MAN RAY? I’LL WAIT UNTIL THEY MAKE A WOMAN RAY…: I’m watching a Netflixable thing called “Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and ’30s: Disc 1.” It’s three hours long and you couldn’t pay me to watch that much indie-film at once, so I’m taking it in bits and pieces. Here are some thoughts on the first six movies–all but two highly recommended. I make no attempt to provide accent marks, because “that’s the way Dad did it, that’s the way America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far!”

And also, I’m lazy.

Man Ray, “Le Retour a la raison”: This is a great teaser for the rest of the disc. It’s maybe two or three minutes long?–yet you’ll find yourself catching “future echoes” of everything from Sesame Street to Hitchcock. (Seriously, I’d need two hands to count the times this disc has reminded me of children’s television–from Pinwheel‘s opening sequence to 3-2-1-Contact‘s, from ZOOM‘s cheapness-equals-existentialism to Looney Toons‘ expressionism.)

The music, so far on every movie, has been amazing. It’s new–created for this release, I think?–and so it creates a completely new viewing experience from the one contemporary audiences would have had. But then, my experience would never be what a contemporary audience might’ve had; and this new experience is so fantabulous that I can’t wish it were different. I’d play this every day just for the music. Imagine… maybe the Raincoats, muddled with Herrmann, dragged a few feet leftward to Messaien, about a quarter-mile east toward Mozart, and a mile south toward Bizet??

Man Ray, “Emak-Bakia”: Suspense music plus adventure-movie visuals! Pilotesses in earflaps! Sheep and pigs! The ghosts of women’s legs stride out of a jeep again and again, memory, until they resolve into the Charleston. A lady has eyes painted on her eyelids. Daggone that’s uncanny.

White buildings and film-white skies.

Man Ray, “L’etoile de mer”: Surrealist sex! The clash of symbols (Cybele, Impressionism); perversity (she strips to her skivvies, then tells him to leave!); mad science; the permeable boundary between nature and culture. Oozy beauty.

I loved this like cake.

Man Ray, “Les Mysteres du chateau du De”: …The music is bouncy and hilarious, and for a long time this feels like a Beckettish, Goreyish comedy of meaninglessness. But then it settles down to portentous talk of MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN and Venus Astarte, and I can’t do it anymore. Fans of The Prisoner might like it more than I did. Also, I wonder how much the opening of The Exorcist owes to this piece–if anything.

Robert Florey Y U NOT MAN RAY?, “The Life and Death of 9413”: Bog-standard Hollywood disillusionment, barely redeemed by some lovely acting. MEH. If you’re enough of a film buff to watch this disc, you’re enough of a film buff to have seen this movie five times already, only better.

Someone I forget, “Menilmontant”: WOW, shivery horror piece. Fans of Heavenly Creatures, Doctor Faustus, and especially Picnic at Hanging Rock shouldn’t miss this. I felt like it lost steam relatively quickly, but there are some frightening moments here even in silent film, and I’d absolutely watch a remake of this. I’m not sure if it was genuinely a bit conventional for an “experimental” disc, or if it merely highlighted how many avant-garde techniques carried over into genre filmmaking. Highly recommended either way.