Ballet Mécanique

1924 DocumentaryFantasy 19 minutes Directed by Fernand Léger

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About Ballet Mécanique

Kitchen tools, gears, and swinging forms repeat in a cut rhythm. A paper puppet of Chaplin's Charlot turns up between the objects. Alice Prin, Kiki of Montparnasse, smiles and blinks in close-up, and those shots are cut against the machines. A few images open onto a garden.

Cast & crew

More about Ballet Mécanique

Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy made the film, with Man Ray also on the camera. Léger wrote it. Frederick Kiesler presented the silent premiere on September 24, 1924, at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik in Vienna. A title on the original print reads Charlot présente le ballet mécanique.

Themes

  • Repeated machines
  • A Chaplin puppet
  • A face cut like an object
  • Kitchen tools in rhythm
  • Dada
  • Fernand Léger
  • Kiki
  • Charlot
  • George Antheil

Look

Dudley Murphy and Man Ray shot the repeated close-ups of utensils, machine parts, and Alice Prin's face.

Technique

The 2000 Lehrman print was the first to run the film with Antheil's score, after the 1924 attempt to synchronize them had failed.

Music

George Antheil wrote Ballet Mécanique as an accompaniment, but the 1924 Vienna show was silent. Lehrman's 2000 print is the version that plays the picture against the score.

Preservation

Several differing prints survive. The negative used in 1924 is not the source of the later copies, and Lehrman's 2000 married print is one of the versions in circulation.

Notes

  • George Antheil composed a score under the same title in 1924. It was not played with the Vienna premiere. He gave the music as a concert piece in Paris in 1926.
  • The score he published calls for player pianos, xylophones, electric bells, propellers, a siren, bass drums, and a tam-tam.
  • An attempt to lock picture and music with Charles Delacommune's Synchro-Ciné did not work. That device was lost in the Second World War.
  • Paul Lehrman assembled a print matched to an edited form of the score in 2000, using a 1999 performance at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
  • The film is on the DVD sets Unseen Cinema: Early Avant Garde Film 1894–1941 (2005) and Bad Boy Made Good (2006).

Scenes

  • A paper Charlot puppet appears between the machine shots.
  • Kiki's blinking eyes are cut against pots, lids, and gears.

Also available

  • Internet Archive (BalletMcanique)
  • Unseen Cinema: Early Avant Garde Film 1894–1941 (DVD, 2005)