Anémic-Cinéma (FILM Review)

This is the art.

This is the film.

I am so proud of the seminar I gave this week in my Avante-Garde and Experimental Film class, that I need to post it. It may be helpful to actually watch the silent film here: http://vimeo.com/7733425. See the footnotes for more details.

My learned colleague has been so kind as to give the pedigree of Marcel Duchamp and for purposes of brevity will agree that she is correct. Instead, we differ on the issue of belonging. In which school and style this film fits may be up for debate and it is this subject that concerns my seminar today. Where my colleague argues that this is a Dadaist film, I argue that it is a Surrealist film for the following reasons. First that it sits squarely with in the Surrealist movement, and second, supported by Marcel Duchamp’s other piece of art "The Large Glass", it deals with Surrealist subject matter by provoking the viewers unconscious sexual desires through words and movement and rhythm.

Anémic-Cinéma was created by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp between 1924 and 1926, released in August 1926 at a private screening in Paris. This was the final work of other versions made in 1920 and 1923. In total, it took six years to create 7 minutes of film. Before and during this same time, beginning in 1913 to 1923 Marcel Duchamp had also been working on his sculpture "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" piece, known as The Great (or Large) Glass. Let me take a moment to advise that I translate the title differently: The word meme is better translated in this context as “..., Themselves”, meaning The Bride is not helping them in their endeavor, not engaged in the act, or even not present and they are doing it [stripping her] in their heads. The Large Glass is two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust held together with two wood frames, one atop the other. In his notes from 1934 The Green Box (eight years later), he describes this as a "hilarious picture" intended to depict the erotic encounter between the "Bride," in the upper panel, and her nine bachelors, known as "The Bachelor Machine" gathered timidly below[1]. The Bride in the act of being stripped is essentially a nude, or an "anti-machine", and balanced below is her opposite: the bachelor machine. This is a juxtaposition, a yin and yang effect, which remains balanced as long as the two sides remain in their respective fields. Katrina Martin writes in her essay Marcel Duchamp's Anemic-Cinema, "He portrays sexuality rather as onanism for two, each partner trying to satisfy his/her cravings..."[2] In his own notes, Duchamp writes "The bachelor grinds his chocolate himself", grinds (those of chocolate or coffee) being a metaphor for the clitoris. The work is transparent glass and although the two fields remain forever separate from one another, they are united by whatever landscape or object is seen behind. Duchamp thought of simultaneous reflection as a representation of infinity and often used glass or mirrors in his work as relevant to his idea[3]. In this work then, he manages to negotiate ecstasy and eternity. This is a similar design to the specially treated screen of translucent glass with silver mirror backing he developed for the first screening of Anémic-Cinéma[4].

Both The Large Glass and Anémic-Cinéma were debuted in 1926, at the height of the Surrealist movement, exhibiting an excess that we will not see again in Marcel Duchamp’s career. If Dada was a reaction to the War Machine, then the idea of The Great Glass and perhaps even Anémic-Cinéma was dreamed of much earlier and found its release in the Surrealist period. Co-creator Man Ray is quoted as saying: “In fact I was a surrealist before being a photographer”[5]. Actually, this is not film at all but rather "precision optics". Duchamp wrote that he would be disappointed if these discs were taken as "anything but optics"[6]; placing it by the filmmakers own words with in an optical cinema or abstraction cinema. This is a new way of "seeing" art, rather than relying on cinéma pur to do it for us. Unlike Return to Reason (1923), it is not abstract visually but abstract in the fact that that it refuses a coherent diogesis or story space. The film is elegant in its simplicity. As we already know, it is a series of rotoreliefs rhythmically paced and interplayed with lines of poetry.

