As a director and theoretician of experimental film, Germaine Dulac proclaimed her goal to make “pure” cinema, which she spoke of as “musically constructed” films or “films made according to the rules of visual music.” At the heart of Germaine Dulac’s controversial collaboration with Antonin Artaud, La coquille et le clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928), source of fabulous misunderstandings with the Surrealists, lies Dulac’s revolutionary poetics.
The Seashell and the Clergyman
Advertised as “a dream on the screen,” The Seashell and Clergyman’s premiere at the Studio des Ursulines on February 9, 1928 incited a small riot, and critical response to the film has ranged from the misinformed – some American prints spliced the reels in the wrong order – to the rapturous – acclaimed as the first example of a Surrealist film. Dulac would have liked to have a preface accompany the film, but Artaud thought otherwise. (1)
Alain Virmaux’s revised and augmented study La Coquille et le Clergyman: Essai d’élucidation d’une querelle mythique, accompanied by a DVD with interviews, provides valuable new information on the vexed collaboration of Artaud and Dulac, which permits us to examine Artaud’s scenario and Dulac’s film in a new light. For Virmaux, Dulac’s resolute position safeguarding her authority as director of the film contributes as much to Artaud’s quarrel with her as does her differing poetics.
In principle, Artaud and Dulac would seem to agree on the need for a new kind of cinema that was based on emotional truth, neither a purely abstract cinema removed from the world of sensations, nor a cinema that projects psychological situations more suitable for the stage or literature:
Deux voies semblent s’offrir actuellement au cinéma, dont aucune certainement n’est la vraie. Le cinéma pur ou absolu d’une part et de l’autre cette sorte d’art visuel hybride qui s’obstine à traduire en images plus ou moins heureuses des situations psychologiques qui seraient parfaitement à leur place sur une scène ou dans les pages d’un livre, mais pas sur l’écran, n’existent guère que comme le reflet d’un monde, qui puise ailleurs sa matière et son sens. (2)
[Two paths seem to be currently offered to cinema, neither of which is likely the true one. Pure or absolute cinema on the one hand, and on the other, this sort of hybrid visual art that persists in translating into images, more or less apt, psychological situations that would be perfectly at home on stage or in the pages of a book, but not on the screen, they hardly exist but as the reflection of a world that draws its source and meaning elsewhere.]
The Seashell and the Clergyman
However, their creative practices follow two distinct tendencies in the avant-garde of the early twentieth century: Dulac, much like an artist such as Wassily Kandinsky, who would explore the meanings of colour through emotional counterparts in music, advocates for a cinema whose light, lines and volumes operate on the spectator in ways analogous to music; whereas Artaud’s aggressive vision of cinema, akin to the surrealist’s, seeks to fathom the dark side of consciousness, and make the sequences of images on the screen translate dreams and function like the language of thought.
Indeed, the term “dream” as used in the initial advertising for The Seashell and the Clergyman became a source of controversy. According to Virmaux:
“Dulac avait envisagé de présenter le film par la formule “rêve d’Antonin Artaud, réalisé par Germaine Dulac.” Artaud protesta avec énergie, en particulier par la note qui accompagnait la publication de son scénario dans la N.R.F. (novembre 1927). […] On accusa bientôt Dulac d’avoir donné du scénario une interprétation uniquement onirique. […] Paule Thévenin a démontré […] que c’était le couple Allendy qui était responsable de l’appellation ‘rêve’ pour qualifier le film: ils avaient utilisé le mot dans divers communiqués et annonces, sans qu’Artaud ait jamais protesté” (3)
[Dulac had envisaged presenting the film with the formula “dream by Antonin Artaud, directed by Germaine Dulac.” Artaud vigorously protested, in particular with the note that accompanied the publication of his scenario in the N.R.F (November 1927). Dulac was soon accused of having given the scenario a solely oneiric interpretation. Paule Thévenin demonstrated that it was the Allendy’s who were responsible for qualifying the film with the designation “dream”; they had used the word in various press releases and announcements without Artaud’s ever having protested.]
When Dulac showed The Seashell and Clergyman, along with L’Invitation au voyage (1927), for Filmliga during a brief trip to Holland, (4) she told the public that subjects that were most suitable to the medium of film (“sujets cinégraphiques”) were those capable of releasing emotion through the play of images on the screen (“dégager l’émotion par le jeu des images seules”). For Dulac, recent cinematic progress was the result of “la découverte des accords d’harmonies et du rythme envisagés comme facteurs dramatiques” [the discovery of harmonic chords and rhythm viewed as dramatic factors.]
