Nos dernières lectures (tome 4)

Nadejda a écrit:

'Metropolis - Cityscape Montage #1', ?poster, 120 x 160cm / 47 x 63 inches, Farblithografie, Bédos et Cie, Paris, 1927. Based on an original photomontage / collage by Boris Bilinsky, using images from the film. René Clémenti-Bilinsky cat. no.1033. No extant copy of this poster is known.

The history and precise identification of this poster / photomontage was, until quite recently, surrounded in mystery. Since the 1970s this famous image has been attributed to a variety of artists, including Fritz Lang (Ades 1976) and 1920s Berlin-based collage artists such as Paul Citroen and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Research indicates that Bilinsky was the creator of the photomontage and that it was first published in the Paris trade newspaper Ciné-Miroir on 16 April 1927, prior to the French release of the film. Therein it was presented without any labels, inscription, or attribution. That image was most likely based upon a photograph supplied to the magazine as part of the preliminary French release campaign. The montage was subsequently transformed by Bilinsky into a poster and presumably used during the local release of Metropolis. The montage as a fully realised poster, bearing the signature of Bilinsky, the full title, and the insignia of ACE, was reproduced in an anonymous article entitled 'Plakate für deutsche Filme in Frankreich' [Posters for German Films in France], published in the Berlin Zeitbilder during January 1928. Shortly thereafter, in March 1928, the montage image appeared once again, this time within Robert Rousseau de Beauplan's special Metropolis-edition of the La Petite Illustration magazine, issued in Paris at the time of the French release of the film.

It is possible Bilinsky was motivated to produce this montage following a viewing of the film during its initial German season (January-April 1927). Perhaps aware of Paul Citroen's famous 'Metropolis' series of montages, which first appeared in 1923, Bilinsky was moved to produce a variant using actual material from Lang's film. When, later in the year, the French distributors ACE came to assign an artist to work on posters and images for the local release, Bilinsky was an obvious candidate. He was perhaps moved to adapt his earlier montage into a poster for wider distribution, appropriately titled and inscribed, though the lettering is rough and haphazard, yet the artist may have meant this to be so. It had been stated in works such as Willett (1984) that this montage / poster was apparently derived from an original stage setting collage model for Metropolis, mounted as part of the German season, though there is no evidence for this and Bilinsky is undoubtedly its creator. The precise history of this collage and associated poster is therefore still shrouded in some mystery.

The collage / photomontage is a classic example of an artistic technique which was in vogue in Europe during the immediate post-WWI years and throughout the 1920s. Photomontage and collage were used widely by German and Russian artists and set-designers (both for film and theatre) as a reaction to modernism and new technologies being introduced into everyday life in the form of, production line mass employment, motor vehicles, and electrical appliances. Strongly featuring in such works were images of skyscrapers and other modern buildings, factory equipment, and household aids. Bilinsky, in his Metropolis photomontage, has utilised some of the strongest images from the film, including the groups of slave-like workers at the base of the picture, supporting a mass of towering city skyscrapers, overhead carriageways, and cold, concrete steps and arches. Combined together these photographic snippets provide an impression of some of the themes presented in Lang's film. The opening scenes of Metropolis are themselves a cinematic montage, featuring a confusion of dissolving images of machines at work, gears turning and shafts pumping.

It should be noted that the above sepia-toned image has been reconstructed from the 1928 photomontage printed in Beauplan (March, 1928) - without signature or titles - and a copy of the poster as reproduced in the Zeitbilder article of January 1928. The exact size, printing details, and colours of the original poster are not known, though, based on information contained in the French Press Book, it may have been one of the 120 x 160cm posters referred to in that kit. If not, the ACE poster featuring the head of the robot (see below) may have been the fourth item. Unfortunately the Press Book does not contain any images of the accompanying posters, which is unusual.

JPhMM a écrit:L'illustration du livre est une affiche de Boris Bilinsky.

http://encinematheque.net/tech/T11/

http://www.uow.edu.au/~morgan/metrojc.htm

Paratge a écrit:Et si la Renaissance était née d'un livre ? Un livre perdu, connu par fragments, recopié par quelques moines et retrouvé par un humaniste fou de manuscrits anciens ? L'idée, audacieuse, vertigineuse, ouvre les portes de l'histoire de Poggio Bracciolini, dit le Pogge, qui découvrit une copie du De rerum natura de Lucrèce dans un monastère allemand. C'était à l'aube du XVe siècle.

Ainsi s'ouvre à nous un monde inouï. celui d'une cour papale où s'agitaient agents cupides, moines séducteurs, filous. femmes de petite vertu et humanistes d'exception: un monde a la fois sévère et déprave, contraignant mais libre. En découvrant. copiant et diffusant l’œuvre de Lucrèce, le Pogge aura levé le voile sur les temps modernes, et influence des esprits aussi puissants que Montaigne ou Machiavel. Car tout, selon Lucrèce, est fait d'atomes en mouvement, qui s'entrechoquent au hasard, se séparent et se rencontrent à nouveau. Telle fut l'intuition géniale du poète latin, une célébration de la danse de la matière et un bréviaire d'athéisme qui allaient bouleverser le Moyen Age finissant. Conteur né, érudit et brillant, Stephen Greenblatt emporte le lecteur au coeur de ce Quattrocento qui fit revivre l'Antiquité pour la porter jusqu'à nous.

Patissot a écrit:Quels livres de Montherlant et Drieu la Rochelle me conseilleriez vous ?

Patissot a écrit:mais il semblerait que "les Lépreuses" soit difficile à trouver

Asha Kraken a écrit:Je le trouve également assommant et lourdingue à lire en tant que femme (menfin, si on devait sortir des bibliothèques tous les auteurs violemment misogynes, elles se videraient considérablement). Mais j'ai un problème avec la littérature française de la période 1920-1970 que je trouve d'une platitude et d'une tristesse morale absolues.

Spoiler:

Patissot a écrit:J'ai commencé à lire "Les jeunes filles" (ou "les Jeunes filles" ? je ne suis pas très familier des règles qu'il convient d'appliquer lorsque l'on cite le titre d'un ouvrage), je vais m'empresser de commander les trois autres tomes qui suivent (mais il semblerait que "les Lépreuses" soit difficile à trouver).  

L'adaptation qu'à faite Louis Malle du "Feu-Follet" ne m'a pas laissé un souvenir impérissable, je vais peut être commencé par autre chose, "Gilles" peut être ?

JPhMM a écrit:

Asha Kraken a écrit:Je le trouve également assommant et lourdingue à lire en tant que femme (menfin, si on devait sortir des bibliothèques tous les auteurs violemment misogynes, elles se videraient considérablement). Mais j'ai un problème avec la littérature française de la période 1920-1970 que je trouve d'une platitude et d'une tristesse morale absolues.

Même Guy des Gares ?

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Jim Thompson a écrit:La violence des Riches du couple Pinson
très très bien