Art: Avant-Garde films from 1915 to 1940
Avant-Garde is a French term that means advance guard. It means that this kind of art is edge cutting, original and new, with ideas ahead of their time. This group of filmmakers was creative in their innovation, applying new techniques and concepts in their work. Avant-garde filmmakers generally begin as amateurs experimenting and eventually finding their way in filmmaking. Their aim is usually to render the personal vision of an artist or promote interest in new technology, instead that entertain or generate revenue.
Germaine Dulac’s background, career, and colleagues
This paper will focus on Germaine Dulac, one of Avant-Garde filmmakers between 1915 and 1940. She is best known for her impressionist film, The Smiling Madame Beudet in 1922/23 and her surrealist experiment in The Seashell and the Clergyman in 1928. Dulac studied painting music and theatre in Paris but later got interested in socialism and feminism, with a career in journalism. She then started writing for a feminist magazine, La Francaise, where she eventually became the drama critic. While working for the magazine, Dulac interviewed a variety of established France women intending to solidifying the role of women in French society and politics. She also found time to work for oh the editorial staff for La Fronde, a radical feminist journal at the time. Dulac also began to pursue her interest in photography, which preceded her entry into filmmaking.
Germaine Dulac became interested in film in 1914 through her friend, Stacia, who was an actress. The two traveled to Italy before world war I, whereby Dulac learned the basics of film making. Upon return to France, Dulac decided to start a film company, and with the support of her husband, Louis-Albert Dulac, and writer Irene Hillel-Erlanger, they founded D.H. Films. All the films produced by this company between 1915 and 1920, were written by Hillel-Erlanger and directed by Dulac. In her movies, she frequently contrasted the modernity of the French capital to the provincial nature of rural France.
Besides being a filmmaker, Dulac became the president of a group that promotes the work of young filmmakers called Federation des cine-clubs. Dulac also taught film courses at Ecole Technique de Photographie et de Cinematographie on the rue de Vaugirard.
In her filmmaking career, Dulac worked with her actress friend, Eva Francis, in Dulac’s company’s first film, Ames de fous, in 1918, which was her early major success. In 1920, Dulac collaborated with her husband and produced Spanish Fiesta, which featured Eva Francis. The film was proclaimed as one of the most influential and a dominant French impressionist cinema works during the time.
Germaine Dulac was the first feminist filmmaker. Being the first feminist filmmaker is mostly overlooked in history, together with her role as a pioneer in innovator of modern cinema. Her work also influenced the French Cinema pur film movement. In 1921, Dulac reflected on her meeting with D. W. Griffith, after which she wrote an article titled Chez D. W. Griffith. In the article, she wrote about the autonomy for cinema as an independent art free from influences of painting and literature and the importance of a filmmaker as an individual artistic, creative force.
Through her filmmaking, writing, and cine-club activism, Dulac’s passionate defense of cinema as a musical art and social practice had a significant influence on twentieth-century film history and theory. She was a precursor to the surrealist films of Luis Bunuel and a crucial champion of Jean Vigo. She wrote passionately about pure cinema, elaborating ideas that linked cinema to dance. She set the pace for artists like Maya Deren and was, therefore, too far ahead of her time as a female filmmaker.
During her time, Dulac was considered a dangerous woman because of her way of thinking. As a feminist and an artist, Dulac believed in extending the range of power and film. She used her movies to criticize society, the effects of conformity and authority on society. She often explored marital discord and drifted to delirious evocations of dream states and general angst. Dulac was not afraid to question or take risks.
The Smiling Madame Beudet
Produced by Germaine Dulac in 1922, The Smiling Madame Beudet was the first feminist film initially written by Guy De Maupassant; a French author considered the father of modern short story. The film explores the role of a woman in society, especially the domestic wife. Told from Madame Beudet’s perspective, the film uses symbolism and fantasy to express her frustrations. The plot of the film revolves around a wife, Madame Beudet, trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband who finds joy in performing a suicide parody with an empty gun. Scholars label this film as an impressionist, silent film. Impressionism is characterized by editing techniques that augment the beauty of the image and evokes the character’s psychological state.
