ANARCHISM AND CINEMA, PANORAMIC VIEW OF A HISTORY OF FRENCH 7TH ART TURNED TO BLACK
Thesis defended by Isabelle Marinone, under the direction of Jean A. Gili and Nicole Brenez at the University of Paris I – Panthéon la Sorbonne in History and Aesthetics of Cinema and Audiovisual (Performing Arts – UFR 03). University Doctorate. Defense on December 14, 2004, Very Honorable Mention with Jury Congratulations.
Thesis Summary
Anarchism and cinema meet in France from the end of the 19th century and will be linked throughout the 20th century through many artistic movements and creators. In 1895, anarchy is at its peak, it then predominates in many reflections on society, and seduces many intellectuals and artists. Painters, photographers, writers, from Pissarro to Signac via Courbet, from Nadar to Mallarmé via Mirbeau, all bear the mark of libertarian revolt. Anarchism, far from the caricature that has been made of it, defends several principles.[1] These are, for the most important ones, anti-authoritarianism, anti-militarism,[2] anti-clericalism,[3] the valorization of the concept of freedom,[4] the renunciation of powers of all kinds,[5] and notably that of the State,[6] the abandonment of the notion of private property,[7] the development of education. This "panoramic view of a history of French 7th art turned to black" takes up the philosophical, political and social idea of historical anarchism, as it has been defined by its theorists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michel Bakunin, Pierre Kropotkin, or even Elisée Reclus. Aiming to bring out an anarchist history of cinema within the official History of the 7th art itself, this research therefore intertwines two different histories, that of French cinema and that of anarchism, highlighting their points of convergence through personalities, filmmakers, screenwriters, dialogue writers, editors, actors, etc., with libertarian tendencies (like Antonin Artaud, Bernard Baissat, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Luis Buñuel, Hélène Chatelain, Emile Cohl, Carl Einstein, Philippe Esnault, Georges Franju, Christophe Karabache, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Yves-Marie Mahé, Man Ray, Georges Méliès, Jean Mitry, Albert Paraz, Jacques and Pierre Prévert, Lionel Soukaz, Michel Zimbacca) or conversely, via anarchist militants or descendants of militants, engaged in the 7th art (like Roger Boussinot, Gustave Cauvin, Elie Faure, Armand Gatti, Armand Guerra, Henri Jeanson, Emile Kress, Maurice Lemaître, Jean Painlevé, Henry Poulaille,[8] Hans Richter, Jean Rollin and Jean Vigo). This research in "history and aesthetics of cinema" does not develop in detail the history of anarchism, each personality or artistic current addressed, and does not analyze in depth each film or work mentioned, because such is not its purpose. On the other hand, it attempts to highlight, and to bring into relief, like a color turn on film, the creators and movements that have had strong relations with libertarian thought. The totality of these elements gathered in a kind of chronological landscape going from 1895 to 2004, allows the establishment of a broad horizontal panoramic describing a global history. While adopting a broad view, this study follows each significant figure or current in a more detailed manner, to identify more precise landmarks throughout this historical unfolding. This point of view, both macroscopic and microscopic, has the advantage of accounting for a history extended in time, demarcating contours and general broad lines from the artistic currents and creators of cinema more or less known.
"Anarchist cinema" is constituted of all these individualities, creating alone or in groups, and thus proposes to the History of cinema the birth of its "first History" with Emile Kress and his Historical of Cinematography[9] as well as several currents including that of "militant and social cinema (Human)[10]" with the People's Cinema, (and its continuators including Henry Poulaille, Jean Vigo, Carl Einstein, Henri Jeanson, Raymond Cazaux, Philippe Esnault, Bernard Baissat, up to Hélène Chatelain, Pierre Carles, Richard Prost, Jean-Michel Carré or Frédéric Godbronn) of pedagogical cinema with Gustave Cauvin's "Educational Cinema," (which was transmitted to Célestin Freinet, Jean Painlevé, Yves Allégret, Jean Vigo, Jacques and Pierre Prévert, Jules Celma, Jean-Michel Carré and Bernard Baissat) and that of the "avant-gardes' Incoherent with Georges Méliès and Emile Cohl,[11] Dadaist with Hans Richter, Man Ray and Georges Ribemont Dessaignes, Surrealist with Luis Buñuel, Antonin Artaud, Man Ray, Michel Zimbacca and Jean-Louis Bédouin[12], Lettrist with Maurice Lemaître, Isidore Isou, Eric Lombard and Armando Navarro, Fluxus and Panic with Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor or even Jean-Jacques Lebel, and experimental with Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Pierre Clémenti, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki, Lionel Soukaz, Yves-Marie Mahé, or even Christophe Karabache.
