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Short Film - 22mn
Black & White
Silent film
ScreenplayFrancis Picabia
CinematographyJimmy Berliet
MusicErik Satie
CastJean Börlin, Francis Picabia, Erik Satie,
Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Marcel Achard
GenreFiction
First ReleaseNovember 27, 1924
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SynopsisAn absolute surrealistic movie : somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a surrelistic chase it stops. The person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin disapear…
AboutEntr’acte is the first film of René Clair, which premiered as an entr’acte for Relâche, a dadaïste ballet, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the November 27, 1924. Relache is a ballet in two acts by Francis Picabia. Erik Satie contributed the music to both the film and the ballet. In this way, we can consider that Entr’acte is the first intervention of the cinema on the stage of dance.
Of course, the film does not have a narrative structure, and thus corresponded with Picabia’s conviction that real sensual pleasures have nothing to do with explainable logic. The connections, which Clair carried out by means of recurring images, are unobtrusive (e.g., the brief cut-in at the very beginning of the film of an image from the later pursuit sequence). The death theme is hidden between fun and entertainment (closing the lid of the coffin in the first part, resurrection from the coffin at the end). The longest continuous passage is devoted to the pursuit of a hearse hung with sausages and being drawn by a dromedary. This pursuit begins in slow motion and gradually speeds up until, ultimately, all that one sees are treetops flashing by which dissolve into blurred spots. The music by Erik Satie (1866 -1925) entitled Cinéma,
is his last composition.
About this avant-guarde short film, Picabia has said : « it respects nothing, if it is not the right to roar”.
Selective filmography of René Clair(1898-1981)
1925 – Le fantôme du Moulin-Rouge
1930 – Sous les toits de Paris
1931 – A nous la liberté
1952 – Les belles de nuit
1955 – Les grandes manœuvres
With the courtesy ofBFI
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