Talk about your blast from the past. The Ballet Mécanique is a work from 1924 that seems about, oh, 70 or so years ahead of its time.
Painter Fernand Léger worked with cinematographer Dudley Murphy to create a Dadaist short film called Ballet Mécanique. Composer George Antheil was to create the soundtrack for same. But their ambitions outstripped the available technology (and their abilities to communicate effectively with each other) so that when it came time to put the two together, Antheil's composition was nearly twice as long as the movie.
Well, we don't have the space to tell you all the details of what happened next (you can read about it here) but this fascinating movie and crazy soundtrack (scored for xylophones, bass drums, gong, electric bells, a siren, airplane propellers, and 16 synchronized player pianos) is worth seeing. You can get a sense of it here, but for the full effect, get it as part of the DVD Unseen Cinema, an incredibly good seven-disc set of early American avant-garde movies.
written on Tuesday Dec 18, 2007
birth of the music video.