This research attempts to understand one of the particularities of "anarchist cinema" which lies in the constancy and timelessness of cinematographic structures, as well as in the "resurgence of memory." Because anarchists do not forget history, the past, both their own and that of others. This memory always active in their 7th art, diffuses pedagogically, and tends towards a renewal of aesthetic forms that always draws inspiration from pre-existing styles.
Thus Incoherence revives in Cohl and Méliès, passes into Surrealism, flows into some sequences of Vigo, until continuing within Fluxus and Panic. Dadaism is situated in Fluxus but especially in Lettrism, then in experimental. There is a form of permanence, which although passing through different forms, different styles and various personalities, subsists in time. All these creators, whether they practice in the most classic or most modern forms, keep the same desire for destruction of a world for the edification of another, freer and more egalitarian. Facing the living spirit of the spectator, the spirit created by the artist, moved by the unfolding of the film, proposes an alternative that breaks with real and social time and space. It offers, like anarchy, an opening towards other possibilities.
Around the problematic of the "link" - link between all creators of the 7th art with anarchist tendencies through time, link between anarchist ideals and cinematographic practice, link between the structure of libertarian thought and realized productions, link between political ideas and aesthetics - this study brings out the contributions of this political 7th art that opens a specific path based on "pedagogy." It is these various cinematographic possibilities, in the variety of cinema disciplines, which includes film and extends beyond it, that we have tried to discover, through this historical panoramic, what "anarchist cinema" French could be, "cinema of memory" in constant projection, which constructs in the present the images of a possible future.
1 — We will not detail these further, this research having as its object a historical vision of French cinema linked to anarchism, and not being a study on the history of anarchism and its values. ↩
2 — FAURE Sébastien, The Anarchist Encyclopedia, Volume I, Paris, La Librairie Internationale, 1932, p. 97: "(…) As the word indicates, antimilitarism has as its object to disqualify militarism, to denounce its formidable and painful consequences, to combat the bellicose and barracks spirit, to stigmatize and dishonor war, to abolish the regime of armies." ↩
3 — FAURE Sébastien, The Anarchist Encyclopedia, Ibidem, p. 92: "(…) Said of the opinion movement that opposes the supremacy of spiritual power over temporal power. In a more restricted sense, anticlericalism is a current, rather political than secular, destined to combat the political influence of the clergy and the official interference of Churches in the mechanisms of the State." ↩
4 — BAKUNIN Michel, Complete Works, volume III, Paris, Champ libre, 1982, p. 173: "(…) I am truly free only when all human beings who surround me, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of others, far from being a limit or the negation of my freedom, is on the contrary its necessary condition and confirmation. (…) My personal freedom thus confirmed by the freedom of everyone extends to infinity." ↩
5 — PROUDHON Pierre-Joseph, On Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Paris, Garnier Frères, 1858, p. 310: "(…) To be governed is to be kept under surveillance, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regulated, penned, indoctrinated, preached, controlled, estimated, appraised, censored, commanded, by beings who have neither the title, nor the science, nor the virtue… To be governed is to be, at each operation, at each transaction, at each movement, noted, recorded, counted, tariffed, stamped, measured, rated, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, apostilled, admonished, prevented, reformed, straightened, corrected. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of general interest, to be taxed, exercised, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, pressed, robbed, then, at the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, repressed, fined, vilified, vexed, hunted, disarmed, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to top it off, played, duped, outraged, dishonored. That is government, that is its justice, that is its morality!" ↩
6 — BAKUNIN Michel, Complete Works, volume II, Paris, Champ libre, 1982, p. 84: "(…) The State is the temporal juridical organization of all facts and all social relations that naturally flow from this primitive and iniquitous fact, conquests which always have as their main purpose the organized exploitation of the collective work of enslaved masses for the benefit of conquering minorities." ↩
7 — PROUDHON Pierre-Joseph, Solution of the Social Problem, Paris, Lacroix, 1868, p. 131: "(…) Property is theft!" ↩
8 — MARINONE Isabelle, "Human cinema?… Return on a conception of cinema defended by Henry Poulaille," in Bassac, 1895 n°43, June 2004, p. 5 to 14. ↩
9 — KRESS Emile, Historical of Cinematography, Paris, Comptoir de "Cinéma-Revue," February 1912. ↩
10 — MARINONE Isabelle, "Human cinema?… Return on a conception of cinema defended by Henry Poulaille," Op. cit, p. 5 to 14. ↩
11 — MARINONE Isabelle, "The anarchist soul of surrealist cinema," in Mélusine n° XXIV (Studies gathered by Henri Béhar), Paris, L'Age d'Homme, February 2004 p. 193 to 204. ↩
12 — Ibid. ↩