In my English class we're studying modernism. I guess it isn't limited just to prose and poetry, so we're exploring the early films made.
The first film, which we watched three times was called "Ballet Mecanique." It's only 16 minutes long, and entirely experimental. It came out in 1925. The actual music composed for it wasn't created til the 1990's. So, yay me, I get to watch this show with the music, which involved sirens, airplane propellers, etc. You can easily find excerpts from youtube, but it's just not the same as the impossible-to-find DVD. This film isn't a film you sit down and say "oh, what a lovely film!" It actually made me feel anxious and uncomfortable. I wish I could just show it to you guys so you'd understand, but the DVD it comes on comes with seven other DVD's, costing over $100. Click here for the only video I could find on youtube that had the actual images with the correct music. It's only about four minutes long, a fourth of what I had to endure. It's very interesting though. If you want to just listen to the music, click here. This is actually pretty cool, because all the instruments are played by robots. Fitting, eh?
(If you're way ambitious, you could play the ten-minute video, but mute the sound, and play the real music in another window. It's as close as you're going to get. :) )
Tonight I got to go to the Marriot library to watch "Modern Times." I loved it very much. Charles Chaplin is an expert at making me laugh. So...that was my evening. (Aside from retyping two papers, which only took 2 1/2 hours.)
1 comment:
OK--4 min was plenty for my senses. I think this was a film used to induce insanity in the twenties.
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