Anemic Cinema

Well, what can one say about this? Seven minutes of spirals and circles and nonsensical sentences or sentence-fragments in French, an experiment in revolution I suppose you could say. Duchamp's only known film as director, obviously a conjunction of formalist exercise and dadaist nonsense. I won't say it wore out its welcome, but I'm also glad it wasn't any longer. Watched on YouTube in an OK copy but most with a real interest in the avant-garde will want to catch it on Kino's excellent "Avant-Garde #1 with other experimental works from the silent and early sound periods including works from Man Ray, Joris Ivens, etc.

Not really "rateable" I think, though I'm doing it anyway...

This is the only film directed by French artist Marcel Duchamp, whose name is associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements (who doesn't remember the urinal exhibited with the title "Fountain"?). As other similar avantgarde works made by Man Ray, Hans Richter or Fernand Léger, there's not a plot, only moving shapes and objects, in an attempt to deny the vision of art as contemplation and ecstasy. All we see here is only wheeling spirals and disks in which we can read sentences that apparently have nothing to do with the film. So it's impossible to comment this short the way you can comment any other non-avantgarde movies. It's Dada. It's strange. It's incomprehensible and also a bit monotonous, but we can forgive the genius Man Ray for this.

And what to think of it I am not sure. Basically it is made up of interchanging rotating spirals and rotating discs with text written on them in French. The text is short and in doesn't add up to much. Except for various kinds of dizziness there is nothing else here than what you can theorize around it.

It is a piece of dada-art where things were put out of context and therefore gains a new meaning or get incomprehensible. One example is Duchamps signed urinal and like that it almost requires to be put in a gallery to get meaning from it.

It is photographed by the great visualist Man Ray, but you cant notice as it is fixed in the same position for the whole duration of the movie (6 minutes).

This is just one of many strange films from the DVD collection "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941" and it's from Disc 3. "Anemic Cinema" is a short film from Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was a Surrealist and Dadaist and loved provocation--such as proclaiming a urinal to be a piece of art.

The film consists of rotating spirals and inscriptions that are VERY hypnotic. The inscriptions are in French and I have no idea what they say, but considering it's a Dadaist film, it probably doesn't matter. It's a black & white film made during the 1920s and must have confused the life out of audiences back then, as even today with our more 'modern' sensibilities, it would be a tough-sell trying to get audiences to watch and appreciate this art film. Not terrible but certain a film that defies your ability to give it any sort of numerical rating.

Anemic Cinema (1926) is a short film consisting simply of spirals and text. This short is very avant-garde and leaves a lot to the audiences interpretation, but it was strangely hypnotic.

If you decide to watch this please watch it without sound as, in my opinion, the spirals create a rhythm of their own and I got a lot more out of my watch when the video was muted.

This film, even though incredibly simplistic, was interesting and felt quite progressive. It was definitely something I needed to delve into and do research after watching but I'm glad I did!

The use of text is intriguing, for example, the title itself is almost a palindrome which I found pretty cool. Also, the text spirals get slower as you read further in, i fell like there's meaning to this. The phrases written are almost child-like and read like a tongue twister, however some quite 'controversial' language is used which feels oxymoronic

For me, the spirals partly represent how film makes you FEEL, rather than the direct actions you watch on screen. The whole movie is a massive metaphor and definitely not for everyone, but it was certainly fun to look into!