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Vasarely, a film by Peter Kassovitz

I’ve always liked Victor Vasarely’s brand of Op-Art so this short film from 1960 would be of interest even without the addition of a score, Neg-Ale, by Iannis Xenakis. Considering the stature of the composer the music fails to add much at all so it’s no surprise to read at Ubuweb that Xenakis later withdrew it from his catalogue. Kassovitz’s film is worth watching for Vasarely’s artworks, however, especially some three-dimensional creations I hadn’t seen before.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Escher and Schrofer

L’Araignéléphant

L’Araignéléphant (1967) is another of the strange animations made by Piotr Kamler in the 1960s and 1970s, this one being a 9-minute piece concerning the travails of “the spiderelephant”. As with Kamler’s Le labyrinthe, the music is by the French electroacoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani whose death was announced this week, hence the link. Parmegiani had a varied career which included scores for a number of other films (among them a Jan Lenica short, A, which I’ve not been able to find), and more commercial music than people at his serious end of the composition scale usually produce.

Ubuweb has a selection of Parmegiani’s longer compositions, one of which, Pop’eclectic (1969–1973), chops up pop and classical recordings (spot the Small Faces!) in a manner which would become commonplace a decade or so later with the advent of sampling. The Kamler films, meanwhile, are all available on a single DVD where the narration for L’Araignéléphant—which doesn’t explain very much—is subtitled.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Psyché Rock
• Le labyrinthe and Coeur de secours
• Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler

8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements

Continuing the Cocteau theme, this fascinating film remains (for the time being) unavailable in a better copy despite its artistic all-star cast. 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957) can be regarded as a follow-up to Hans Richter’s Surrealist anthology Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), the directorial credit this time being shared between Richter, Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. The latter famously quit the art world to devote more time to chess-playing so his involvement with a chess-based fantasy (self-described as “a fairytale for grownups”) isn’t so surprising:

It explores the realm behind the magic mirror which served Lewis Carroll 100 years ago to stimulate our imagination.

The cast comprises famous friends including Cocteau himself, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Paul Bowles, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder, Duchamp, and, in the Venetian episode, Peggy Guggenheim in her favourite sunglasses. In places it’s closer to Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) than Dreams That Money Can Buy, especially since Anger’s film was another assemblage of unique personalities. One detail I’ve not seen remarked upon elsewhere is the presence behind the camera of Louis & Bebe Barron who assisted with the sound. The Barrons are better known today for their still astonishing all-electronic score for Forbidden Planet (1956). Watch 8 x 8 at Ubuweb or YouTube.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dreams That Money Can Buy

Paris Qui Dort by René Clair

A half-hour comic science fiction film made the same year as Clair’s much more experimental Entr’acte (1924):

The young keeper of the Eiffel Tower awakes one morning and, from his vantage point at the top of the tower, finds that the whole of Paris is at a standstill. On descending the tower, he finds the streets are filled with stationary cars and motionless people. He meets up with a group of tourists who have just landed in a biplane at Paris airport. Unable to explain what has happened, they waste no time profiting from their situation – acquiring new clothes, jewels and wads of bank notes. But they soon grow tired of their new-found freedom and return, bored, to the Eiffel Tower. There, they receive a radio message from a girl, asking to be rescued. She claims to know what has happened to Paris…

Scenes of empty cities are always fun although the effect here is rather hit-and-miss when you glimpse distant cars moving down the streets. The film has French intertitles but the copy at Ubuweb includes a translation. The idea of using temporary stasis to commit robberies reminds me of Arthur C Clarke’s short story All the Time in the World in which someone uses a time accelerator to plunder the British Museum. The story was filmed for American TV in 1952, and may be watched here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Entr’acte by René Clair

Electronic Music Review

A new addition at the Ubuweb archives that’s catnip for anyone interested in the history of electronic music. Electronic Music Review was Reynold Weidenaar & Robert Moog’s short-lived journal devoted to the world of electronic music at a time when the field was rapidly growing away from the academic, “serious” side of musical composition and being taken up by the pop world.

All seven issues are present, running from January 1967 to July 1968. Pages of VCF circuit diagrams aren’t so interesting unless you’re an electronic engineer but the magazines also feature unique articles from composers who are now very well known, including Luciano Berio, Frederic Rzewski, Tod Dockstader, Henri Pousseur, Alvin Lucier and Jon Appleton. Despite the many women working in the field they evidently didn’t go looking for any to write for them. Granted, Wendy Carlos is among the contributors but in the late 60s she was still using the name Walter. In the later issues, Dockstader, Carlos and others review the recent electronic music releases. It’s especially fascinating to see an early reaction to albums such as Morton Subotnik’s Silver Apples of the Moon, and the debut from The United States of America, a cult favourite of mine for many years.

Scattered throughout the issues are ads for the latest studio gear and new album releases. One of these, The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music, was compiled by Paul Beaver and Bernard Krause. The latter is still recording, and happens to be interviewed in the current issue of Arthur Magazine.

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