In what would seem a response to the controversy surrounding the use of the term “rêve” (dream) in general advertising for the film, Dulac prefaced its screening with the intertitle: “Non pas un rêve, mais le monde des images lui-même entraînant l’esprit où il n’aurait jamais consenti à aller, le mécanisme en est à la portée de tous.” [“Not a dream, but the world of images itself taking the mind where it would never have agreed to go, the mechanism is within everyone’s reach.”] The choice of the term “mechanism” seems an unusual one for Dulac, more in keeping with Artaud’s notion of how the mind works. The film was subsequently advertised as “Screenplay by Antonin Artaud; Filmed by Germaine Dulac.”
968full-the-seashell-and-the-clergyman-screenshot
Asked by Filmliga to explain several technical points in The Seashell and Clergyman, Dulac wrote: “Je puis dire que tout mon effort a été de rechercher dans l’action du scénario d’Antonin Artaud, les points harmoniques, et, de les relier entre eux par des rythmes étudiés et composés” [“I can say that all my effort was to look for harmonic moments in Antonin Artaud’s scenario, and to link them up through carefully designed and composed rhythms”]. She offered the beginning of the film as an example: “Chaque expression, chaque mouvement du clergyman sont measurés selon le rythme des verres qui se brisent. Tel aussi la série des portes qui s’ouvrent et se referment, et aussi le nombre des images ordonnant le sens de ces portes qui se confondent en battements contrariés dans une mesure de 1 à 8.” [“Each expression, each movement by the clergyman is measured according to the rhythm of breaking glass. So also the series of doors that open and close, and the number of images ordering the direction of these doors that merge in opposing beats measured from 1 to 8.”]
Artaud’s scenario calls for “une succession de gros plans la tête du prêtre doucereuse, accueillante quand elle apparaît aux yeux de la femme, et rude, amère, terrible quand elle considère le clergyman. [… ] [Le clergyman] se retrouve au sommet d’une montagne; en surimpression à ses pieds, des entrelacements de fleuves et de plaines. […] [Le clergyman] se jette sur [la femme] et lui arrache son corsage comme s’il voulait lacérer ses seins. Mais ses seins sont remplacés par une carapace de coquillages. Et arrache cette carapace et la brandit dans l’air où elle miroite. Il la secoue frénétiquement dans l’air et la scène change et montre une salle de bal. Des couples entrent; les uns mystérieusement et sur la pointe des pieds, les autres extrêmement affairés. Les lampadaires semblent suivre les mouvements des couples. Toutes les femmes sont court vêtues, étalent les jambes bombent la poitrine et ont les cheveux coupés. […] Des servants, des ménagères envahissent la pièce avec des balais et des seaux, se précipitent aux fenêtres. De toutes parts, on frotte avec intensité, frénésie, passion. Une sorte de gouvernante rigide, toute vêtue de noir, entre avec une bible dans la main et va s’installer à une fenêtre. Quand on peut distinguer son visage on s’aperçoit que c’est toujours la même belle femme. Dans un chemin dehors on voit un prêtre qui se hâte, et plus loin une jeune fille en costume de jardin avec une raquette de tennis. Elle joue avec un jeune homme inconnu.” (5)
[ A series of close-ups of the priest’s head, unpleasantly sweet, welcoming when it appears in the woman’s eyes, and hard, bitter, terrible when it considers the clergyman…[The clergyman] is on the summit of a mountain, in superimposition at his feet, rivers and plains interlaced…[The clergyman] throws himself on the woman and rips off her blouse as if he wanted to lacerate her breasts. But her breasts are replaced by a carapace of seashells. And snatches this carapace and brandishes it in the air where it shimmers. He shakes it frenetically in the air and the scene changes and shows a ballroom. Couples enter; some mysteriously on tiptoe, others extremely busy. The lights seem to follow the movements of the couples. All the women are wearing short dresses, legs on display, breasts bulging, hair cut short. […] Servants, housekeepers invade the room with buckets and brooms, rush to the windows. They scrub all over with intensity, frenzy, passion. A sort of rigid governess, dressed all in black, enters with a bible in her hand and goes to stand by a window. When we can distinguish her face, we notice that it’s still the same beautiful woman. On a path outside, we see a priest who is hurrying, and further away a young girl in a garden dress with a tennis racket. She is playing with an unidentified young man.]
Artaud even provided a “découpage”