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– The Passion of Saint Lon Chaney, Jr.
Experimental Cinema
Alameda TV has acquired the exclusive rights to "Objet
Passionale" (Passionate Objects) -
the early film works of Swedish-Japanese-French director Ingmar Ozu-Bresson.
This series of groundbreaking short films chronicle the surface life of the ordinary. As true cinematic
experiments, they mine the mundane for hidden meanings of the treasured and the untreasured.
Whether you're a novice movie fan or a film aficionado, Objet Passionale will both fascinate and infuriate.
Ingmar Ozu-Bresson
This pan-cultural director is arguably the most neglected filmmaker of the
Post-New Wave era. Beginning with his revolutionary 1971 feature debut "Le
Savoir Fâché" (Angry Knowledge),
Ozu-Bresson revolutionized movies, freeing the medium from the shackles of movement
– creating Non-Moving Form. He was the foster father of the style known as Le Petit
Gesture.
A mad post-capitalist renegade, he rejected all forms of production, distribution, and exhibition,
and subverting the conventions of Hollywood formula to create "anti-seeing."
His statement, "The best viewer is the non-viewer," is a succinct challenge to all theories of cinema.
Objet Passionale Short But Masterful
Ozu-Bresson's career as a feature director was preceded by his explorations of the short film form.
Objet Passionale is made up of 64 abbreviated film statements ("le cinema dwarf declaration").
Ranging from 30 seconds to 28 minutes, they are as baffling as they are boring.
Impenetrable, arcane and mysterious – they are passionate objects for the non-viewer.
Objet Passionale #1: L'Arrangement de l'Âme (Place Setting of the Soul)
The first in the series, "L'Arrangement de l'Âme" is perhaps the most pure example of "Non-Viewing" in
the œuvre.
A dinner place setting. Slices of lemon. A marble. A nun. A hula dancer.
Sound Design by Ingmar Ozu-Bresson.
28 min.
Objet Passionale #2: Le Perroquet Diabolique (The Bird From Hell)
A room of shadows. A bird. A cage with an open door. The bird enters and leaves
the cage freely, however, it never flies. "Nous sommes libres au milieu
de notre propre captivité." ("We
are free in the midst of our own captivity.") This marks the first collaboration
between Ozu-Bresson and American expatriate musician Jefferson T. Bone.
6 min.
Objet Passionale #3: Les Éléments,
Probablement (The Elements, Probably)
Air. Earth. Fire. Water. Objet Passionale #3 brings Ozu-Bresson to a boil as multiple objects almost
burst from the screen in an homage to montage, reminiscent of
Sergei Eisenstein or
Dziga Vertov.
This piece marks the first acknowledgement of Ozu-Bresson's Swedish and Japanese collective unconscious
roots and cinematic influences. Jefferson T. Bone contributes a score that combines cool jazz with
twanging proto-surf guitar.
4 min.
Objet Passionale #4:
Les Aveugles (The Blind)
Nineteenth century French poet Charles Baudelaire was a major influence on Ozu-Bresson.
In this dark meditation, filmed on the streets of Paris in 1969, he makes use of human voices
(stock company regulars Françoise Simone and Karina Anna-Maria) for the first time in the Objet series.
In 4 minutes, Ozu-Bresson journeys from the budding Flowers of Evil growing in the Parisian streets of the 1860s
to his own visual rock and roll take on the exploding 1968 Paris.
Jefferson T. Bone juxtaposes soft piano chords of memory with a psychedelic guitar right out of Jimi Hendrix's bag of tricks.
4 min.
Objet Passionale #5 - Herculin/Feminin
Ancient masculinity strains under the power of the infinite feminine.
Men and women are caught in a web that forever connects yet divides them
from each other.
Hercules labors under the gaze of the archetypal Sorcerer Queen. The two then
wander separately through a storm. St Francis and the Madonna look on as the
moon falls and the seas part. The spider lies in wait, or is it death? Is
there final union, or is it all fantasy? Inter-titles of Ozu-Bresson's own
English translation of his poem "Labours" mark
this version. Jefferson T. Bone provides the guitar disCHORDS beneath the
cinematic drums.
6 min
Objet Passionale #6 La Baignoire (The Bathtub)
Feeling perhaps he was straying too far from his own aesthetic of Le Petit Gesture, Ozu-Bresson turns the gaze of his lens back to a new frame within a film frame – a bathtub – creating a meditative gaze of objects within an object. Apples, knives, wine, shoes and are juxtoposed in montage of meaninglessness. Meanwhile, the French love/hate of America floats upon a symbolic sea of domestic indifference. Dead center is a seemingly never-ending image of barbed-wire twisting, turning and spinning hypnotically, both attracting and repelling the eye. And somewhere in the porcelin jumble, Ozu-Bresson salutes two of his countless cinematic influences when Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut momentarily enter “La Baignoire.” Jefferson T. Bone supplies an ecclesiastically ORGANic soundtrack.
6 min
Objet Passionale #7 Rêverie en L'Enfer (Daydream in Hell)
Is hell something we’re trying to lock away in a drawer? Or is it what we’re dying to open? Ozu-Bresson’s preoccupation with an infernal underworld surfaces not for the first or last time, as a lying man’s afternoon respite takes a thoughtful turn towards punishment, beauty and decay. Once again the screen is filled with everyday objects – mundane paintings, rotting outdoor furniture, a rusted cobwebbed lamp, and a sleeping (or dead) dog. These are juxtaposed with image quotes from Italian director’s Riccardo Freda’s under-rated classic film – Maciste L'Enfer. Jefferson T. Bone provides a Voudon Rock and Roll score.
7 min
Objet Passionale #8 The Passion of Saint Lon Chaney, Jr.
Continuing his deconstruction of film history and reality with an epic meditation on Lon Chaney, Jr, Ozu-Bresson takes one of the Wolfman’s later “B” films and strips it of everything but his performance. The Indestructible Man already contained a portrayal of a mute monster, so the director takes it to its logical end, and creates a silent movie structured as 14 Stations of a Tormented Alcoholic Actor Cross. One of the longer Object Passionales, it contains, perhaps, Jefferson T. Bone’s most complex score. 25 minutes.
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