The SIFF Classic Unit is an important program screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival every year, pinning the heart of SIFF and the local audience: the intersection of the past and the future, the real and the fiction, in the special time and space created by the film festival, we blow away the dust for the timeless light and shadow, and quietly meet the memories of the past.
This year's SIFF Classics section will begin with Buñuel's monumental work The Collapse of the Escher Cathedral, in which Buñuel was an assistant director. This avant-garde silent film, directed by Jean Epstein, is adapted from the literary masterpiece Eren Poe.
The surrealist film "An Andalus Dog" co-created by Buñuel and Dali will be used as a supplement to the commemorative feature of surrealist master Luis Buñuel in this year's tribute to the master, along with the previously announced six works of "Veritina", "Maid's Diary", "Daytime Beauty", "Tristana", "Bourgeois Prudent Charm" and "Hazy Desire".
Interestingly, the viewing experience of the Shanghai audience this time seems to travel through time and space, back to Paris eighty years ago, and see the excitement of the two films again.
In the mid-1930s, the maestro Henri Langlois and Georges Francois watched the double-film show at the Montmartre Film Club. Fascinated by this, they soon began their own career as a film collector. The Collapse of the Arch of Usher is not only one of the greatest works of the silent film era, but also the first film in the collection of the French Film Archive.
The Collapse of the Ancient Mansion of Usher (1928)
Directed By: Jean Epstein
Writers: Edgar Allan Poe / Louis Buñuel / Jean Epstein Starring: Jean Debigu
Synopsis
Roderick lives with his young wife, Madeleine, in the ancient mansion of the Escher family, where a doctor often visits the frail Madeleine. Like all the men of the Usher family, Roderick passionately painted portraits of his wife. In the process, Madeleine's health deteriorated, as if her soul had gradually shifted to the portrait.
As the portrait was completed, Madeleine stopped breathing. Rodrik, who loved his wife deeply, believed that her wife was just asleep and refused to bury her, but waited in solitude for her return. One night of lightning and thunder, he finally saw his wife return to him alive. Then they flew into the sky together and saw the Ashet below them reduced to ashes in the fire caused by the lightning strike.
"The Collapse of the Ancient Building of Usher" is adapted from the novel of the same name by the famous American novelist Ellen Poe, and mixes the plot and character settings of several other novels by the author such as "Oval Portrait". Of course, this film is not really a "Buñuel work", because its director is one of the important representatives of French Impressionist cinema in the 20s, the Polish director Jean Epstein. Buñuel was involved in the filming of the film as Epstein's assistant director.
In 1925, Buñuel, who had artistic dreams, came to Paris and gradually established his passion for film, entering Jean Epstein's private film school. Jean Epstein was one of France's most famous commercial directors, and his work has been hailed as "a triumph of impressionism and at the same time a triumph of the modern spirit".
Soon after, Buñuel began assisting Epstein in his work as an assistant director, producing Mobra (1926) and The Collapse of the Escher.
"The Collapse of the Ancient Building of Usher" is a typical Ellen Poe-style horror novel, and the film successfully conveys the horror and mysterious atmosphere of the original novel through unconventional photographic angles, close-up shots, picture overprinting, lens movement and other techniques.
In this silent film, Epstein uses a large number of stream-of-consciousness clips and scene metaphors to show the psychological activities of the characters, which was a very fashionable practice at the time of the avant-garde, and various high-end operations also deeply influenced the young Buñuel.
However, Buñuel did not follow Epstein's footprints, and Impressionism was already weakening in the European film world at that time. In 1927, when Epstein's mentor Abel Guns was filming Napoleon, Epstein asked Buñuel to help Gunner, but was unexpectedly rejected by Buñuel sarcastically. Angry Epstein immediately fired Buñuel, scolding: "You little bastard, you deserve to despise such a great director as Guns so much?" ”
As he was leaving, he also sent Buñuel another sentence: "You look surreal, beware of the surrealists, they are all crazy." ”
Unfortunately, Epstein said it. A year later, the "madman" made a great work that defined surrealism — the 16-minute short film An Andalus Dog.
An Andalus Dog (1929)
Director: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Salvador Dali / Luis Buñuel Starring: Simone Malei / Luis Buñuel / Salvador Dali / Robert Omey
A melancholy young man sat in the moonlight, sharpening his razor, and he smoked a cigarette, waiting for the young girl to appear. The young man took a razor and caressed the young girl's face, cutting her eyeballs with the razor while the dark clouds crossed the moon.
8 years later, a young man riding a bicycle wearing a cloak similar to women's clothing appeared on the road, he fainted downstairs from a woman, the woman went downstairs, took the box in his hand, and the man never woke up again. Back inside the house, the woman sat contemplatively, and another man came knocking on the door, his palms covered with ants. While men and women were studying ants, a woman in men's clothing downstairs was playing with a severed hand, causing passers-by to watch. Then women's breasts, pumpkins, monks, pianos, ragged men and women appear in the picture, and symbolic dreams are displayed one by one.
A year after breaking with Epstein, Buñuel became a director for the first time, co-wrote the screenplay with another "madman", Salvador Dali, and made the 16-minute short.
In Buñuel's autobiography My Last Breath, he recalls in detail the creative process of A Dog of Andalus: "The film combines the dreams of Dalí and me. I was living at Dalí's house at the time, and one day I had a strange dream that a dark cloud obscured the moon, like a razor cutting the eyeballs apart. Dalí told me that he had also had a strange dream the night before, and in the dream he saw a palm full of ants. ”
Dalí proposed to make the two dreams into a movie, and the script was completed in less than a week, with no storyline, only one scene after another. "Our only rule is very simple: open the door to all irrationality and keep only the images that shock us without trying to explain 'why,'" Buñuel said. ”
Although this short film is only 16 minutes long, it has left many classic shots that future filmmakers worship, such as "blade scratching the eyeball", "palm crawling ant", "piano and dead donkey" and so on. All shots are stitching together meaningless dreams.
To this day, 90 years later, there are still a lot of filmmakers arguing about the metaphor and spiritual core of "An Andalus Dog", but as Buñuel said, everything in the film is irrational, and when you try to understand it with rational thinking, you have already lost.
Interestingly, at that time, Buñuel wanted to use this film to humiliate the "rational" French intellectuals and bourgeoisie, but after the film came out, it produced a huge sensation and was warmly sought after by the French bourgeoisie. This made Buñuel cry out in despair: "What can I do to save these people who advocate everything new?" ”
Fortunately, this did not change Buñuel's position – like others in the Paris Surreal circles at the time, André Breton, Louis Aragon, René Magritte, Paul Allúja, each of whom took an anti-middle-class stance despite being in the middle class. This sentiment continued Buñuel's film career until its peak in 1972 when "The Prudence of the Bourgeoisie" reached its peak.
It is also worth mentioning that in the first clip of "An Andalus Dog", the melancholy young man with the razor is played by Buñuel himself.
During the Shanghai International Film Festival, you can sit in the cinema in Shanghai and enjoy the works of surrealist masters from the big screen. Put aside all rational thoughts and enjoy this wonderful dream trip.