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2036-461X
21136
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Kirsten Baumann, Rolf Sachsse (eds.), Moderne gruBe/Modern Gretings. Fotografierte Architektur auf Ansichtskarten 1919-1939/Photographed Architecture on Picture Postcards 1919-1939 (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2004)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
5
Selected by
2005-10-01
2023-09-21
2005-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Thomas Elsaesser
2005/10/01
2036-461X
7
en
Kirsten Baumann, Rolf Sachsse (eds.), Moderne gruBe/Modern Gretings. Fotografierte Architektur auf Ansichtskarten 1919-1939/Photographed Architecture on Picture Postcards 1919-1939 (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2004)
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/21136/18764
5
                                                                             SELECEO BY


SELECTED BY: RICK ALTMAN                     reflections and esperiments on sound
                                             regularly takes her far afield. The clarity
Giusy Pisano, Une Archéologic du ciné.       of her summarics of important develop
ma sonore (Paris: CNRS, 2004)                ments is most wclcome.
                                              Once Pisano reaches the mid so centu
  One of the oldest human dreams is the      ry, her carlier broad coverage joins the
desire to store and reproduce sound in the   more familiar history of phonography.
same way that images can be replicated.      The usual suspects thus make their
Unless sound can be reproduced, it can't     appearance here: Leon Scott de Martin-
be properly studied, stored, or sold, and    ville, Helmholtz, Marcy. Mugbridge,
thus must remain unavailable for scien-      Alexander Graham Bell, Edison, Berliner.
tific and commercial exploitation. The       In a final section, Pisano provides in-
history of attempts to domesticate sound     depth coverage of the many late 19 cen-
is thus rich and fascinating, as Giusy       tury attempts to synchronize sound and
Pisano demonstrates in her archaeology       image.
of sound cinema. This is not a history of      Based on substantial new research into
cinema sound like Harry Geduld's The         a wide range of documents and materials
Birth of the Talkies: From Edison to lol-    (patents, laboratory instruments, projec
son. Where Geduld concentrates on those      tion systems, contemporary claims and
who applied existing ideas about sound  reviews, catalogues, technical docu
to cinema (De Forrest, Case, Sponable), ments), Pisano's work adds substantially
stressing Phonofilm, Vitaphone, and          to previous work in this domain. Her abil.
other 19205 sound systems, Pisano offers    ity to handle technical writing in several
a complete overview of the ways in which languages gives her work a breadth not
the Western world learned to document       seen elsewhere. Whether she is dealing
and reproduce sound events.                 with myth, magic, or science. Pisano does
  The book's first section explores the a first-rate job of explaining not only the
sound-oriented myths and dreams of details of cach theory, but also their gen
antiquity (the statue of Memnon) and the    eral import and relation to other theories.
Renaissance (Rabelais' paroles gelées), the The   book also benefits substantially from
                                            several dozen well chosen illustrations.
magical approach of early moderns
(Athanasius Kircher, Giambattista Della
Porta, Etienne-Gaspard Robertson), and
the 18th century's increasingly experi- SELECTED BY: THOMAS ELSAESSER
mental science of sounds, with its empha-
sis on the production of automatons          Kirsten Baumann, Rolf Sachsse (eds.).
capable of reproducing the mechanisms        Moderne grüße/Modern Grectings.
of the human body. Moving into the 19th      Fotografierte Architektur auf Insicht.
century, Pisano concentrates on the all      skarten 1919-1939/Photographed Archi-
too neglected figure of Thomas Young,        lecture on Picture Postcards 1919-3939
one of the first to devise an adequate       (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers.
method for transcribing movement,             2004)
eventually successfully applied to tran-
scription of the vibrations produced by        One of the most famous examples of
sound. Though Pisano makes it clear that     international modernism in architecture
her principal domain is France in the 19th   is the Weissenhofsiedlung near Stuttgart,
century, the international nature of         a housing complex designed in 1927 by
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      Mies van der Rohe, with purpose-builters, but here grouped according to
  homes by Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens,   tion and city, as one would expect with
  Bruno Taut, J.P. Oud and a dozen other picture postcards: Stuttgart, Frankfur,
  renowned architects from the 19205.           Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf,
  Weissenhof's fame rests, however, also       Hanover, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin and
  on its notoriety: it became          well-known
                                               Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).
