The Films Of Man Ray

Four short films from one of the greatest artists in the Dada and later the Surrealist movements.
Return To Reason (1923); this very short piece inflicts literal violence on the film. The scratches and so on were a development of the 'rayograph' methid. We have everyday objects taken into swirls. Really a test more than anything, if ends in a fascinating abstraction, patterns of light on a body making it seemingly not a body at all.
Emak Bakia (1926); Man Ray takes everyday objects of hardness, and reduces them to pieces, thousands of small tinkles, disintegrating. He takes the everyday out of context ('Ghosts Before Breakfast Style') and gives it a bendy, tactile quality, as though it hugs itself, it comes outside of itself. There is no special relations in the montage, these remain collections of images.
L'Etoile De Mer (1928); The first loosely (loosely loosely) narrative piece. Seen through frosted glass, again we have more focus on abstracting, on the gazre that tells us something different, throwing into question our ordinary gaze. The use of the starfish is enigmatic and fascinating, it challenged what should be there in any picture. How is this different from what we term the everyday? Regarding objects such as this, and the human body, Man Ray again abstracts, surprises.
The Mysteries Of The Castle Of D (1929); The longest piece. Man Ray is obviously n ot interested in the human as traditionally captured, or indeed in human sibjectivity. It is instead the texture and the feel he loves; that word again, tacticility. The stidy of Le Hasard fails to really grip, perhaps in the slightly meandering 'narrative' we get the best, almost postmodern in its openness, sense of this.
Man Ray is clearly not the great artist cinematically as he is in other forms. He does not really use the montage possiblities, and his use of light and so on is only fitfully interesting. Some curious pieces here, but not in the class of other Surrealist filmakers of the time.