"I don't like being kept in the dark"

“I don’t like being kept in the dark,” Mabel (Gilda Gray) petulantly remarks to her desired lover and boss, Valentine (Jameson Thomas) - a wilful misuse of this quotation will illuminate (mind the pun) various key elements of Dupont’s silent film “Piccadilly” (1929).

 

Literally, this quotation symbolises the concept of spectacle. Mabel strongly desires to be watched, she objectifies herself through the use of decadent 1920’s stylised costume and a performative nature in both her work as a dancer in the Piccadilly club and her melodramatic behaviour within private spheres. Mabel’s dance in the early part of the film intersected with long panning shots of the audience observing her creates a hyper-awareness of her desire to be, and pleasure in being, watched. This validating audience is usurped from her by Shosho (Anna May Wong), her declining status is coupled with a perception of her theatrical costumes as increasingly ridiculous.

Shosho’s fluidity and mystifying combination of innocence and manipulative countenance ensures that she steals the spotlight from Mabel, within both the plot and cultural realm of the film; as Cynthia Liu truly remarks “Anna May Wong casts a shadow that extends to the present day” (“When Dragon Ladies Die, Do They Come Back as Butterflies? Re-imagining Anna May Wong”), a shadow that blocks out Gilda Gray. 


“Piccadilly” features a recurring shot, a high-angled view of the dance floor, audience, stairs and band which appeared to me as a gaping mouth (similar to, but more symmetrical than the image to the right). This frame reminded me quite strongly of a striking triptych depicting hell as a chasm in the earth - watched, revered and feared by numerous spectators that ring the edges, however I cannot recall the name nor artist, thus cannot demonstrate properly this allusion. However, it was with this image in mind that the rest of the film was framed, rather melodramatically. The conception of the Piccadilly club as a flashing neon locus of spectacle takes on a sinister tone, as we watch expecting the inevitable demise of one or more characters.

This tone of underlying malevolence is supported by Dupont’s training in German expressionist film, the stylistic use of shadow, unusual angles and lingering shots never allows the audience to relax into the lethargically-paced film. A minor side note on the destabilising nature of the film, the titles feature swirls of shade, reminiscent of Dupont’s kaleidoscopic use of light. 


Another manifestation of being ‘kept in the dark’ is the precarious balance between hiding and displaying inter-racial couplings. Emblematic of jarring framing, an interior shot of the Limehouse club is presented to us through the spinning blades of a fan. This jazz-club scene features the ejection of a white woman for dancing with a black man, when coupled with the unsubtle allusions to the relationship between Shosho and Valentine, "Piccadilly" features a remarkably candid portrayal of both inter-racial relationships as extant and as the cause of societal tension. Unsurprisingly, however, censors removed an onscreen kiss between Shosho and Valentine and Shosho’s violent downfall resulting from the crossing of these acceptable boundaries was to be expected, altogether an unexceptional plot.

Film is often conceived as an inclusive medium, opening the door to allow new experience and understanding of events far removed from the audience’s scope, however “Piccadilly” keeps the audience in the proverbial dark. The structural exclusion of silent film is enhanced through long periods without dialogue, forcing the individual to guess and assume from the magnificent over-acting. The broken temporality, deriving from observing soundless speech before removal from the scene to read dialogue, reinforces our position as the observer. One cannot help but imagine the actors, frozen in a dark room while the audience reads dialogue removed totally from their acting process, waiting for the return of the audience, the validating spotlight.

"Glory, glory forever"

“Le sang d'un poète” (The Blood of a Poet - 1930) is the first instalment in Jean Cocteau’s partially autobiographical Orphic trilogy, which through uniting disparate artistic forms explores the creative process.

“The Blood of a Poet” deals less directly with the Orpheus myth than the following two films of the trilogy. There is a loose association between the artist/poet (Enrique Rivero) and Orpheus, their shared extra-human perceptive ability, both a gift and a burden allowing the artist figure to move back and forth between spheres that strongly connote death, Hades in the Orpheus mythology and here the Other/mirror-world. Cocteau, self-identifying as a poet, is ruminating on the artist’s sacrifice for art and the desire for glory; the artist's suicide attempt is in the endeavour for "eternal glory", a concept repeated but never achieved as both artists and artworks are consistently and repeatedly fractured and destroyed. 



The protagonist, if he can be conceived as such in a largely non-narrative film, travels into the other-world at the command of a statue (Elizabeth Lee Miller) that he himself gave life to. Greene (“Deadly Statues: Eros in the Films of Jean Cocteau,” 1988) argues that these most autobiographic films follow the artist as subservient to a powerful and cold woman in a display of masochism, alluding to Rossetti’s 'Venus Verticordia' (pictured left) as indicative of this woman-figure, manifested in various forms in “The Blood of a Poet”, threatening and beautiful. Although sexual overtones run strongly through this film, I find it limiting to see the artist’s service to his art, manifest in the statue-woman, as purely masochistic. 

Most interesting in the artist's destruction of the statue is that the first swing of the mallet takes her face off cleanly, as a mask, before destroying the rest of her body. The camera lingers on his stationary legs and torso contrasted to the dismembered, fractured stone body segments. This film has a preoccupation with the incomplete human body, whether it be the spinning wire mask frames or the recurring instance of statues missing limbs, Cocteau may be arguing for the beauty of the incomplete. Surrealist cinema upsets the human drive to enforce order upon chaos; this film is as the concept of constellations in the sky, trying very hard to see a narrative pattern that simply doesn’t exist. 

When the marble dust has settled and the artist has closed his eyes, the illusion of the artist as transformed into the very thing he destroyed is complete - “By breaking statues one risks turning into one oneself. Again glory, glory forever.” Film, as a moving medium, is uncomfortable when in stasis. Extended shots of stationary objects disquiets. Although the transition immediately following the artist’s transformation into the third part commences with energy and childhood vibrancy, the violent death of a child again stills the frame.

If what Wikipedia tells me is true, the original audience applauding the suicide of the poet in this third section consisted of the financial backer of the film, the wealthy socialite Vicomte de Noailles, along with his wife and friends. Upon discovering what it was they applauded, Noailles forced Cocteau to change the scene, who replaced Noailles with Barbette, the famous female impersonator. The film suffered delayed release due to fears of presenting immoral messages as supported by Barbette's role.  

The content is impossible to categorise or analyse, but commentary on the suffering of the poet and allusions to the Orpheus myth are discernible. Cocteau’s use of imaginative effects and striking visual elements, from the juxtaposition of the dead child to the socialite card game and the manipulation of camera to create a world removed from the laws of physics, “The Blood of a Poet” signifies many of the traits I expect from surrealist cinema - an unusual, unsatisfying but entertaining experience.