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Rianna Patricia S. Cruz

2013-59075

Film 176

Prof. Nicanor Tiongson

Development and Destruction in Dudley Murphy and Fernand Lgers Ballet Mechanique (1924) and

Ralph Steiners Mechanical Principles (1930)

While both prominent films of the early avante-garde film movement, Ralph Steiners

Mechanical Principles and Dudley Murphy and Fernand Lgers Ballet Mechanique present a stark

contrast of the potential of technology for development and destruction.

Mechanical Principles (1930)

Ralph Steiner

The film is a collage of metal mechanismsmostly gearsin motion, accompanied by firm

romantic piano music, The score is regularly paced, with a pronounced bass dip that enters and recedes

slowly and gentlykeeping a mild but steady rhythm. Almost in time with the rotations of the gears and

mechanisms being presented, this steady rhythm sounds like one comically snoring with great volume, or

a child happily keeping rhythm on a swing set. These set the blissfully reassuring mood to be maintained

throughout the film.

Besides these, the score sometimes allows a wind instrument to take the spotlight of the

score. In these melodies, there is a key shift to a key which expresses a tenser mood, but this is quickly

resolves itself and returns to its original motif. Thus, the score does not excite many other sentiments; it is

neither grand nor spectacularly innovative. The only outstanding property one might expect from this

score is its playful plainness, but this reliability only further establishes its benign atmosphere.

The films visuals are various close-ups of gears in motion. The size and crudeness of the

gears and mechanisms or the early 20th century ensured that their movements were slow and in large

revolutions. There is no movement that the viewer cannot anticipate immediately. Even as new gears are

introduced their movements all generally follow the same principle: rotation. In these meek expected

movements, film this further establishes a sense of reliability.

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The circular nature of the gears themselves also facilitate some sense of calm to be

established. There is a sense of closure and reassurance in watching a gear make a full rotation, and in

seeing the organization with which the mechanisms all fit perfectly into each other.

Despite the viewer never actually seeing for what final cause these gears are moving towards

(if any, or whether they are even at all related to each other) the basic monotony the film establishes

through its visuals and its score establish its viewers trust by presenting the audience with one simple

motif and maintaining such throughout the film. There are no plot twists and the audience may quickly

and easily ease into the calm reassuring mood of the film.

Steiners Mechanical Principles is a humble but certain tribute to the benevolence of

technology. It is a romanticization of industrialization.

Ballet Mechanique (1924)

In contrast to the calm reassurance offered by Steiners Mechanical Principles, Leger and

MurphysBallet Mechanique (1924) does not present similar sentiments.

In contrast to Steiners mild score, the score of Ballet Mechaniqueis immediately tense and

affronting. A melody is almost incomprehensible, and the score sounds more like some terrified assault

of various musical and non-musical instruments by some perverted musician.

The score and visuals of the film were originally made separately, and the filmmakers

decided the two were incompatible for each other and not presented together. It has only been with the

development of new audio manipulating technologies that the original score and film have been synched

together. The score has been digitally recreated and synchronized with the visual material. Thus, at its

current tempo, the score is not actually playable by human musicians.

The score itself sounds like some panicked scurry. At various points one might here various

types of sirens and alarms. One could almost hear the masses of terrified civilians running behind the

screen, but the viewer knows their efforts are futile. The assault is not isolated in the screen.

The occasional eyes and mouths give the viewer an uneasy sense of being watched. Even the

viewer is not safe.

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The visuals of the film present various objects crashing into each other, or into the sides of

the frame, many of such being thrust towards the viewers themselves, repeatedly. Like Mechanical

Principles, the film shows many metal instruments in motion, but these instruments either do not fit into

each other or are in blatant conflict with each other. They clang into and scratch each other.

Some disembodied limbs, articles of clothing, and jerky phallic symbols (there is some metal

contraption similar in shape to the female genetalia) imply almost a sexual assault on the viewer.

The images are thrown at the viewer so quickly there is barely time to process each image.

At the start of the film there is an animated cubist representation of Charlie Chaplain, but

near the end of the film he is all completely disassembled, and this is a perfect representation of the

disorienting assault that the viewer would have just experienced by the end of the film.

There is only one unifying element of these images throughout the film: they all represent

the perversion of life by modern (early 20th century) technology. Ledger and Murphy show that

technology and modern inventions are not the benevolent benignity of Steiners Mechanical Principles

but some assaulting antagonist. New technologies are being thrust so quickly towards humanity it is

incomprehensible.

Occasionally an image of a woman admiring flowers in a garden or enjoying a swing are

flashed, but this woman appears aware of the camera and artificial. The self-aware woman conscious of

her appearance to the camera encapsulates how technology is directly corrupting our image of ourselves

and is degrading our sense of the natural and the sincere.

Experience of War and Conflict

It is easy to see why such films are of such opposing natures when assessed through the

perspective of their origin, their directors, and their respective experiences of technology and its uses.

American Steiner was a chemistry student turned photographer. He was occasionally a

commercial photographer and member of the academe and lived a relatively peaceful life in America. He

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appreciated technology as a medium for the development of new photographic techniques, as a practicing

photographer and as occasional academician.

Despite having lived through both world wars, his experience of war might be described as

mostly that of a spectator, never having himself been caught in the crossfire of the two devastating wars

he had survived. His anti-war film Caf Universalwas mostly inspired by the drawings of a German artist

George Grosz, who himself had only briefly been engaged as a soldier in the First World War, before

being discharged for bad health only a year later. This is not to discredit his experience of the conflict he

had survived, but Steiners experience is definitely glaringly different from that of the directors of Ballet

Mechanique, particularly that of the French Ledger.

In contrast to Steiners relatively unaffected experience during the war, the older Leger was

very much immersed in the traumatic experience of war. He was part of the first soldiers first mobilized

by the French in August 1914, and served at the front for about two years. He had experienced how

technology and new inventions could cause such corruption and destruction. He had himself experienced

the mechanization of humans to perform as merely as instruments of war themselves the ultimate

corruption.

Thus, having experienced such differing utilizations of the technologies of their time,

SteinersMechanical Propertiesand Leger and MurphysBallet Mechaniquepresent a poignant dialogue

on the potential of technology: on one hand an instrument for the development of art, and on the other an

instrument for destruction and corruption.

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Resources

John A Benigno. "Ralph Steiner Biography from Scheinbaum & Russek, Ltd". Blogger. Blogger. 26 March

2011. Web.

Nicolavanstraaten. "Objects & Dance: Mechanical Principles". Wordpress. Wordpress. 30 August 2014.

Web.