   partly thanks to a photomontage which       As a film historian, I was captivated by
   denounced the white, flat-roofed cube-what the volume told about several unar
  shaped building ensemble as an "Arab swered questions that had puzzled me
 village," depicting it complete with over the years, while working on the cin
   camels, a lion and burnus-clad Bedouins. ematic representations of modernist
   Besides the fact that this anonymous,      architecture. For instance, why was it that
   racist image used the typically left-wing  so few of these landmark buildings and
  technique of photomontage, what strikes     housing schemes of Das neue Bauen (the
  one is that it circulated as a (hand- new urbanism) were depicted on film?
  coloured and sepia) postcard well into Why were there, with the exception of
  the 1940s: playful, insidious and finan-    Hans Richter's Die neue Wohnung, virtu
  cially very successful. Yet for there to be ally no films, either documentary or
  this cartoonish "take" on the Weis- avant-garde, that celebrated this key
 senhofsiedlung, there must have been an      aspect of modernism? What had hap
    "original," presumably also a postcard.   pened to the famous alliance between
 And so it turns out to be: via its diffama-  CIAM, the Congres international des
 tory "faking" of a famous urbanist land-     architects modernes, and CICIM, the
 mark, a visual medium of modernity             Congrès international du cinéma
 comes into view that has so far largely        indépendant moderne, meeting in La Sar.
 escaped scholarly attention: the architec-     raz in lune 1928 and 1929 respectively?
 tural postcard.                                  Somewhere, I felt, a link was missing,
      Modern Greetings, the book under          a factor had been overlooked, our prem
 review, allows us to re-assess what this       ises were misconceived. In trying to
 medium was capable of, with respect to         account for the lack of the landmarks of
 modern architecture in the inter-war           modern architecture recorded on film, I
 years. It is in many ways an eye-opener.       eventually came across statements b!
 Originating as the catalogue of a touring      architects themselves, notably Bruno
 exhibition in 2004 organized by the            Taut and Walter Gropius who, while in
 Bauhaus Dessau, itself based on the pri-       other respects enthusiasts of (avant
 vate collection of Bernd Dicke, a German       garde, as well as popular) cinema.
 designer of note, the handsomely printed       nonetheless expressed reluctance to
 volume comprises 18o reproductions of          have their buildings filmed. In cases
 mostly black-and-white or sepia post-          where they did allow a film camera, the
 cards. They show some of the outstand-tended          to use only certain shots in order
 ing monuments of the modernist move-to illustrate their books, articles or pan
 ment in Germany, focusing among others         phlets. The reason was in one sense sin
 on buildings and housing projects by           ple enough: it was a matter of power and
 Peter Behrens, Otto Bartning, Erich            control. Architects felt that with film
 Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut, Hans                   they could no longer control the angle or
Fahrenkamp, Ernst May, Hans Poelzig,            point of view from which their building
Fritz Hoeger, Otto Häsler and many oth          was viewed. Hence their marked prefer.

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encc for still photography or single           postcard, focusing on questions of cio
frame enlargements.                            nomics and printing technique as much
  In another sense the issuc sas more          as on acsthetics, laste and fashion.
complex and revolved around an unre.             The modern posteard gocs hack to tS;o.
solved tension between movement and            when the single printed picce of card
stasis in modernism in general. Mod-           with specified dimensions was licensed
ernist architecture, with its reliance on      by the (German) Post Office for privaie
straight lines, on geometric forms and the     usc. A by-product of the military (its trial
grid - in contrast to expressionist archi.     run was as field post in the Franco Pruss.
tecture - did not always come to terms         ian War), it was cheaper than a letter, and
with motion and mobility, those key sig-       permitted messages to circulate more
nifiers of the city and modern urban life.     quickly and more efficiently. But the
As counter-example confirming this             postcard also opened up a new communi
point one could cite Pierre Chenal's film      cation space between the private (break-
L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1931)            ing the much-prized confidentiality prin-
about three of Le Corbusier's villas, and      ciple of the letter) and the public (the text
especially his masterpiece, the Villa          was now as accessible as the address). The
Savoie in Poissy. There, one sees the archi-ambivalence of public and private can ba
tect himself arrive in his car and rapidly   extended to a similar ambivalence con-
traverse the entrance, before taking           cerning sender and addressee. Posteards
Chenal's camera on a guided tour               soon became kitschy, frivolous.
through the rooms and on to the balcony.        "naughty" and often enough pornograph-
The editing - at once Russian montage          ic: ways of teasing prying eyes, embar.