How shall we define the words? Are they ready-mades with a camera turned on them? In my research I discovered that the words had been pasted, letter by letter, in a spiral pattern on round black discs that were then glued to phonograph records; slowly revolving[7]. Even a phonograph record, an otherwise finished product of art was "pressed" into service to create still more art. This is the definition of the ready-made. Ready-mades are finished products, a bicycle wheel or ceramic urinal for example, that are taken out of their conventional context and placed in a new one. They are treated by the artist as a raw material for their art, and while they are seemingly easy to procure, they are manifested at the end of a long intellectual process. Dalia Judovitz writes in her essay from the reader, Anemic Vision in Duchamp: Cinema as Readymade, "This decontextualization of the object's functional place draws attention to the creation of this artistic meaning by the choice of the setting and position ascribed to the object[8]. Further Judovitz writes on the subject of ready-mades, "esthetic representation is less about objects proper... then about conceptual operations in visual and discursive contexts"[9]. In short, they represent a deeply intellectual art, rather than a beautiful or “retinal” art that is pleasing to the eye. A retinal retention, if you will. Duchamp is quoted: "...our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists, who tried to go outside it somewhat..."[10]

Are the words themselves arranged as simple nonsense, acting as objets trouvés and thrown up in front of us? Marcel Duchamp was fascinated by language and "his conception of words as entities separate from meaning"[11]. He explored the use of alliteration (where the front part of a word phonetically rhymes), consonnance (where the back end does) and visual puns in his art. The title Anémic-Cinéma is itself an imperfect mirror of the word cinéma; one word used twice. The poetry is similar to automatic writing, that of writing in an altered or uncontrolled state revealing your deepest unconscious desires. P. Adams Sitney quotes Jean Epstein in The Instant of Love from our reader: The filmmakers experience is tied to an unmasking of the self[12].

Or are the words Intertitles? According to our text book Visionary Film, intertitles are acknowledged in the silent era as a conscious aesthetic problem[13]. At the time it was "standard procedure to introduce each film episode with a title - almost a chapter heading - which would provide whatever information the director thought important in establishing the context, time, place and emphasis of the scene to follow". Let's keep this in mind as we reflect on the nine lines of poetry written by Robert Desnos, as it may become important later. Desnos himself saw the title as an integral part of the art of cinema. "Everything that can be projected on the screen belongs in cinema, letters as well as faces... it is in the mind that the quest for purity must occur"[14]. Quoted later, he says “There was no thought of creating a work of art or a new aesthetic but only of obeying profound, original impulses, consequently necessitating a new form”[15].

(Emphasis mine)

All at once then, these spare lines of poetry are imbued with layers of meaning, "an endless train of associations"[16]. Katrina Martin's essay on Anémic-Cinéma is the foremost authority on what the words mean but it requires a fluency in French, both formal and slang that exceeds the limits and purposes of this class and so I will simply recommend that it is read and I have a brief synopsis of their themes, but I warn you the following is obscene:

1. "Baths of vulgar tea for beauty marks, without too much Ben Gay". A discourse on elegance and vulgarity (i.e. tea and shit), allusion to foreplay without consummation.

2. "The child who nurses is a sucker of hot flesh and does not like the cauliflower of the hot glass house." This can be reduced to: The one who gives head does not like prostitutes, or rather a rejection of vaginal sex. Allusion to homosexuality; frustration, oral sex is not consummation.

3. "If I give you a penny, will you give me a pair of scissors?" Banal and obvious: money for sex with a female/castration anxiety where scissors are a woman's legs.

4. "They are asking for some domesticated mosquitoes for the nitrogen cure on the French Riviera". Banal again: a want ad style imbued with new meaning; juxtaposition. Having herpes and allowing the air to cure it.

5. "The only problem with incest is there is too much sex."

6. "Lets us disdain the perversions of Eskimos who have seductive sophistication." Wife-sharing

7. "Have you ever put the marrow of the sword into the stove of the loved one?" Incest. There is also the self-reflexive allusion to the viewer of Anémic-Cinéma as a voyeur or spy, asking this embarrassing question to us directly.

