■ Today, when the film "The Seashell and the Clergyman" is mentioned, it is not so much as a film by Germaine Dulac, but rather as a film for which Antonin Artaud wrote its script. Even if one is not interested in the director of the film, the fact that Artaud had something to do with it makes it sound as if it were his work.
■ However, this is not something to be accused of not reflecting on Dulac herself. "The Seashell and the Clergyman" survives as a film which screenplay was written by Artaud, who had strong influence on Modern Thought. Without it, it is doubtful that anyone but the most fanatical film enthusiast today would have been able to discover the avant-garde silent films of the 1920s. I myself came to know " The Seashell and the Clergyman" through Artaud's book.
■ The Seashell and the Clergyman is the extension of Cinéma Pur, the French avant-garde movement of the 1920s. In addition, it is said to have inspired Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's The Dog of Andalusia. However, it should be emphasized that "The Seashell and the Clergyman" is placed in the genealogy of Cinéma Pur, even before it is identified as the first surrealist film.
■ "The Seashell and the Clergyman" exists as a work that fleshing out the image of real and humanical gestures and minimum narrative, on the lineage of Hans Richter's "Rhythmus 21 ( 1921 )", Wiking Eggeling's "Diagonal-Symphonie ( 1923 )", and Henri Chaumette's "Cinq Minutes de cinéma pur ( 1926 )", to which embodies the abstraction through geometric figures and images of things in motion ( *A ).
( *A )
Hans Richter's "Rhythmus 21 ( 1921 )
Wiking Eggeling's "Diagonal-Symphonie ( 1923 )"
Henri Chaumette's "Cinq Minutes de cinéma pur ( 1926 )"
■ However, these summaries are only based on the position of Germaine Dulac, the director of The Seashell and the Clergyman, and Artaud even rejects such pure cinema. Artaud understands that pure cinema, as expressed in terms such as "pure film", "abstract painting", and so on, is nothing more than Abstract Art form ( just as in this point, Hans Richter consciously combined abstract painting and cinema ) that is derived from abstract painting, which itself is formally thematic in its distancing from the Real thing. This is what Artaud cannot recognize because it cuts off the power of cinema in the sense that he sees it, that is, its essential power to approach the Real thing.
■ Interestingly, The Seashell and the Clergyman contains similar scenes to Henri Chaumette's Cinq Minutes de cinéma pur (1926 ). For example, the repetition of the image of an accumulation of broken vials at the beginning of "The Seashell and the Clergyman" and the abstract movement of glass containers and metal objects in "Cinq Minutes de cinéma pur". In this connection, Artaud thoroughly refuses to consider "The Seashell and the Clergyman" as Cinéma Pur, taking into consideration the nature of pure cinema.
■ So, what was Artaud aiming at in "The Seashell and the Clergyman"? It is the Approach to the Real Thing that I mentioned in the previous section, not the approach to pacific relations, but the approach in the sense of confronting combatively "the Thing called Body" that dominates the human mind. As a step in this direction, he is attempting to destroy the mental object or mental system created by the dominance of the body, in other words, he is attempting to carry out Metaphysical attempt to dismantle the pseudo-peak structure of the human ego, symbolized by the head ( brain ). The reason I say "Metaphysical attempt" here is that Artaud had made Metaphysical struggle against the "Body" the main theme of his life at that time in such philosophical works as "The Navel of the Underworld" ( 1925 ) and "The Scale of Nerves" ( 1927 ). Unfortunately, without knowing this background, it is impossible to understand his intention in "The Seashell and the Clergyman," and it is no wonder that one cannot understand it at all.
■ This is because, at that time, few people ( except for a few, such as Jacques Rivière, editor-in-chief of the New French Critique ) would have been driven by the urgency of dealing with the metaphysical intractability of Artaud's ideas. Not to mention the Surrealists who, in response to Artaud's dissatisfaction with the film, caused disturbances criticizing Dulac at the place where The Seashell and the Clergyman was shown, and even the director, Germaine Dulac herself, did not really understand the metaphysical content of the film.
■ However, this does not mean that Dulac's initiative as a film director should be infringed by the metaphysical profundity of Artaud's thought. It is only natural that Dulac, the director of the film, would protect her creativity and initiative by keeping Artaud away from the production site, even though he is only a scriptwriter who has interfering in the production of the film and has expressed a desire to appear in the film himself.
■ Furthermore, if we compare the script written by Artaud with the completed film, it is clear that even if Dulac did not understand the content of Artaud's thought ( Dulac emphasized the formal and abstract nature of the film, to the extent that she herself described the film as the visual symphony that evokes emotion through images ), she tried to reproduce the script as faithfully as possible. In her productions, Dulac, while aiming for the construction of pure cinema, an avant-garde artistic element, continued to oscillate and revise within a cinematic experimentation that attempted to strike the balance between "the political nature" that moved women toward to the social subjectivity as a pioneering feminist and "the additional junction with minimal narrative elements" ( ＊B ). However, in "The Seashell and the Clergyman," Dulac's artistic assertions were modestly contained within Artaud's script. In other words, Dulac had the tolerance to respect Artaud's script, and if she were to criticize the finished product as different from what Auteau had imagined, Auteau would have to direct it himself. But Artaud was unable to do so. Dulac, on the other hand, was undoubtedly enthusiastic enough to continue making films, establishing a film company, a filmmakers' union, a film society, and so on, in an effort to protect the artistic status of cinema.
■ Based on the above, it would be more philosophically meaningful to stop talking about the pros and cons of the struggle for leadership between the two sides and consider the following. Dulac's almost faithful reproduction of Artaud's script, although it inserts the image of pure cinema, paradoxically leaves Space for thinking Artaud's metaphysical intentions contained in "The Shell and the Reverend" because it is not decorated with Dulac's production. Next time, let's try philosophical consideration of the film using the limited Space.
( ＊B )
Today, some people are reevaluating Dulac's experimental avant-garde and the theories of her film conception. But, Thing that theoretical individuality such as "the concept of integral film" and "the independency of film from the influence of other arts" is only supported by Imagery of abstract picture separated from "the Real" causes ironic consequence. Repetition of abstract picture, such as experimental films derived from abstract paintings, cuts down the narrative. Therefore, they function only as short videos, as if you were appreciating paintings. There, the "surplus of narrative", which has no place to go while trying to construct the virtuality like Reality with abstract solution, is returning and drifting. Dulac in the 1920s tried to somehow combine abstract imagery with this narrative, but she continued to fail ( so her masterpieces are still limited to purely abstract imagery works : *C ). Ironically, Dulac's transition from avant-garde film construction in the 1930s to documentary newsreel was due to how unconsciously serious her access to reality, which she continued to fail to it.
( *C )
for example,
『 Thèmes et variations 』( 1928 )
『 Disque 957 』( 1928 )
『 Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque 』( 1929 )
