Chapter 5 Personal Expression and Studio Production 193Filmmakers linked to artistic movements in Paris began producing
motion pictures that built on ideas from painting, music, and poetry, such
as René Clair’s Entr’acte (1924), Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique (1924),
and fi lms by Luis Buñuel, Dimitri Kirsanoff , and Man Ray. Th ese movies,
generally grouped under the title of avant-garde, sought to explore new forms
and challenge viewers’ perceptions. Th ey enthralled some viewers, perplexed
others, and even enraged a few.
Th ere were also movies that were not part of aggressive artistic manifestos.
Some non-narrative fi lms of this time off ered portraits of city life through a
succession of images linked by geometry, grouped activities, and patterns of
movement, but without a traditional story in sight. For example, Rain (1929)
by Joris Ivens depicts the interplay of weather, the city, and people using the
patterns and physical eff ects of a rainfall to arrange the moving images. During
his long career fi lming in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America,
and Australia, Ivens oft en worked in documentary format, and throughout
his life he developed methods for structuring his fi lms using a variety of non-
narrative techniques. Ivens made a number of movies that could be described
as poetic essays which centered on the relationship of people to the natural
world, such as with his last fi lm, A Tale of the Wind (1988).Using Non-Narrative Motion Picture Language
Filmmakers began to use non-narrative moving images to communicate
in inventive and original ways and to challenge the status quo. Jean Vigo, a
young French fi lmmaker, was energized by the possibilities of the camera to
capture the rhythms, peculiarities, behaviors, and inequalities of modern life.
He made A Propos de Nice in 1929 with cinematographer Boris Kaufman, a
sometimes graceful, overall scathing city portrait, followed by Ta r i s , a shortFigure 5-25 Dita Parlo and
Jean Daste in Jean Vigo’s
L’Atalante. (Courtesy Gaumont/
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