8. Want Ad style again: "Among our articles of lazy hardware, we recommend the faucet stops running when no one is listening to it." This is the frustrated banality of the sexual impulse that can not be controlled by societal restrictions or even free will. This idea is truest in the signature of the author at the end of the film: Rrose Selavy or "Eros, c'est la vie!" translated as Sexual love, that's life! This takes the Freudian view, espoused by the surrealist that one is ultimately a slave to his animal desires.

9. The aspiring one (or candidate) lives in Javel and me; I had my penis in the spiral. There is some understanding that the candidate is drowning, or trying to breath, underneath javelin water (bleach) and that the vortex of the mouth is the spiral. So, to wind up, after our assumed confession to point seven regarding whether we have committed the act of incest or not, Duchamp feels now is a good time for a confession of his own auto-erotic pleasures.

All sources agree on the strong sexual emphasis but Visionary Film argues that it is ultimately an erotic timidity, or anemia, coupled with its rejection of space and human action that results in a frustration rather than release. Katrina Martin agrees that frustration is apparent in The Large Glass. She writes "In The Large Glass, intercourse was never achieved. The Bride was left hanging"[17]. The pulsing eroticism of the spirals has deformed language until it is virtually nonsensical. So, even the purpose of language as signifier is frustrated. Filmically the words are -quite literally! - tightly wound, boxed into a confined space in close up. Compared to these lines, the interlude of rotorelief spirals are relaxing, non-taxing. While the wild subject matter is deeply offensive to moral sensibilities, Duchamp is merely playing at porn; optical precision porn to displace our retinal retention.

As an intellectual cinema this is not a film, or even porn, for the masses. Instead, one must be in on the joke. "In", first physically, by being part of the private screening as a subset of this artist's circle and figuratively "in" that one must be willing to be affronted by what their subconscious or interior may pose. Despite its shock value, none of these sexual unions can produce a viable heir; incest leads to compromised genetics, self-satisfaction and homosexuality can bear no fruit on its own. Ultimately Anémic-Cinéma is a study of all the ways one can find oneself frustrated by sexual impulse. Only the spirals pulse with erotic truth. Instead of rotoreliefs, they should be called "erotic-reliefs".

---

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bride_Stripped_Bare_by_Her_Bachelors,_Even

[2] Katrina Martin, "Marcel Duchamp's Anemic-Cinema", Studio International 189/973 [Jan-Feb. 1975]: 53-60.

[3] Katrina Martin.

[4] Dalia Judovitz, "Anemic Vision in Duchamp: Cinema as Readymade", Dada and Surrealist Film. Kuenzil, Rudon E., ed. New York: Willis Locker & Owens, 1987. pg 46 - 57.

[5] P. Hammond, ed. Man Ray “Cinemage”. The Shadow and its shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema. London: BFI, 1978. pg. 85

[6] Katrina Martin.

[7] http://www.ubu.com/film/_anemic.html

[8] Dalia Judovitz.

[9] Dalia Judovitz.

[10] Dalia Judovitz.

[11] Dalia Judovitz.

[12] P. Adams Sitney, quoting Jean Epstein. "The Instant of Love: Image and Title in Surrealist Cinema", Modernist Montage. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1990. pg. 17-37.

[13] P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The Avant-Garde [VF]. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. pg 372-373.

[14] P. Adams Sitney.

[15] P. Hammond, ed. Robert Desnos “Avant-Garde Cinema”. The Shadow and its shadow: Surrealist Writings on Cinema. London: BFI, 1978. pg. 36-38.

[16] Dalia Judovitz.

[17] Katrina Martin.

All Cheerleaders Die (FILM review)

Ok, so this started 30 minutes late and I was standing outside for close to an hour which irritates me. 

(Big shout-out to my new friend-in-line, Leif!) 

