SELECTED TEXTS
BLAISE CENDRARS, "On The Cabinet ofDoctor Caligari"
Translaced by Scuarc Liebman from "Sur Le Cabinet du Docteur Caligari," Cinea, 56 (2 June
I922), I I. An earlier cranslacion ofCendrars's essay appeared in Broom, 2 (July I922), 35 I.
I DO NOT LIKE this film. Why?
Because it is a film based on a misunderstanding.
Because it is a film which does a disservice to all modern art.
Because it is a hybrid film, hysterical and pernicious.
Because it is not cinematic.
A film based on a misunderstanding because it is a sham produced in bad
faith.
It heaps discredit on all modern art because the subject of modern painters
(Cubism) is not the hypersensibility ofa madman, but rather equilibrium,
tension, and mental geometry.
Hybrid, hysterical, pernicious because it is hybrid, hysterical, and pernicious.
(Long live cowboys!)
It is not cinema because:
I. The pictorial distortions are only gimmicks (a new modern conven-
tion);
2. Real characters are in an unreal set (meaningless);
3. The distortions are not optical and do not depend either on the camera
angle or the lens or the diaphragm or the focus;
4. There is never any unity;
5. It is theatrical;
6. There is movement but no rhythm;
7. There is not a single refinement of the director's craft; all the effects are
obtained with the help ofmeans belonging to painting, music, literature,
etc. ~owhere does one see [the contribution of) the cam-
era;
8. It is sentimental and not visual;
9. It has nice pictures, good lighting effects, superb actors;
IO. It does excellent business.
FERN AND LEGER, "La Roue: Its Plastic Quality"
Translaced by Alexandra Anderson as "A Cricical Essay on che Plascic Qualicy of Abel
Gance's Film, The Wheel," in Functions ofPainting, ed. Edward F. Fry (New York: Viking,
I973). 2cr-23. Reprinced by permission. The original French cexc firsc appeared as "La
Roue: Sa valeur plascique," in Comoedia (I6 December I922), 5.
ABEL GANCE's film involves three states of interest that continually al.fl.ternate:
a dramatic state, an emotional state, and a plastic state. It is
PART THREE 1920-1924
this entirely new plastic contribution whose real value and implications for
our time I shall struggle to define precisely.
The first two states are developed throughout the whole drama with
mounting interest. The third, the one that concerns me, occurs almost exclusively
in the first three sections, where the mechanical element plays a
major role, and where the machine becomes the leading character, the leading
actor. It will be to Abel Gance's honor that he has successfully presented an
actor object to the public. This is a cinematographic event of considerable
importance, which I am going to examine carefully.
This new element is presented to us through an infinite variety of methods,
from every aspect: close-ups, fixed or moving mechanical fragments,
projected at a heightened speed that approaches the state of simultaneity
and that crushes and eliminates the human object, reduces its interest, pulverizes
it. This mechanical element that you reluctantly watch disappear, that
you wait for impatiently, is unobtrusive; it appears like flashes of a spotlight
throughout a vast, long heartrending tragedy whose realism admits
no concessions. The plastic event is no less there because of it, it's nowhere
else; it is planned, fitted in with care, appropriate, and seems to me to be
laden with implications in itselfand for the the future.
The advent of this film is additionally interesting in that is is going to
determine a place in the plastic order for an art that has until now remained
almost completely descriptive, sentimental, and documentary. The fragmentation
of the object, the intrinsic plastic value of the object, its pictorial
equivalence, have long been the domain of the modern arts. With The
Wheel (La RoueJ Abel Gance has elevated the art of film to the plane of the
plastic arts.
Before The Wheel the cinematographic art developed almost constantly
on a mistaken path: that ofresemblance to the theater, the same means, the
same actors, the same dramatic methods. It seems to want to turn into
theater. This is the most serious error the cinematographic art could commit;
it is the facile viewpoint, the art of imitation, the imitator's view-
point.
The justification for film, its only one, is the projected image. This image
that, colored, but unmoving, captures children and adults alike--and now
it moves. The moving image was created, and the whole world is on its
knees before that marvelous image that moves. But observe that this stupendous
invention does not consist in imitating the movements of nature;
it's a matter of something entirely different; it's a matter of making images
seen, and the cinema must not look elsewhere for its reason for being. Project
your beautiful image, choose it well, define it, put it under the microscope,
do everything to make it yield up its maximum, and you will have
no need for text, description, perspective, sentimentality, or actors.
SELECTED TEXTS
Whether it be the infinite realism ofthe close-up, or pure inventive fantasy
(Simultaneous poetry through the moving image), the new event is there
with all its implications.
