Entr'acte

About

Entr'acte is a landmark of French avant-garde cinema, directed by René Clair and conceived in collaboration with Francis Picabia for the interval of Picabia’s ballet Relâche. Rather than following a conventional narrative, the film unfolds as a rapidly shifting series of comic, absurd, and visually inventive episodes. A cannon fires at the audience; a group of mourners follows a funeral procession whose hearse mysteriously accelerates; a camel-drawn hearse races through the streets while the mourners struggle to keep up; and the procession gradually transforms into a surreal chase. Clair employs stop-motion, slow motion, rapid editing, superimpositions, reversed movement, and playful camera effects to disrupt ordinary perceptions of space and time. Featuring appearances by Picabia, Erik Satie, and Man Ray, Entr'acte embodies the irreverent spirit of Dada, turning cinema itself into a vehicle for chance, motion, visual humor, and deliberate nonsense.

Comments

Log in to join the conversation.

No comments yet — be the first.