The shell and the cleric

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Movie
German title The shell and the cleric
Original title La Coquille et le Clergyman
La coquille et le clergyman 1.jpg
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1928
length 600 meters, at 18 frames per second approx. 38 minutes
Rod
Director Germaine Dulac
script Antonin Artaud
production Délia film
music Iris ter Schiphorst (2004)
camera Paul Parguel ,
Paul Guichard
occupation

The Shell and the Cleric (original title: La Coquille et le Clergyman , alternatively Die Shell and the Clergyman ) is a French short silent film that Germaine Dulac made in 1927 based on a screenplay by Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) for her production company Délia Film. Even before Buñuel and Dalí , it is considered the first surrealist work in film history.

action

A young priest, trapped in the oedipal triangle between an unreachable woman and a jovial-dominant man , can win the fight for her favor against this officer, who is decorated with medals, but has to face, from unfulfilled longing, castration fear and destruction rage - and torn apart, finally fail because of his mental conflicts.

background

Germaine Dulac not only made the film, but also produced it. The model was provided by the theater director and playwright Antonin Artaud , who had joined the Surrealists movement around André Breton in 1924 .

When The Shell and the Cleric premiered on February 9, 1928 in Paris in the Studio des Ursulines , a cinema in the Rue des Ursulines in the 5th arrondissement in Paris, there was a scandal between Artaud and Dulac. He was not satisfied with the implementation of his script and accused the director of lifting his scenario into the realm of dreams and thus completely defusing the fact that she had "feminized" the book.

After the premiere in Paris, the film was also shown in Hungary and Poland, overseas, Argentina and Japan , where it did not premiere until February 16, 1933. The owner of the rights is Jean-Michel Mareau.

reception

At the time when the avant-garde of the visual arts discovered the new medium of film as a “welcome playground”, Die Muschel und der Kleriker broke two years before an Andalusian dog with the (new) viewing habits that the audience had just internalized. The film service found that every scene was bursting with "visual showpieces such as double exposures, fades, distortions and extreme sharpness / blurring contrasts". This creates a "psychoanalytic nightmare about sexual frustrations and desires". For Deluc it was about the subconscious of the clergyman: “The dreams and fantasies, the slow motion pictures and fades, the divided pictures and the association montages, everything represents the inner state of the priest; the outside world is only a simile for religion, violence and sexuality. "

The Dutch writer Menno ter Braak gave introductions to films in the spring of 1929, which were very well received by psychiatrists. Since Artaud - "well versed in the tricks of psychoanalysis" - was so "refined" to "stuff the film with symbols of lust such as clams, swords, keys and doors", the film was shown twice in a hall full of psychiatrists and then in Amsterdam presented to a delegation from the Netherlands Association for Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. Critics have interpreted the shell and the clergy to this day with terms from psychoanalysis, such as Freud's dream symbolism.

The critics Odette and Alain Virmaux describe the film as a "strategy of self-staging" of the hard core around André Breton, to which Artaud belonged, to the filmmaker Dulac, through whom he felt excluded from the shooting. Artaud would have liked to be an actor. Dulac had not responded to a series of suggestions for the staging that he had written. Instead, she had distanced herself increasingly from him.

Re-performances

The Shell and the Cleric was shown together with Madame Beudet's sunny smile (also by Germaine Dulac) during the 27th Berlin International Film Festival at the 7th International Forum of Young Films in the Arsenal cinema in Berlin . On August 16, 2000, the film, again with Madame Beudet's sunny smile, was shown at the National Museum of Women In The Arts in Washington DC, USA with live accompaniment by the Silent Orchestra (Carlos Garza and Rich O'Meara).

The Arte cultural channel broadcast the film on German television on Friday, June 24, 2005 after the film had been restored by the Dutch Film Museum in Amsterdam after a systematic review of all available film material and supplementation with material from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa).

The German-Dutch musician Iris ter Schiphorst composed a new piece of music for the restored version of La Coquille et le Clergyman for 12 instruments and CD feeds in 2004 . The music was premiered on April 6, 2005 in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam as part of the Filmbiënale of the Filmmuseum Amsterdam by the Asko Ensemble, conducted by Peter Rundel. It was applauded by critics, for example in the NRC Handelsblad : “The music of the Dutch / German Iris ter Schiphorst creates a natural combination with the film [...] a real unity of image and music. Sometimes she follows the associations very precisely, then again she goes her own way. Ter Schiphorst knows how to elicit a very unique sound from the instruments: thin and unreal. This goes perfectly with the film [...] "

A small retrospective with three films by Germaine Dulac, which also included Die Muschel und der Kleriker , was shown at the Cinémathèque Leipzig on May 16, 2008 with musical accompaniment by Anja Kleinmichel, piano, and Lutz Eitel, electronics / electric guitar.

The publishing house absolut Medien brought The Shell and the Cleric onto DVD in 2005, along with two other Germaine Dulac films, Madame Beudets Sunny Smile and The Invitation to a Journey .

