CRASSH

In avant-garde art during Cubism, Futurism and Purism new techniques of collage and de-collage emerged, changing radicially the aesthetic and perception of space. The techniques of collage and montage are not only an artistic/aesthetic revolutionary statement, but are also a provocative way of seeing the environment and perceiving an entirely new form of reality. Thus with the increasing speed of urbanisation and new media (newspaper, radio and film), the conception and perception of the metropolis transformed as well to a “real collage”. In the early 1920s, an entirely different and non-narrative film genre emerged all over the globe: the so-called city reportage or better: city symphony . One of the first and most outstanding of these early film essays or city poems was the lengthly BERLIN ­ THE SYMPHONY OF A CITY (1927) by Walter Ruttmann, whose experimental camera, montage and editing devices were based on musical principles of color, mode, variations and tempo.

Similar to the symphonic form and principles of a musical score/composition, its multilayered organized structure uses counterpoint, with its rhythmic pattern and dramatic use of themes. Similar techniques and principles were visualized by the avant-garde movement in their use of montage, contrasts, tectonic structure and multiperspectives with filmic expression for the graphic depiction of the modern city. Charged with the momentum of rapid technical and social change of the modern cityscape since the beginning of a new Objective Reality (Neue Sachlichkeit) in cinema, art and architecture, these sort of filmic city portraits dedicated themselves soberly to the indifferent urban landscape of traffic, advertising, neon lights, public places, urban crowds and motion. With the advent of collage and montage techniques in the visual arts, drama and literature, the form and visualisation of cityscapes and even city life itself changed as well, no longer being a whole, privleged and static panoramic view. In the course of Modernity the city and its form, images, meaning and repercussion have undergone a pendulous evolution.

In my lecture I will discuss various ways of perceiving and understanding the contemporary city by visual medias. I will also try to distinguish opposite principles of narrative and non-narrative storytelling by the use of film excerpts from various periods in film history from multiple standpoints to explain the different paradigma changes during the 20th century. This interesting contra-position is very much to the point concerning the subject with which we are dealing, to describe (cinécriture) the metropolis by artistic means. In contrast to the authentic visionaries and poets of order, rationalism and realism, represented by such sharp intellectuals, scholars, epic authors and poets of the late century as Emilé Zola, Georg Simmel, Alfred Döblin, Dolf Sternberger et al. other unique storytellers of Modernity were often of highly anti-utopian, cynical and even surrealist character, such as the controversial individuals Charles Baudelaire, T.S. Elliot, James Joyce, Walter Benjamin, Blaise Cendrars, Louis-Ferdinand Celiné and Raymond Queneau. My aim is not to broaden the theme by endless and often useless comparisons, but to go deeper in the subject matter by analyzing two excellent film examples: one being the vintage BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1931) by Phil Jutzi after a famous ciné-novel by Alfred Döblin, and the other, the ironic ZAZIE DANS LA MÉTRO (1960) by Louis Malle, written and adapted for a surreal screenplay by Raymond Queneau.