Ballet mécanique

I try to watch films like this as if I were of their time rather than a century ahead. It's my own method of defamiliarization, or maybe it's an embarrassingly dorky attempt to falsely transport myself to the past. Either way, this movie is transportive enough on its own, and seems to anticipate a very strange machine age, wherein we are locked into mechanical cycles and our human wills have lost the battle to automata.

Arriving at the same time as the first surrealist manifesto dedicated to the idea of psychic automatism, this is a cinematic expression of the strange rhythms of the mechanical automatisms of the new machine age, building to an animated cubist mechanical man who promptly disintegrates, and ending, seemingly antithetically, with the image of a woman enjoying the scent of a flower in the sunshine. Automatism versus dis-automatisation, perhaps.

Dynamic enough to hold my interest, and somewhat clever in parts, but it didn't really elicit any reaction from me.

Modernism at its most pretentious, least expressive. It is the first abstract film, which is worth something, but it's also the first bad abstract film.

Showing how people felt ecstatic when cinematic technology came along: they got to realise it not only made possible the “repetition” of our perceptual experience over again (though there’s no repetition of experience in a strict sense), but also contained a potential to create and present images, combinations and rhythms that used to be impossible, through which a new world of (dis)enchantment could be opened up and whose psychic and noetic effect people like Légar were eager to experiment on.

Fucking awful. None of his experimental techniques were that interesting or innovative.

Interesting to watch, but I've seen more interesting/better experimental films.

Creative and energetic, but it doesn't do a good job of using that energy to engage the audience.

Interesting work for 1924, but that is about it.

film explores the dialectic between mechanical nature of the camera and its tools and the human soul and matter it captures, split frames refer to the mechanism itself and various human conditions and moods refer to spiritual reality...

Silent experimental short fusing mechanical movement with less mechanical shots of women. The kaleidoscope effect is interesting, as is the sectioning of facial features. Overall Ballet Mécanique is surreal, but I'm sure that was the point.

Although it occasionally hints at something beautiful, its experimental techniques really fail to deliver on any level.

This was like a fever dream that you can't stop watching.

I don't do enough drugs to appreciate this.

I dunno I just don't get stuff sometimes

A merry little dance of images that still compels after all these years

Cubist Charlie Chaplin presents... a mindless waste of 18 minutes of film. As the title promises, there's mechanical imagery, and a steady sort of mechanical rhythm to go with it. Also, kaleidoscopes. That's about as deep as it goes. (Or maybe that's too harsh, I just feel like this isn't as interesting as some similar things from the period, really.)

One of those film class viewings where I didn't enjoy myself.

Kaleidoscope, mirror image and convex lens experiments are interesting, but rest is too much out of phase.

Seems to hint at intrusion, invasion - bodies both human and machine fuming under extreme duress. A foundational example of image assaulting emotion, reason, and taste - from this perspective, it's pretty clear this film added tools to the filmmaking toolkit.

Too long for its concept, but an interesting enough tribute to mechanical motion.

Doesn't hint at anything deep and is just random to be random. There are a lot better experimental shorts to study. Or you can pretend to be full of yourself and see a deeper meaning in this utter crap

interesting short that could be construed as a meditation on the parallels between a mechanised society and the humdrum of daily life. of course, meaning is obfusticated beneath layers of whimsy and idiosyncrasy, but there's something to this one.

Meh.

Tons of great images. Human bodies and other organic sights get cut up, distorted, looped, and otherwise mechanized/exploited. An emphatic reminder that film is the product of machines, and carries the ideology of industrialization with it. The maddening, unforgettable musical score, a pounding headache of player pianos and bizarre percussion, ties everything together perfectly.

Interesting, but far from great.

Fernand Léger was a painter, and a father of Cubism. It was this he wanted to explore in moving images.

12 minutes of obnoxiousness.

A violent short, were the camera attacks the mise-en-scène (or visa versa). The pace is aggressive, energetic, and the film feels like a pissed warning, a "fuck you" to the machine age/materialism; hurried images of machines, cars, vine, nylon stockings and other "modern" stuff contrasted with calm images of a woman smelling on flowers speak out. A film yelling in your ear/eyes. Pretty good shit.

Different, but not bad.