The cheerleaders doing stunts outside were a great gimmick. While it has some clever dialogue, in the absence of a serious plot, they just turned the volume to 10 and hoped for the best. After 90 minutes of waiting, I raced to the abandoned bathroom only to hear the sound of the movie increase as I approached the ladies room door. I thought I was going crazy when suddenly a stunningly beautiful woman, ultra slim, elegantly tanned (every square inch) in a silver floor-length slip-dress burst from the bathroom dragging her fur chubby with a handsome pompadoured man in hot pursuit. Given the perfectly large diamond ring on her delicate left hand, I assumed he was her fiance. She was full tilt screaming and crying. He had to practically hold her up, such was her complete desolation. Her beautiful face was like a scrunched up nose. I suppose they had been in there to gather her composure, but it didn't work. He hugged her while she wailed something about contracts, film shoots and whether or not she "signed anything".
And so begins TIFF... (Ask me about the time Sean Penn almost walked into me)

27-inch waist

Once upon a time, deep in the suburbs, a handsome young man who was gay laughingly described his first sexual experience: 

“We were watching TV and the next thing I knew she was riding me”. 

I am reminded of that statement when I tell the following story:

There is a woman in my office with a 27-inch waist. It is not easy. It takes all of her time and concentration to keep it that way. She spent a year whittling it down. Eating less, taking energy powders, extreme gym memberships and most of all, eating less. She started dieting after she was fired from her last job. Generously, they gave her a year of severance. She dieted until her breasts disappeared. She dieted until her skin became dry, her forehead creased and her hair started to thin. She kept dieting until it fell out. When her mother began to complain, she just cut into a short bob so it’s harder to tell how thin it is. She talks about weight loss and new clothes all the time. By the time she arrived at our office, she was wearing 14 inch skirts and 3 inch heels. It’s quite a sight and she had trouble in the beginning getting people to take her seriously.

How she got to this place is how a lot of women find themselves on the cusp of thirty. If single and stuck in their career, they overcompensate by becoming very controlling of their environment. She controls everything she does. She even controls what other people do. I once ate a salad with her and she complained that I hadn’t mixed it enough. She complained so many times, that I let her mix it for me. Right there in public she attacked my $15 salad with a fork and all of her stick-thin arm muscles for a whole minute, cracking and stabbing and stirring with all her might. She is fairly high strung.

There are women out there who, upon mention of The Rules, exclaim “Oh yeah, I know ALL The Rules”. Ms. 27-inch waist is one of them. Then again there are close to 40 rules… There are only 10 commandments and I have yet to meet a person who can name all of them on the first try. Because she succeeded in losing so much weight and getting a new job, she felt she knew everything. She had a lingering residue of superiority that greased everything she touched. And so here’s what happened…

One of the Rules is that if you like a man, stop communicating that to everyone, most of all him. Especially of he works in your office. This means, do not talk about him to your colleagues, do not flirt with him, do not send him cute emails and do not approach his desk for any reason. And keep it to a minimum if your job absolutely requires it. Well, that’s not what she did. Ms. 27-inch waist wiggled her way around the office and leaned against his cubicle partition with her arms dangling engaging him in conversation every afternoon at 3pm. She liked him because he worked out. She invited him to her gym. She arranged lunch dates. She asked him over to her apartment and she initiated sex. She encouraged him to get a better car and move out of his parent’s basement. She treated him like my salad: a work-in-progress that she needed to improve upon with her good ideas. In exchange, she started attending church with him on Sundays. She thought this was fair.

There was only one problem. 

He hadn’t broken up with his girlfriend (GF) yet. 

He thought that was fair.

Well, that’s not true. He had mentally decided he was no longer going to be her boyfriend, but he had not stopped sleeping with her. And GF had not stopped attending church with his family, or going to Sunday dinner afterwards. And neither one had stopped calling the other whenever they needed something. That’s because he had done this before and GF knew that if she sat tight she would eventually be that last one standing.