Image gallery

  • La coquille et le clergyman 2.jpg
  • La coquille et le clergyman 3.jpg
  • La coquille et le clergyman 4.jpg

literature

  • Antonin Artaud: La Coquille et le Clergyman. In: Nouvelle Revue Française. Paris November 1927.
  • Antonin Artaud: Film and Abstraction / LA COQUILLE ET LE CLERGYMAN. First published in: Le Monde Illustré. No. 3645, October 1927; German by Frieda Grafe in: Filmkritik. No. 3/69, p. 197 f.
  • Antonin Artaud: Cinema and Reality. In: Karlheinz Barck (Ed.): Surrealism in Paris 1919–1939. A reader. Leipzig 1990, pp. 591–594, here p. 592.
  • Ulrich Gregor, Enno Patalas: History of the film. Volume 1, Verlag Rowohlt, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-499-16193-1 .
  • Léon Hanssen: Menno ter Braak (1902-1940). Life and work of a lateral thinker. Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-8309-7464-2 .
  • Karyn Kay, Gerald Peary (Eds.): Women and the cinema: a critical anthology. Dutton, New York 1977, ISBN 0-525-47459-5 . (English)
  • Jean-François Lyotard: The anti-cinema. In: Dimitri Liebsch (Ed.): Philosophy of Film. Grundlagentexte, Paderborn 2005, pp. 85–99.
  • Uwe M. Schneede: The Art of Classical Modernism. (= Volume 2560 by CH Beck Wissen; Volume 11 in the Beck'sche series History of Art in 12 volumes). Verlag CHBeck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59110-5 .
  • Horst Turk (Ed.): Theater and Drama: Theoretical Concepts from Corneille to Dürrenmatt. (= Volume 8 from the German Text Library). Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-87808-388-2 , p. 325.
  • Alain and Odette Virmaux: La Coquille et le clergyman. Essai d'elucidation d'une querelle mythique. Paris expérimental publishing house, 1999, ISBN 2-9500635-9-4 . (French)
  • Alain and Odette Virmaux: Andre Breton (Qui etes-vous?). La Manufacture Publishing House, 1987, ISBN 2-7377-0040-X . (French)
  • William van Wert: Germaine Dulac, First Feminist Filmmaker. In: Women and Film. No. 5/6, (Berkeley) Santa Monica 1974.
  • Tami Michelle Williams: Beyond Impressions. The Life and Films of Germaine Dulac from Aesthetics to Politics. University of California, ProQuest Verlag, Los Angeles, 2007, ISBN 978-0-549-44079-6 , pp. 2, 5, 64, 78, 108, 158, 183, 215-216, 245. (English)
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, pp. 478-479.

items

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Essay ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Nina Goslar at arte.tv  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  2. ↑ Detailed table of contents in the catalog sheet of the Friends of the German Kinemathek in the program for the 7th international forum of young films Berlin 1977.
  3. ^ Xavier Delamare: Studio des Ursulines. cinematreasures.org, accessed July 8, 2014 .
  4. ↑ La coquille et le clergyman. Ciné-Club de Caen, accessed on July 8, 2014 (French): “[…] la présentation du film au studio des Ursulines provoqua un des plus beaux chahut de l'époque: venus en force, les partisans d'Antonin Artaud hurlaient Leur désapprobation devant le manque de compréhension “surréaliste” de la cinéaste, tandis que de nombreux spectateurs faisaient du vacarme pour protester against l'incohérence des images. “
  5. ↑ cit. after Van Werth 1974.
  6. ↑ see Van Werth 1974, V.
  7. ↑ a b Jörg Gerle: La Coquille et le Clergyman (The shell and the clergyman). In: film-dienst , 12/2005. Retrieved July 8, 2014. ( online at Boosey & Hawkes)
  8. ↑ William v. Werth, 1974.
  9. ↑ Léon Hanssen p. 117 and Notes 289–291. Quoted from M. ter Braak, politicus zonder partij. P. 109.
  10. ↑ Schneede, 2009. p. 79.
  11. ↑ cf. Gregor / Patalas, 1976.
  12. ↑ Alain and Odette Virmaux: La Coquille et le clergyman. Essai d'elucidation d'une querelle mythique . Paris expérimental, 1999, ISBN 2-9500635-9-4 (French).
  13. ↑ August 16, 2000 - Two films by Germaine Dulac. silentorchestra.com, accessed July 8, 2014 .
  14. ↑ La Coquille et le Clergyman. Germaine Dulac - silent film pioneer. (No longer available online.) Arte , June 21, 2005, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; Retrieved July 8, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  15. ↑ NRC Handelsblad , April 7, 2005. Quoted from Iris ter Schiphorst - La Coquille et le Clergyman. Boosey & Hawkes, accessed July 8, 2014 .
  16. ↑ Invitation to travel / Disque 957 / The Shell and the Cleric - Three films by Germaine Dulac - accompanied live. Cinémathèque Leipzig, accessed on July 8, 2014 .
  17. ^ Germaine Dulac - Three Films (1922-1928). absolut MEDIEN, accessed on May 10, 2016 (B / W, partly viraged, 117 minutes.).