Ballet mécanique

This film is a very interesting short. To fully understand it you have to put your self in a mindset of someone in the 1920's when machines were starting to do jobs that humans typically did, were we being replaced by our own creations. It's scary and beautiful and shows machines as humanistic and humans as mechanical and visa versa. However, what I found most interesting was the score which was composed when the film was made in the 20's but couldn't be preformed or recorded until today as it requires 16 synchronized player pianos. This score was well worth the wait, it is one of the most interesting beautiful and shocking pieces of music I have ever heard. If the idea of music written for xylophones, sirens, a piano, 4 percussionists, an airplane propeller, buzzers, and the aforementioned player pianos intrigues you then you should hear the score however possible.

Note: the score of which I'm referring isn't on all versions of this film, as it was not recorded as intended until 1999 so make sure you see this film with the music you were supposed to see it with or you will be sorely missing out.

1924. While everyone else is screwing with "feature" films with subtitles and storylines, along comes Ballet Mecanique. A fifteen minute experimental masterpiece, that walks the fine line of boredom/pointlessness and excitement/entertainment. This particular film was showing in the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, and was a visual treat playing in the same section as the Picaso.

Leger and Murphy used magic and early optical illusions, such as looping segments and split screens. The repetitive movements of the steel machines, match those of the live action people doing work, or even the comical puppet like figure that dances across the screen to create a mechanical ballet. Be it mechanical movements of humans, or mechanical movements of machines. Something tells me I should make a parallel between the man-machine imagery and the 70's electronic German godfathers, Kraftwerk. It's the Europeans I tell ya...they bring us all the best art as entertainment. Every image, from the smiling girl, to the numbered cards all serve a purpose in the grande scheme of Ballet Mecanique.

I really encourage anybody in the Toronto area, or anyone visiting Toronto, to go to the Art Gallery of Ontario to check out Ballet Mecanique. It's on a continual loop. I could have stayed watching it all day. Very spellbinding.

This excellent surrealist short is a highly imaginative montage of images of people interspersed with machinery. It doesn't have any narrative whatsoever; instead it concentrates on presenting images in a variety of interesting ways. It's more about one central idea – the connection between man and his machines – being expanded on and expressed through an avant-garde art film; in this case via the styles of Surrealism and Dada. The steady pace mimics the mechanised tempo of the machinery depicted in the film. The images themselves are highly imaginative, incorporating a variety of camera trickery and optical illusions, coupled with repeated shots, way before Andy Warhol had similar ideas. It's overall, a very beautiful and compelling presentation. For anybody at all interested in 1920's art films, this is a must. It's well worth 15 minutes of your time.

French abstract painter Fernand Leger was swept up in the first month of The Great War when France was being overrun by the Germans in August 1914. Spending two years on the front, he almost died in Verdun during a mustard gas attack. Leger had a lasting image of the mechanics of the war during his convalescence in the hospital, describing "I was stunned by the sight of the breech of a 75 millimeter in the sunlight, in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in ... made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility." After the war Leger became fixated by mechanical images, with his paintings dominated by tubular and machine-like forms. Once his fame spread as a canvass artist, he became intrigued with how cinema could give his art an extra dimension. When asked to design a movie set for a laboratory sequence in director Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 'L'Inhumaine,' Leger immediately embarked on an experimental short film with photographer/artist Man Ray. His effort produced September 1924's "Ballet Mecanique (Mechanical Ballet)." Filmmaker Dudley Murphy, more familiar with the technology of movie producing, assisted Leger on his project, now considered a masterpiece in experimental film.

Embracing Cubist and Dada aesthetics, Leger took over 300 shots to compress his 15-minute film into a collage of images, live action and others abstractions of lights and lines. The beauty of "Ballet Mecanique" is that individuals are able to arrive at their own personal interpretations of the film's meanings. The juxtapositions of the mechanical cylinders with an old woman carrying a large bag repeatedly up stairs in a loop-edited sequence reflects for some viewers that mechanical inventions are replacing age-old human manual labor for efficiency. The reoccurring Cubist images of Charlie Chaplin are scattered throughout the program.

A special musical score by composer George Antheil premiered two years after the film was released in a June 1926 Paris theater. The cacophonous music stirred up the passions of some viewers at its opening, causing fights between admirers and detractors of Leger's movie in the street after the show.

I would not recommend this film to anyone not interested in the cubist painter Leger, or in the dada and surrealist films of the 1920s. Fascinating for its primitive use of montage and eye-line match, the film is just an experiment with different rhythms and images. Your experience may differ grandly depending on the soundtrack that accompanies it. Most videotapes produced of the film have dinky little organ melodies that really take away from the ballet-like beauty of movement that Leger was going for. In the end, the film's value lies in its historical and fine art historical importance.