The most impressive thing about 'Anemic Cinema' is its title: an anagram which is very nearly also a palindrome. Unfortunately, it only works in American English, since in Britain 'anaemic' is spelt differently.
I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious, and I've never understood why his work attracts so much attention. Apart from his Rayographs (which he invented by accident, and which are merely direct-contact photo prints), his one real contribution to culture seems to be that he was the first photographer to depict female nudity in a manner that was accepted as art rather than as porn. But surely this had to happen eventually, and there's no real reason why Ray deserves the credit. The critical reaction to Man Ray reminds me of the story about the Emperor's New Clothes.
Back in the early 1960s, the second season of 'The Twilight Zone' opened each episode with a shot of revolving concentric circles in black and white. There's an image in 'Anemic Cinema' which is so similar, I wonder if 'Twilight Zone' borrowed it from this film. The main difference is that the revolving image here is a black and white spiral. Indeed, if ever there was any movie that deserves to be described as a spiral, this one is it. Throughout 'Anemic Cinema', we're treated(?) to shots of a revolving disc containing words (in French) moving in a spiral. The effect is vertiginous, and the texts -- about incest and Eskimos -- are nearly Dada in their meaninglessness. I did laugh at one clever sexual pun.
The emperor is naked, folks, and this movie just barely rates 2 points out of 10. Au suivant!
I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious, and I've never understood why his work attracts so much attention. Apart from his Rayographs (which he invented by accident, and which are merely direct-contact photo prints), his one real contribution to culture seems to be that he was the first photographer to depict female nudity in a manner that was accepted as art rather than as porn. But surely this had to happen eventually, and there's no real reason why Ray deserves the credit. The critical reaction to Man Ray reminds me of the story about the Emperor's New Clothes.
Back in the early 1960s, the second season of 'The Twilight Zone' opened each episode with a shot of revolving concentric circles in black and white. There's an image in 'Anemic Cinema' which is so similar, I wonder if 'Twilight Zone' borrowed it from this film. The main difference is that the revolving image here is a black and white spiral. Indeed, if ever there was any movie that deserves to be described as a spiral, this one is it. Throughout 'Anemic Cinema', we're treated(?) to shots of a revolving disc containing words (in French) moving in a spiral. The effect is vertiginous, and the texts -- about incest and Eskimos -- are nearly Dada in their meaninglessness. I did laugh at one clever sexual pun.
The emperor is naked, folks, and this movie just barely rates 2 points out of 10. Au suivant!