Nothing but time

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Nothing but time
Original title Rien que les heures
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1926
length 957 meters, at 18 fps 45 minutes
Rod
Director Alberto Cavalcanti
script Alberto Cavalcanti
André Cerf
production Pierre Braunberger
music Yves de la Casinière
camera James E. Rogers
cut Alberto Cavalcanti
occupation

Nothing but Time is the German title of the French silent film Rien que les heures , which the Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti , who lives in France, shot in 1926 as an experiment in which he wanted to show life in Paris for a whole day. His film therefore belongs to a series of avant-garde city portraits, such as those started by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand in America with their film Manhatta (1921) and Walther Ruttmann in Germany with Berlin - The Symphony of the Big City (1927) and Dsiga Wertow with The Man with the Camera (1929) continued in the Soviet Union.

action

A city. You can tell from the buildings that it is Paris. But it could be any other place, poor people's life is the same everywhere. You can see a newspaper seller, a prostitute, a sailor, a housekeeper, an old woman, a shopkeeper and another man. The camera shows the homeless, the helpless and the unemployed. As time goes by, people come to work, shops and restaurants open, butchers carry the meat of slaughtered animals. After work there is time for fun and relaxation, but danger lurks after midnight. Possibly. But then the clock hands went around again and the whole thing can start over.

background

The film was a production by Pierre Braunberger's company "Néo-Film". The scenario was created by Alberto Cavalcanti and André Cerf, who was also assistant director. The exterior shots were made in Paris in the summer of 1926, the photography was done by James E. Rogers. The film was First performed in Paris at the Studio des Ursulines on October 22, 1926. In Japan, it was only shown in cinemas on February 20, 1930. It was also shown in Poland, Finland, Turkey and the USA.

Yves de la Casinière wrote music to accompany the film for piano trio (violin / cello / piano). It represents a “mixture of different styles that are assigned to the different hours of the day and night in the city”, which “enriches and completes” the film. The 957-meter-long copy in the Nederlands Film Museum , which has been the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam since 2009 , is viraged and has Dutch subtitles.

reception

“Rien que les heures: Nothing but a few hours from a day in Paris. The opening credits explain: “This film doesn't tell a story. It consists only of a sequence of impressions about the transience of time and by no means wants to work out the synthesis of any city. ”Between morning and evening, between documentation and staging, between experimental image inventions and cross-fading, Cavalcanti takes a stance on the human condition in the middle of the urban canyons big city. "(Zeughauskino Berlin)

Rien que les heures can still be seen as a unique original. Cavalcanti presents “more than just a sociological cross-section of the modern city”: he reflects the relationship between film and life, conveys impressions of the passing of time. But “while Ruttmann was more interested in people as a group, Cavalcanti was concerned with people as individuals” (Peter von Bagh).

“Whether animal, human being, worker or visitor to the fair, lover or murderer - they all live a series of moments that the film captures. An old woman torments her way forward, her time seems to be up soon. Dying out candles, a lost doll gnawed by rats, a lover who comes and goes, moving clouds and withered vegetables all illustrate the passage of time. "(Program arte.tv)

Live on

On March 31, 2009 the film was shown in Buenos Aires at the International Festival of Independent Cinema .

On October 6, 2010 it was performed at the Giornate del Cinema Muto at the Teatro Verdi, Pordenone , with (electronically inserted) English and Italian subtitles. The original music was played by Lucio Degani (violin), Francesco Ferrarini (violoncello) and Maud Nelissen (piano).

The culture channel Arte showed “Nothing but Time” on German television on June 28, 2011 at 0.34 am with the original music and German subtitles.

literature

  • Chris Dähne: The city symphonies of the 1920s: architecture between film, photography and literature (= culture and media theory ). Transcript Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8394-2124-6 , pp. 4, 7, 35, 167-169, 189, 200.
  • Hans Emons: Film - Music - Modern: On the history of a changeable relationship (= art, music and theater studies. Volume 14). Verlag Frank & Timme, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7329-0050-3 , p. 55.
  • Lewis Jacobs: The documentary tradition, from Nanook to Woodstock. Compiled by Lewis Jacobs. Hopkinson and Blake Verlag, 1971, pp. 37, 39, 41.
  • Scott MacDonald, Frank Stauffacher: Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society . Wide angle books, editor Scott MacDonald. Temple University Press, 2006, ISBN 1-59213-427-0 , pp. 36, 39, 53, 133, 293.
  • Laura Marcus: Dreams of Modernity. Cambridge University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-04496-8 , pp. 89-90.
  • William Moritz: Beyond "Abstract" Criticism. In: Film Quarterly. Vol. XXXI, No. 3, Spring 1978, pp. 29-39. (online at: centerforvisualmusic.org )
  • François Penz, Maureen Thomas (eds.): Cinema & Architecture: Méliès, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia (= For the Study of Art Scholarly ). BFI British Film Institute, 1997, ISBN 0-85170-578-2 , pp. 19-20.
  • Holly Rogers: Music and Sound in Documentary Film. (= Routledge music and screen media series ). revised edition. Routledge Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-317-91604-8 , pp. 2o, 20, 209.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Dähne p. 169.
  2. ^ British cameraman, once also directed the documentary Steam (1945), cf. IMDb.com
  3. ↑ 1926 opened film art theater in the 5th arrondissement in Paris in the rue des Ursulines No. 10, cf. fr.wiki
  4. ^ " A mixture of different styles which" belong "to the different hours of day and night in the city ", according to Maud Nelissen, Giornate del Cinema Muto catalog, quoted. at Antti Alanen (October 6, 2010)
  5. ↑ see KUNST DES DOCUMENTS - ORGANISMUS GROSSSTADT: Zeughauskino Berlin, p. 45 PDF online
  6. ↑ cf. Ilpo Hirvonen: "Rien que les heures still stands out as an original film since Ruttmann, for instance, was interested in people as masses, but, as a film historian Peter von Bagh has pointed out, Cavalcanti was interested in people as individuals." . In: Essence of film. April 18, 2011: City is a Symphony: Rien que les heures (1926), on line at Tumblr.com , also Jacobs p. 37.
  7. ↑ cf. IMDb_releaseinfo
  8. ↑ Myriam Juan: “... et de revoir Rien que les heures (1926, Alberto Cavalcanti), dont la musique originale d'Yves de la Casinière était ressuscitée par Maud Nelissen." In: The "Giornate del Cinema Muto" Pordenone, October 2-9, 2010. en ligne
  9. ↑ cf. Berenice21 at over-blog.com