and continuity editing - creates a kind of     rassing the addressee and daring the cen-
cinematic equivalent of the architectural      sor. The visual riddle, the rebus picture
promenade, providing a carefully con-          and the photo-montage were favoured
trolled way of experiencing the building       visual modes. Thus, precisely because of
with one's body, but here led and con-         the public nature of an essentially private
trolled by the architect himself. After see-   communication, the message on a post-
ing the film, Siegfried Gidion is supposed     card has always a particular rhetorical
to have said: "Only film can make the          thrust, being as much a meta-message as a
new architecture intelligible," a quote        message: boast, boost and self-advertising
more often used to bridge the gap              are never far, especially when the holiday
between architectural and filmic practice      postcard is sent from fabulous destina.
rather than to explain it.                     tions to those unlucky enough to have
  Part of this gap is indeed addressed (and    stayed at home.
filled) by Modern Greetings. For it seems        A similar principle perhaps obtains in
with the posteard, the architect could         the architectural posteard. Rather than
have it both ways. A popular medium,           showing a beach, a cathedral, a local mar
with a potentially wide circulation, it        ket or the hotel, on which the sender has
gave the architect a medium of motion          figuratively inscribed his own presence,
and mobility while not obliging him to         in order to gleefully or regretfully under-
relinquish the control over how a build.       line the addressee's absence, the architec-
ing is seen. The brief historical excursus     tural postcard obeys a symmetrical, but
supplied in Modern Greetings by Rolf           inverted semiotic rule: the general
Sachsse explains the place of the architec-    absence of people makes the building
tural postcard within the history of the       into the dramatis persona, while its
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   sculptural prominence invites curiosity
   by invoking the invisible-visible presence
   of the building's creator. The architectur-
                                                   absence     of hum
                                                   tic for the "new wa
   al postcard thus functions as much as a         architectural photogr
                                                   from the New Objectiv
   visiting card identifying an architect as
   author, as it is a card recording a visit to
                                                   mon with the minima
   an architectural site.                          ern photography genera
                                                    cover puts is: "Credit for the shrew
       For what the images reproduced in           culated effect made by this visions;
   Modern Greetings quite insistently raise        architecture is due to the photographs
   are questions of scale and of human pres-       (.) whose 'camera eye' staged factories
   ence. Scale: the architectural postcard is      and high-rises as radiant cubes and scu
  recognizable as a distinct visual genre           ture on a superhuman scale."
  because of the quasi-uniformity of the              The sculptural aspect - achieved at t;
  perspective chosen, in particular, the rela-      price of voiding the site of the huma;
  tion of horizontals to the vertical axes          user - is in some ways a provocation, bu
  and the function of the white margins as          also that which most fascinates the eye
 a picture frame, suggesting depth and These postcards already appeal to the co!
 recess, but also isolating the building andlector, rather than invite to be sent A
 turning it into an abstract shape. Given fetishism of possession creeps into one's
  the diversity of the photographers (some         gaze that Jean-Luc Godard so brilliant;
  known, but many anonymous), it is                satirized in Les Carabiniers (1963): for his
  remarkable how consistently the posi-            heroes postcards are the spoils of war, to
  tion of the camera takes either a bird's eye     have the image is to own what it repre
  view or assumes the street-level as eye-         sents. Architectural postcards, we leam,
 level, tilting upwards. Equally typical is        were mass-produced to be handed out at
  the emphasis on the diagonals, and the           trade fairs, sold on site, or given away by
  over-angle rather than head-on position          the architect. Pioneers in this respect
  generally chosen for the exterior of a           were Erich Mendelsohn and his clients
 building. Taken together, these stylistic         the Schocken Brothers. For their depart
 choices lend to most of the sites a for-         ment store chain in Germany, Mende
 ward-thrusting aspect, reminiscent of             sohn not only designed distinctive build
 Lumiere's train, roaring into the station         ings, whose elegant curves, white bands
 or a ship's bow and thus perhaps not              of masonry, alternating with broad
 unconnected with the decade's craze for           expanses of glass virtually defined mod
 ocean-liners - an effect emphasized by            ern shopping. By incorporating the letter
 the choice of blue skies, with just a hint of     ing into the facade and making sure the
 attractively picturesque cumulus clouds.          building looked as spectacular at night
 Ernst May's Römerstadt building in                lit with neon lights, as it did in daytims,
 Frankfurt or Fritz Höger's Chile House in         he underscored the tendency of archite
 Hamburg are icons of architectural histo-         ture to become a visual medium in its
 ry precisely because there seems to be           own right, over and above it being built
 only one angle under which they can be           space, and functioning in a multi-media
 viewed - the one immortalized by the              context. Indeed, Mendelsohn's Schocken
 postcard.                                        buildings, made famous through the
   Human Presence: virtually every build-         postcards, on sale and on display at the
 ing is set in streets that are all but desert-   checkout, could be said to be among the
 ed of traffic, people or pedestrians. This        first conceptual forays into an all-encom
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                                   (1927), Man with the Movic Camera
passing corporate design (after Behrens
and his AEG factory), in which the thrust-
                                        (1928), and Berlin. Symphony of a Big City
ing yet modulated outlines as reproduced      (1927) notwithstanding. Or perhaps, mak.
