, the serial, and "natural" color came along to
doom our new hopes. Later, the spectator-anxious for information about
the theater but depending on chance for the choice offilms to see--discovered
The Cheat, Chaplin, Mack Sennett, and Nanook. And his understandable
discouragement gave way to a temporary reconciliation.
At present-except in the eyes of the French legislator, who still classes
it along with "traveling shows"-the cinema has been able to win its least
favorable judges back to its side. Yet, although it is a newborn force with
numerous possibilities, it is still showing signs ofonly one ofits potentials:
the representation of known things.
In short, the only role it plays in regard to the eye is partially comparable
to that of the phonograph in regard to the ear: recording and reproducing.
Ofcourse, stop-action filming reveals to us events which our eyes did not
perceive or did not perceive clearly (the opening ofa rose)--but at least we
had an idea about the sum of these events. Of course, trick shots give us
unprecedented illusions (elimination ofgravity, or of the opac;ity ofa body
through double exposure)--but only by sticking to objects familiar to our
reason, concrete and well-known objects. Do you wish to escape from the
real and conjure up something imagined-a soul, for example? You will
have to make use of a body, which has become transparent-but is still a
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recognizable human body. A conventional representation, but representa-
tion.
Thus, all the present uses of cinema can be reduced to films of a single
world, the representative, which can be divided into two groups: documentary-mere
reproduction in motion-and dramatic (comedies, dramas,
fairy-pantomimes, etc.), the origin and essence ofwhich can be found
in older types ofperforming arts (drama, pantomime, vaudeville, etc.).
But the cinema is not limited to the representative world. It can create.
It has already created a sort of rhythm (which I did not mention when
speaking about current films because its value in them is extremely diluted
by the meaning of the image).
Thanks to this rhythm, the cinema can draw from itself a new potentiality,
which, leaving behind the logic ofevents and the reality ofobjects,
engenders a series of visions that are unknown-inconceivable outside the
union of the lens and the moving reel of film. Intrinsic cinema-or, ifyou
will, pure cinema-since it is separate from all other elements, whether
dramatic or documentary-that is what certain works by our most personal
directors permit us to foresee. That is what offers the purely cinematic
imagination its true field and will give rise to what has been called-by
Mme Germaine Dulac, I believe-the "visual symphony."
Virtuosity, perhaps, but just like a harmonious concert of instruments,
it will move our sensibilities as well as our intelligence. For why should the
screen be denied that faculty for enchantment which is granted to the or-
chestra?
Universal kaleidoscope, generator of all moving visions from the least
strange to the most immaterial, why should the cinema not create the
kingdom of light, rhythms, and forms alongside that ofsound?
HENRI CHOMETTE (1896-1941) was the older brother of Rene Clair. He worked as an
assistant co Robert Boudrioz, Jacques Feyder, and Jacques de Baroncelli; made two short
abstract lilms,jeux des re/lets et de la vitesse (1925) and Cinq Minutes de cinima pur (1925); and
then directed Dolly Davis and Albert Prejean in Le Chauffeur de Mademoiselle (1928).
FERN AND LEGER, "Painting and Cinema"
From "Peincure et cinema,"' Cahiers du mois, 16-17 (1925), 107-108.
TH,E PLASTIC ARTS all exist in a state of relativity. If you wish to consider
the cinema as such, it then comes under the same law.
In my own case, I know that I have used the magnification of the frame
or the individualization of a detail in certain compositions. Thanks to the
screen, the prejudice against "things larger than nature" no longer exists.
The future ofcinema as painting lies in the attention it will draw to ob-
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