1920s
David Nice
Ask opera-lovers to name their favourite one-acter and chances are the choice will be L’enfant et les sortilèges. Colette’s typically off-kilter fable of a destructive kid confronted with the objects and animals he’s damaged is set by Maurice Ravel to music of a depth which must have taken even that unshockable author by surprise. Ravel’s earlier L’heure espagnole, on the other hand, is much less likely to be top of the list. The farcical ‘Spanish hour’ – 50 minutes, to be precise, and Ravel’s sense of timing otherwise is – proves only one thing: how potent a cheap plot can be when Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Dziga Vertov’s narrativeless “city symphony” Man With a Movie Camera celebrates the modernity and energy of the post-Bolshevik Revolution metropolis – a composite of Kharkov, Kiev, Moscow and Odessa filmed over three years. Propaganda for the harnessing of machinery in the building of the Soviet Union’s future, it was much more besides – a masterpiece of avant-garde experimentalism and, fleetingly, an unexpected critique of the continuing class struggle.Inspired by Constructivism’s creed of art with a social purpose and its photo-montage techniques, Vertov’s poetic documentary was partially Read more ...