Session 1: Notes and tasks

Session 1

Notes:

Janet shows a Man Ray film, L' Étoile de mer...

Below: A description of the film and poem taken from an online review

Almost all of the scenes in this film are shot either off a mirror like the final shot, or through diffused and textured glass.

After opening to the couple walking along a road, the scene cuts to a caption

Les dents des femmes sont des objets si charmants... (Women's teeth are such charming things...)

A short scene where the female alters her stocking.

... qu' on ne devrait les voir qu' en rêve ou à l'instant de l'amour. (... that one ought to see them only in a dream or in the instant of love.)

From this point the couple retire to the upper bedroom of a house and the female undresses and retires, at which point the male bids her farewell.

Si belle! Cybèle? (So beautiful! Cybèle?)

The male leaves the house.

Nous sommes à jamais perdus dans le désert de l'éternèbre. (We are forever lost in the desert of eternal darkness. Éternèbre is a portmanteau of éternel (eternal) and ténèbre (darkness))

The film cuts to a female selling newspapers in the street, this is André de la Rivière in drag.

Qu'elle est belle (How beautiful she is)

A man is shown purchasing a sea star in a jar, returning it home to examine further.

"Après tout" ("After all")

The film then changes focus, following newspapers being blown in the wind while a man attempts to pick them up. Scenes from a railway journey appear briefly, tugboats docking at a wharfside followed by a panning city scape.

Si les fleurs étaient en verre (If the flowers were made of glass)

Followed by a montage of various rotating objects, including the sea star in a jar. A few still lifes appear, again featuring the sea star.

Belle, belle comme une fleur de verre (Beautiful, beautiful like a glass flower)
Belle comme une fleur de chair (Beautiful like a flower of flesh)
Il faut battre les morts quand ils sont froids. (One must strike the dead while they are cold. cf. Il faut battre le fer quand il est chaud - Strike while the iron is hot)

We rejoin the man as he ascends the staircase to the upper bedroom in the house, leaving the sea star at the foot of the stairs. The film cuts to the woman brandishing a large knife superimposed with the sea star.

Les murs de la Santé (The walls of the Santé)
Et si tu trouves sur cette terre une femme à l'amour sincère... (And if you find on this earth a woman whose love is true...)
Belle comme une fleur de feu (Beautiful like a flower of fire)
Le soleil, un pied à l'étrier, niche un rossignol dans un voile de crêpe. (The sun, one foot in the stirrup, nestles a nightingale in a mourning veil.)

We return to the female reclining in the bedroom.

Vous ne rêvez pas (You are not dreaming)

The film then reveals a short end to the characters love triangle.

Qu'elle était belle (How beautiful she was)
Qu'elle est belle (How beautiful she is)

The female appears in a mirror with the word 'belle', which shatters. The affair is over, and the film brings to a close.

Task 1:

Consider the use of objects in the film...

The film was adapted from his friend Robert Desnos's poem "la 'place de l'etoile". The title of Man Ray's film meaning "the starfish" or the "sea star".  I believe that Man Ray uses the star fish to represent the embodiment of a lost love. 

"Both Desnos and Man Ray thought that the starfish "inhabited liquid depths as well as heavenly reaches." - Ryan Doyon

Man Ray seemingly has an affinity for vague objects which, through his surrealist thinking are used as metaphors and become dominant and established objects that then convey powerful messages. Such as the Star fish which makes numerous appearances throughout the film. Every time there was some sort of conflict this object would be on screen somewhere. There are a couple of reasons I can think that the star fish is an appropriate and representative or metaphorical object; it is delicate, and precious, and in this content trapped where it should be free in the ocean. It is almost preserved in this glass jar, perhaps this is how he saw his love to his wife. Trying to preserve it somehow, but in this manner inevitably it is impossible. There is something equally exquisite and exotic about a starfish, much like true love. 

The film stared his wife Kiki as the female lead, this makes it somewhat autobiographical, and certainly it is insightful into their personal affairs. The woman (Kiki) and a man, during the film, drift apart from one another. Which was the truth in reality as their marriage ended during the films release. 

To me the most interesting aspect of this film is that it was shot through a sheet of uneven glass which helped to emphasize the nature of the romance between the two lead characters, through its lack of clarity, and also through the materiality of glass itself which is thin, fragile and to an extent transparent.