Until now America has been able to create a picturesque cinematographic
fact: film intensity, cowboy plays, Douglas {Fairbanks], Chaplin's
comic genius, but there we are still beside the point. It is still the theatrical
concept, that is, the actor dominating and the whole production dependent
on him. The cinema cannot fight the theater; the dramatic effect ofa living
person, speaking with emotion, cannot be equaled by its direct, silent projection
in black and white on a screen. The film is beaten in advance; it will
always be bad theater. Now let us consider only the visual point of view.
Where is it in all of this?
Here it is: So percent of the clients and objects that help us to live are
only noticed by us in our everyday lives, while 20 percent are seen. From
this, I deduce the cinematographic revolution is to make us see everything that
has been merely noticed. Project those brand-new elements, and you have your
tragedies, your comedies, on a plane that is uniquely visual and cinematographic.
The dog that goes by in the street is only noticed. Projected on
the screen, it is seen, so much so that the whole audience reacts as ifit discovered
the dog.
The mere fact of projection of the image already defines the object,
which becomes spectacle. A judiciously composed image already has value
through this fact. Don't abandon this point ofview. Here is the pivot, the
basis of this new art. Abel Gance has sensed it perfectly. He has achieved
it, he is the first to have presented it to the public. You will see moving
images presented like a picture, centered on the screen with a judicious
range in the balance ofstill and moving parts (the contrast ofeffects); a still
figure on a machine that is moving, a modulated hand in contrast to a geometric
mass, circular forms, abstract forms, the interplay of curves and
straight lines (contrasts oflines), dazzling, wonderful, a moving geometry
that astonishes you.
Gance goes further, since his marvelous machine is able to produce the
fragment of the object. He gives it to you in place of that actor whom you
have noticed somewhere and who moved you by his delivery and his gestures.
He is going to make you see and move you in turn with the face of
this phantom whom you have no more than noticed before. You will see his
eye, his hand, his finger, his fingernail. Gance will make you see all this
with his prodigious blazing lantern. You will see all those fragments magnified
a hundred times, making up an absolute whole, tragic, comic, plastic,
more moving, more captivating than the character in the theater next
door. The locomotive will appear with all its parts: its wheels, its rods, its
signal plates, its geometric pleasures, vertical and horizontal, and the for-
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midable faces of the men who live on it. A nut bent out of shape next to a
rose will evoke for you the tragedy of The Wheel (contrasts).
In rare moments scattered among various films, one has been able to
have the confused feeling that there must be the truth. With The Wheel
Gance has completely achieved cinematographic fact. Visual fragments collaborate
closely with the actor and the drama, reinforce them, sustain
them, instead ofdissipating their effect, thanks to its masterful composition.
Gance is a precursor and a fulfillment at the same time. His drama is going
to mark an epoch in the history of cinema. His relationship is first of all a
technical one. He absorbs objects and actors; he never submits to means
that ought not to be confused with the desired end. In that above all his
superiority over the American contribution resides. The latter, picturesque
and theatrical in quality, in bondage to some talented stars, will fade as the
actors fade. The art of The Wheel will remain, armed with its new technique,
and it will dominate cinematographic art in the present and in the
future.
FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) was a French painter initially aligned with the Cubists,
whose work came under the influence of the "Purist" movement after the war. But Leger
also became involved in attempts to produce a synthesis of the arts as a popular spectacle--
for example, the ballet dramas Parade(1917) and Skating Rink (1922), L'Herbier's film L'Inhumaine
(1924), and his own Ballet micanique (1924).
EMILE VUILLERMOZ, "La Roue"
From "La Roue," Cinimagazine 3 (23 February 1923), 329-31, and (2 March 1923), 363-
65.
A BEL GANCE's latest film establishes once again that even though the
.fl.cinema is silent, filmmakers are not chary with words. La Roue has provoked
numerous discussions and debates, and the hubbub shows'no sign of
abating. The release ofthis majestic work does not, however, raise complex
problems, rather it highlights-and in huge close-ups even-several elementary
questions on which, it seems, everyone can easily agree.
In La Roue, Abel Gance has spun out an incalculable number ofsymbols,
some ofwhich are magnificently beautiful and poetic. One can also spin out
another: La Roue is the very image of cinema, that is, a machine that is
steadily revolving and yet seems to be revolving in place. The film industry
is a prisoner of this gyrating motion which forces it to follow the same circle
forever, to commit the same mistakes, and to fall into the same errors.
Never has this elementary truth been demonstrated so obviously as in this
splendid work which I intend to examine.
La Roue proves several things. First, that the current commercial formula
of cinema exhibition is absurd and dangerous, and, second, that its
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fate ofOrpheus, who was torn apart by the bacchantes; but, like Orpheus,
it will survive the punishment.
