{"id":473,"date":"2011-11-25T14:50:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T13:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philippelanglois.net\/lcd\/?p=473"},"modified":"2022-10-21T18:15:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T16:15:02","slug":"la-marche-des-machines-1928-de-eugene-deslaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philippelanglois.net\/lcd\/en\/la-marche-des-machines-1928-de-eugene-deslaw\/","title":{"rendered":"LA MARCHE DES MACHINES de Eug\u00e8ne Deslaw (1928)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d\u2019Atlantis, musique \u00e9lectroacoustique et cin\u00e9ma arch\u00e9ologie et histoire d\u2019un art sonore,<\/em> <\/a>\u00e9ditions mf, Paris, first quarter 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Paul Gilson points out in the film\u2019s flyer, La marche des machines<\/em> is the fruit of very extensive image processing in the laboratory. Through optical printer tricks, Deslaw himself develops negatives and duplicate negatives, augmenting certain scenes and reusing several motifs in order to obtain recurrences of rhythm. To accompany this marginal visual aspect, Russolo\u2019s futurist instrument is called upon in the context of a film screening at the Studio 28, in Paris, where, for the first time, a totally new sound accompanies images, in an interpretation of the image that surpasses, above all in terms of timbre, the improvisations of the pianists during silent-film screenings. It is unfortunately impossible to verify this, for lack of any sound document \u2013\u00a0 the surviving copies of this film being hopelessly silent \u2013\u00a0 but it seems that the different modes of playing and timbre of the rumorharmonium\u00a0on Deslaw\u2019s manipulated images may have had a real expressive power, and may have aroused the enthusiasm of the audience at the time. However, Eug\u00e8ne Deslaw himself takes part in the quarrel between supporters and detractors of sound cinema in the London journal Close Up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy film\u2019s conception? An entirely \u201csilent\u201d conception. Adding sound to La Marche des machines<\/em> showed me that the more perfect the machine, the less noise it makes. Deprived of its realistic noises, reduced to the silent music of its wheels and pistons, the machine gains in cinematic value and strikes the nerves better. It speaks better.\u00a0 But, but, but\u2026 Silent films are no longer made. So I chose to make a sound film that is as unrealistic as possible. The accompaniment of Vers les robots will be created with the Rumharmonium of the composer Russolo\u201d .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poster found at the Mus\u00e9e Montmartre, announcing a screening at the Studio 28 for the opening of the 79th Prampolini exhibition on 15 November 1928, confirms that Deslaw was still performing with Russolo\u2019s unusual instrument. The poster indeed announces the screening of Tolsto\u00ef intime as well as La marche des machines,<\/em> with Russolo and his rumorharmonium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The version presented here was the subject of an attempted reconstruction, based on a commission placed with the composer Xavier Garcia, taking as its basis five noise-making instruments of Russolo and carrying out only electroacoustic transformations, mainly affecting only the parameter of pitch.
This version was given in April 2004. at the CNAC\/ Centre Georges Pompidou as part of the retrospective of Eug\u00e8ne Deslaw\u2019s films under the direction of Lubomir Hosejko and Philippe-Alain Michaud.
Another live version was also shown at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains du Fresnoy, on 4 November 2004, as part of a lecture by Philippe Langlois on the theme of the city symphony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please note that the version shown here has a shift of one frame per second owing to digitisation from a VHS.
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