For him, the frenzy of the new relationship lasted for 30 days. They did not date. He came over and they had sex. That was the extent of the relationship. For Ms. 27-inch waist, during the same 30 days she started talking about marriage to anyone who would listen. She said things like “Last year was all about my health, this year is all about marriage”, the common theme being herself. She also explained how she met the old girlfriend and forgave her beau for not advising GF that he had moved on with Ms. 27-inch waist. She was very polite. She said she took the high road. (Interesting I have just finished a book written by a PhD called "Fierce Conversations", in it she describes the phrase "taking the high road" as permission to have an inauthentic conversation.)

As the sexual thrill wore off, he began to pull back to catch his breath. The Rules are prepared for this. They advise that you acknowledge what is happening and follow his example, get busy with other things (like the life you abandoned to fit this dude in) and the endeavor to take a breath before you do something you may regret. This is a prime opportunity to determine with a clear head if this guy is really a part of your future. If he is, he will seek you out so that you have no doubts. This is the wisdom of the Rules.

Unfortunately, Ms. 27-inch waist did not take this in stride. She began to call him asking where he was, what he was doing and when he would come over. To appease her, they planned a road trip to Florida for a week to visit his bartender friend (see above: he didn’t have a road-worthy car). She had hang ups about alcohol, afraid it would interfere with her weight. Boozing all day on the beach was not her idea of fun. But when they fought, he called her high-strung and she agreed with him, blaming herself.

Upon their return, he stopped taking her calls. He told her that he was ultimately looking for someone with less sexual experience than she had. He threw her sexual availability back in her face. She tried to talk him out of his position, but he held firm knowing that he had his GF waiting in the wings. She was devastated.

None of this would have happened if she had done the Rules. Like many people, she chose her partner based on his looks, and it went poorly. She wanted a boyfriend who worked out and this dude fit the bill. She did absolutely nothing to determine what kind of person he was. She didn’t ask anyone’s opinion. She did not even allow him to take her out on a date, deciding instead to lead with her vagina. She ignored obvious red flags when he clearly had another GF and didn’t take her alcohol concerns into account. She just barreled in, believing that she could control this situation. Here’s the crazy thing: while the woman is a royal pain in the ass, I think they might have had a chance if she had relaxed her grip and let him come to her without the promise of easy sex.  This woman failed because she tried to hogtie a man who is obviously destined for someone else (and I do not necessarily mean GF), rather than look around for the one who might be looking for her. I know that life is only worth living if it is lived authentically and trying to talk a guy into your idea of marriage is a recipe for disaster.

But not one to surrender, Ms. 27-inch waist has continued to stoke the fire and the relationship has limped along as all useless endeavors do. She invites him to the odd work function (read: free food and drink) and sometimes he shows up. When he doesn’t I have heard that she mopes about leaving comments in her wake like “my personal life is in ruins”. Now she is entering the drama-infused portion of the non-relationship. The Rules are prepared for this as well; they call it a Fantasy Relationship. This is a relationship that exists entirely in your own head. It never stops being attractive because it’s entirely safe and controllable. You will recognize it because it will be entirely one-sided. The Rules recommend that when you find yourself in a Fantasy Relationship, to immediately get a grip and stop lying to yourself. The result is that this woman has become talked about in the office, so now her bad choices are affecting her career. This is a slippery slope. I would love to reach out to her, but she’s not one to take anyone’s advice. We all know women like that.

UPDATE: The man transferred to another office a few months ago and they apparently broke up. Ms. 27-inch waist has been spotted draped attractively (in very tight pants) over the desk of another eligible bachelor.

The Canyons (FILM Review)

That's her spirit leaving her body.

Dear {insert name},

You missed a doozy. It’s immediately going to become a cult classic. I actually was experiencing all the feelings so I’m not even sure my distillation will be satisfactory.

Cons:

1.The extreme over-acting by all the males in the film.

2. Lilo is puffy-faced and still drug-addicted, so her little head fidgets and she wipes her nose during takes involuntarily.

