Modernist Cinema” Has Been Stuck in a Terminological Deadlock

A MODERNIST “ATTEMPT AT CINEMA”: THE “IMPURITY” OF PIERROT LE FOU

PETER VERSTRATEN

The notion of “Modernist cinema” has been stuck in a terminological deadlock. For some scholars, the term seems to cover a broad scope of films, for others, the label is practically non-existent. A good example of the first option is the volume Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema (2006), edited by Ted Perry. In his “Introduction”, Perry enumerates several common denominators for Modernist films: they are “singular”, that is, without precursors and stylistically original; they make images stand on their own, not simply to represent something else; they lack an omniscient narrator and they initiate an unusual viewing experience.1 The net result of Perry’s effort to define Modernist cinema is that the traits are so indistinct that the label encompasses a huge variety of “singular” titles, such as Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; Robert Wiene, 1920), L’Age d’Or (The Gold- en Age; Luis Bunuel, 1930), L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad; Alain Resnais, 1961) and Sleep (Andy Warhol, 1963). Perry’s volume is a good read of magnificent films, but one may wonder whether these titles – from different countries, different periods – are not too divergent in terms of a Modernist poetics. Emblematic of the idea that “Modernist cinema” might be a con- tradiction in terms is Laura Marcus’ voluminous study The Tenth Muse, subtitled Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period. Well versed as Marcus is in the area of Modernism, she contends that the Modernist consciousness was “inflected by, and perhaps inseparable from, cinematic consciousness”2 or that a Modernist novel may have a cinematic dimension, but she is reticent about qualifying films them-

1 Ted Perry, “Introduction”, in Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema, ed. Ted Perry, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006, 6-7. 2 Laura Marcus, The Tenth Muse: Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 44. 220 Peter Verstraten selves as “Modernist”. It has been suggested in the volume on the film journal Close-Up (1927-1933), co-edited by Marcus, that cinema opened up aesthetic possibilities for Modernist tendencies in visual art and literature.3 The question to what extent the cinema itself might display such tendencies is either elided within film studies or has re- sulted into hair-splitting debates. A position frequently taken has it that cinema and Modernism are an unlikely couple. This position may be motivated by two ideas. First, film scholars are adamant to contradict a parallel history of film with the histories of older, established art forms. If one takes care to keep the cinema outside the scope of Modernism, one affords cinema a unique position in relation to arts like painting and literature which are both deeply embedded in this discourse. Second, debating cinema as Modernist always risks a slippage between Modernism and modernity – in the social sense. There is some validity in defining Modern- ism as an artistic response to modernity, that is, to the overwhelming sense-impressions of life in the metropolis in the first half of the twen- tieth century. Many novels can be read as some sort of defence strate- gy, according to Ernst van Alphen. The intellectual and reserved tone of a number of Modernist writers (Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Döblin, Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes) arises as a “protection against the loss of self which threatens the subject living under the conditions of modernity”.4 In this regard, contemplation is offered as a welcome remedy to the fleeting moments of modernity. The situation for cinema is slightly different, since cinema itself can be taken as a symptom of the fast-paced life styles of citizens living in the early 1900s, just like the railroad and the telephone. There- fore, Michael Wood mentions cinema as such an “accelerated image” of modernity.5 Many films, such as a variety of slapstick comedies, containing quite vulgar behaviour, were enjoyed by their audience as a

3 Close-Up, 1927-1933, Cinema and Modernism, eds James Donald, Anne Friedberg and Laura Marcus, London: Cassell, 1998, vii. 4 Ernst van Alphen, “Configurations of Self: Modernism and Distraction”, in Modern- ism, eds Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007, 345. 5 Michael Wood, “Modernism and Film”, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern- ism, ed. Michael Levenson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 217.