Dulac uses symbolism further when her brutal husband controls Madame Beudet’s life in every aspect. In the film, her husband literary controls everything, including hold the key to a piano, which Madame Beudet loves to play and rearranging flowers after she carefully arranges them. The constant fiddling of her husband shows how men have complete control over women, even in the most delicate tasks. The women are not given the freedom to thrive even in the confines of their homes.
The film also conjures the battle between an oppressive state of domesticity and the liberating state of fantasy. Madame Beudet uses imagination throughout the film to escape from the troubles of her daily life, trapped in an unhappy marriage. When her maid asks for a day off to visit her fiancé, moved by the eagerness, Madame Beudet fantasizes about how happy this couple must be, revealing how she yearns for love. She consumes herself in fits of ecstasy and agony.
Two kinds of time in the film also collide as depicted by Dulac through the accumulative repetition of absurd rituals and gestures. The time of habit and the time of certain events. The recurrence of a lousy joke whereby Monsieur Beudet performs suicide parody on three different occasions and the return to a typical day when Madame Beudet arranges her flowers and her husband messes them. The collision of the two different times is resolved when Madame Beudet puts a bullet in the gun, and Monsieur Beudet points the gun at her. The decisive event fails to save her from her loveless marriage as she would have wished.
There is intelligence associated with the imagination of The Smiling Madame Beudet. Madame Beudet may regret what she has done, but at least she can face her desires. On the other hand, Monsieur Beudet suffers double blindness in that he does not know his wishes and those of his wife. He is unable to contemplate that his wife can put her freedom before his life and thinks that she wanted to commit suicide.
In this film, Germaine Dulac is fighting for the worthiness of a woman. When Madame Beudet contemplates asking for a divorce, she looked in the mirror and saw an unattractive woman who would end up single and no longer equipped with beauty to earn her a worthy man. Without a man, even though she was a modern woman, Madame Beudet was nothing during the time. The film, therefore, brings out the importance of both genders having equal opportunities and equal rights.
While Dulac was pro pure cinema, her colleague Antonin Artaud, who wrote the screenplay for The Seashell and the Clergyman, was against pure cinema claiming that it was devoid of emotions. These differences resulted in a row during the premiere of the film as Antonin was not present. He deemed the movie as unsuccessful, which had dire consequences as screening of the film was aborted, affecting the entire film. As a result, even though it was the first surrealist film, it was overshadowed by The Andalusian Dog produced by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel in 1929, which is mostly considered as the first surrealist film. Dulac believed in the film’s unique plasticity, unlike Antonin Artaud.
Critics consideration
Avant-garde critics use diverse strategies, especially when they are artists themselves. Greenberg was one of the art critics when avant-garde films were produced. He attempted to use the cultural climate in his favor when he argued that Avant-Garde art was too innocent to be effectively used for a bent cause. Greenberg appropriated a German word, kitsch, to describe the low concocted form of culture. He also claimed that real avant-garde art is a product of enlightenment’s revolution of critical thinking as it is against culture degradation both in the mainstream capitalist and communist societies.
Avant-garde promotes radical and social reforms, meaning that an artist goes beyond the boundaries of what is considered as a norm. Critics, therefore, manipulate cultural barriers to suit their opinions. Greenberg, in his argument, stated that avant-garde is against the mainstream cultural values and often has a trenchant social or political edge.
In the film The Smiling Madame Beudet, Dulac goes against the mainstream culture where the woman is supposed to submit to her husband. She dares to include the fantasy aspect, which is probably against the culture. The film is written from a woman’s point of view, revealing her desires. Avant-garde also goes beyond the boundaries of the cultural expectations where a woman is not allowed to express her passions in the way Madame Beudet does.
Conclusion
As an avant-garde artist, Germaine Dulac was able to experiment her way through filmmaking. In the process, she was able to depict feminism, impressionism, and surrealism in her work. Her work set a precedent for artists who were looking to make a career in filmmaking in the early twentieth century.
Works cited
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Last name, First name. Italicized Title of Book in Title Case. City: Publisher, year. Medium of publication.
Last name, First name. Italicized Title of Book in Title Case. City: Publisher, year. Medium of publication.