3. To counteract this, she got botox which seriously undermines her facial movements and she insisted on that heavy black Cleopatra makeup which was distracting and poorly done. Result = She has the largest double-chin in celluloid history.

4. The lighting was amateurish and the camera kept swaying in the breeze for no apparent reason.

Pros:

1. The sex. Tons of male full-frontal. The rumours are true: James Deen is well-hung.
2. The gloriously seedy underbelly of ultra rich young Hollywood.
3. Lilo’s still got her acting chops. Still. There. Underneath. It. All.

 So think back: Remember American Psycho? This is American Psycho: LA.

Christian is in LA, still hating his father, still abusing women and still using his trust fund for drugs and sex. He lives in a magnificent home in the Hollywood Hills (I imagine?) with his girlfriend of about a year, Tara (Lilo). The entire movie is EXPOSITION. The actors are telling us a story, quite literally, and badly. We are filled in on timelines running from 1 month ago eventually stretching back to 3 years ago when all the real action happened. (They is why the writer BEE sucks. He is under the impression that such vapid characters would retain wounds that are really ancient history. It’s a fiction that all his stupid novels are based on. Today’s twenty-somethings can’t remember their own phone numbers much less what they were feeling 3 years ago.)

Anyway, in an effort to impress his father Christian becomes involved with a production company and a small-budget film looking for a male lead. As a lark, between “shopping and fucking”, Tara gets involved and helps choose the lead – Ryan - and then disappears back to doing nothing at Christan’s house. The production assistant misses her and invites her to lunch to talk. Tara is nervous but happy and sings Christian’s praises. We learn that this was set up by Christian and all Tara’s words are being recorded for Christian in his fast Audi blazing down the sun-drenched highway to his mistress, his “yoga instructor”. Christian is also stealing Tara’s phone and having her followed.

Turns out – through unbelievable holes in the plot – that the male lead and Tara shared a happy history living together 3 years ago when they were broke and in love. But neither of them hit it big and she sold her soul to be some rich man’s muse and abandoned Ryan to his life of bartending/ auditions and when times really get tough – male prostitution. Now  that they’ve re-connected he won’t leave her alone and they have a month long affair; which she tearfully – she’s always wet in this movie – can’t live with and can’t live without.

To separate her from Christian, Ryan has the yoga mistress tell Tara that Christian is dangerous, roofied her, ran a train on her and she ended up in the hospital. Tara with typically bravado laughs in the girls face and then spits this info back at Christian.

Should I spoil the plot? Here goes…

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED

Christian retaliates by killing yoga mistress and weakly framing Ryan. This killing *may* have been precipitated by the previous nights se>< adventure wherein Christian brought another couple to bed and a 4-way ensues (nothing to report, lots of blurred images and red light) EXCEPT Tara engineers Christian to engage in homo se>< which he really enjoys. Tara appears to know Christian better than he knows himself and the plot flirts with the idea that perhaps Tara has been in control all along. This unmans him and he awakes by knocking Tara against a wall. When he returns from his killing, Tara has bags packed and begs for her release. Christian gives it in exchange for a steel trap alibi as to his whereabouts for the previous few hours and finally: That she never see Ryan again or Christian will kill him and will get away with it.

So we are abruptly thrown forward in time one year (?) and the closing scene opens as the movie opened, with two couples finishing up dinner in LA. Tara has just returned from Dubai with her current man who spent the time in “meetings”. The other female begins to quiz Tara on the events of her and Christian’s relationship ending with the death of yoga mistress …etc. Tara is nervous and fidgety, sticks to the story. The female gets up and goes to the washroom and calls a man – presumably Christian – to report all that she said. But it’s not Christian …it’s Ryan she is speaking to. The virus of obsession has transferred and infected the onetime golden boy, sitting cold and alone in an empty room.

This is the spirit being re-inserted.