Symphonie mécanique

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d’Atlantis, musique électroacoustique et cinéma archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, first quarter 2012.

From 1952 to 1956, the filmmaker and film theorist Jean Mitry frequented Pierre Schaeffer’s studios. Beyond his own theoretical research, Jean Mitry seeks, as previously with his film Pacific 231 (1949) – built on Arthur Honegger’s score – to recover the spirit of the avant-garde cinema of the 1920s.

Jean Mitry’s statement of intent for the film also highlights the rhythms of contemporary industrial life, transposing the rhythm of machines into a “lyrical poem”. The conjunction of movement and sonorities must transcend reality. In this sense, he also joins the idea of the city symphony, of which he is one of the admirers. The music is based on the rhythm of a shot breakdown that accords precisely with the conditions of a jerky, violently cadenced and measured mechanical rhythm. The scenario of the film, that is to say this breakdown, provides for the relative duration of each shot, together with the machines’ own movement and cadence; it supplies, in a way, a first rhythmic, if not musical, structure for the whole. Pierre Boulez thus created the substance and musical organisation of his work from this preestablished form, conforming to it as closely as possible. After which, the construction and editing of the film fall into place of themselves within the definitive musical datum, with the final editing adjusted to the musical articulations.

“in this cinematographic essay in CinemaScope (…) equivalences between Pierre Boulez’s serial music and the images of machines in motion” are established. In place of CinemaScope, Mitry opts for a triple-screen projection system, in the manner of Abel Gance, whose decisive influence is once again felt.