We must have a reshaped and tightened version of La Roue, relieved of
the slight imperfections which have been imposed on it by circumstances.•
All the elements ofa masterpiece exist in this composition. It's perhaps the
first time that a cinegraphic production has contained such pleasing and
persuasive treasures. All those who love the cinema and have confidence in
its future must lay claim to this "artistic model" in the work of Abel
Gance.
For, if there have been more refined, more delicate, more ingenious
works before this, I cannot remember ever having contemplated a production
as clearsighted as it is powerful, in an exclusively cinegraphic style. La
Roue will make those who are still unsuspecting now understand the prodigious
future of this art form of moving images. Later they will come to
see that La Roue was a prophecy. Why are we not immediately attempting
to comprehend the broad range of its advance?
' A reedited 4,200 meter version of La Roue did premiere at the Colisee cinema in February
1924.
RENE CLAIR, "La Roue"
Translated by Stanley Appelbaum in Cinema Yesterday and Today, ed. R. C. Dale (New
York: Dover, 1972). 97--98. Reprinted by permission. The original French text first appeared
as "Les Films du mois: La Roue," Theatre et Comoedia i/lu1tri (March 1923).
1 a Roue is the archetype of the film that is Romantic in spirit. Just as in
La Romantic drama, you will find in M. Abel Gance's film improbable
situations, a superficial psychology, a constant attempt to achieve visual
effects-and verbal effects as well-and you will find extraordinary lyrical
passages and inspired moments of movement, one could even say, the sublime
and the grotesque.•
Given a drama so obviously "thought out," so carefully stuffed with literary
ideas and ambitions, it is tempting to debate these with the author.
No need to bother. Ifa screenplay ought to be merely a pretext, here it is a
cumbersome pretext, sometimes annoying, rarely necessary, but in any
case not deserving of lengthy consideration. It is hardly unusual that, like
most filmmakers, M. Gance has made a mistake as a screenplay writer, even
if the mistake is more serious at times than we are accustomed to. If we
were asked to judge M. Gance by the psychological intentions he expresses
on the screen and by the titles he writes, I have to admit that my judgment
would not be in his favor. But right now we are concerned with cinema.
As I see it, the real subject of the film is not its odd story, but a train,
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tracks, signals, puffs ofsteam, a mountain, snow, clouds. From these great
visual themes that dominate his film, M. Gance has drawn splendid sequences.
We had, of course, seen trains before moving along tracks at a
velocity heightened by the obliging movie camera; but we had not been
completely absorbed-orchestra, seats, auditorium, and everything
around us-by the screen as if by a whirlpool. "That's only a feeling," you
will tell me. Maybe. But we had not gone there to think. To see and feel is
enough. Fifty years from now you can talk to me again about the cinema of
ideas. This unforgettable passage is not the only one that testifies to M.
Gance's talents. The catastrophe at the beginning of the film, the first accident
Sisif tries to cause, the ascent of the cable car into the mountains,
the death of Elie, the bringing down of his body, the circular dance of the
mountaineers, and that grandoise ending amidst veils of cloud: those are
sublime lyrical compositions that owe nothing to the other arts. Seeing
them, we forget the quotations from Kipling, Aeschylus, and Abel Gance
throughout the film, which tend to discourage us. And we start to hope.
Oh, if M. Abel Gance would only give up making locomotives say yes
and no, lending a railroad engineer the thoughts ofa hero ofantiquity, and
quoting his favorite authors! Ifhe were willing to create a pure documentary,
since he knows how to give life to a machine part, a hand, a branch, a wisp
ofsmoke! If only he were willing to contribute in that way to the creation
of the Film that can barely be glimpsed today!
Oh, if he were willing to give up literature and place his trust in the
. I
cmema....
RENE CLAIR (1898-1981) was a young journalist and accor-for instance, in Feuillade's
L'Orpheline (1921) and Parisette (1922). In 1922, he worked as an assistant director to
Jacques de Baroncelli; a year later he was making his first film, Paris qui dort (1924).
' Victor Hugo's theory of the sublime and the grotesque, enunciated in his dramatic
manifesro, The Preface to Cromwell (1827), became one of the French Romanacs' main
themes. Clair here uses the term ironically to describe Gance's ups and downs, rather than
in an accurate historical way. {Note by R. C. Dale]
LEON MOUSSINAC, "On Cinegraphic Rhythm"
From "Du rythme cinegraphique," Le Crapouillot (March 1923), sr-11.
IF, IN A FILM, the images have to possess a particular beauty and value
in and of themselves, beyond their significance in relation to the whole,
this beauty and value can be singularly diminished or increased according
to the role those images are given in time, that is, the order in which they
succeed one another.
For example, it's evident that if they projected, all by itself, the image
in El Dorado where Marcel L'Herbier shows his heroine walking along the
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