on the postcards are the key clement: at      ing films was simply too expensive, and
once trademark and advertisement, with        the chances of distribution by then too
the logo the building and the building the    uncertain for architects and their clients
logo. It required the pictorial isolation     to invest in them: the postcards as estab
and monumentalisation as enacted in the       lished mass-medium at once substituted
architectural postcard, to generate such      for the moving image, and sacralised the
an image culture around these modernist       sites and buildings they so theatrically
cubes, with their soaring diagonals.          put on show. Even as they reduced them
 Thus, the mobility of thrust and recess,     in scale, they made them circulate and
and the energy of elevation and scale ulti-   kept them on the move. An ephemeral
mately rest on an almost baroque trompe       medium, but mass-distributed, the post-
l'eil effect. Such mise-en-scène mimics       card raised the new architecture's recog.
elements of the cinema, while keeping         nition factor, which in turn was the
the human figure at the edge or altogeth-     ground on which its images grew into the
er off-frame. However, the point for us is    cliches and the icons they became.
surely to see the postcards in context: a       Which brings me back to the ambiva-
popular medium serving another, elitist       lence I noted among modernist archi-
medium, while not forgetting their ironic     tects, with respect to movement, mobility
and even anachronistic relation to each       of the gaze and the human point of view.
other, with an older medium "borrowed"        Ambivalence, more than outright rejec-
by a new age, as if to subtly allude to the   tion. Le Corbusier, the very embodiment
traditional juxtaposition of "the old" and    of the plan, the grid and the cube, and the
 "the new," of "before" and "after" so        man who famously said that the modern
stereotypically employed in advertising,      house was a machine to live in, was also
in instructional films and when propagat-     acutely aware of the dilemma of how to
ing social progress. Perhaps one of the         "take in" modern architecture. He once
first successful blends of avant-garde cul-   remarked: "Arab architecture teaches us a
ture and popular culture, the architectur-    valuable lesson. It is best appreciated on
al postcard did so well in the late 19205,    foot. Walking - you have to walk through
because by then, several of the technical     a building with a changing viewpoint to
 media - photography, design, architec-       see the articulation of the building
 ture, typography, printing and publishing    deployed. It is the opposite to that of
- had begun to discover their mutual          baroque architecture, which is conceived
 interdependence. Leading figures had         on paper around the fixed vertical axis. I
 become aware of synergies that could be      prefer the teaching of Arab architecture."
 realized when industry and the avant-        Could it be that by calling, among others,
 garde, commerce and high concept design      Le Corbusier's contribution to the leis-
 worked together, however warily they         senhofsiedlung an "Arab village." the
 might have eyed each other. That the cin-    photo-montaged postcard was not so
 ema in all this remained so marginal is      much proffering an insult, as paying a
 still something of a mystery, and seems to   compliment - if utterly unintended? Did
 indicate that it was probably not yet per-   it speak truer than it knew about how
 ceived as the medium of urban modernity      modern housing should be perceived,
 we now tend to recognize it as, Metropolis   experienced, lived in - on the far side of
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  either the God's eye view or the frog's eye installation au sein de l'institution uni
  view, but at the scale of the human body, versitaire, les études historiques ont don
  and at the pace of the human foot? Orfinalement
                                         put      repris du poil de la bête,
  the other way, was it the "naughty" post-        dopées en cela par une conjoncture nos.
  card - as the medium of a more popular          velle ayant notamment vu l'émergence
  but also more populist-demagogic imagi-          d'une structure nationale particulière.
  nation - that took revenge on the mod.   ment productive: l'Association Française
 ernism which had appropriated it, by try. de Recherche sur l'Histoire du Cinéma.
 ing to ennoble it? Evidently, the battle  Cette association, qui est l'une des forces à
 over European modernism and moderni-l'origine de la publication de l'ouvraza
 ty had only just begun, and the fact that examiné ici, a été fondée en 1984, dans la
 the word "Arab" should be at the centre   foulée du renouvellement d'intérét
 must strike us today as uncannily envers le cinéma des premiers temps
 prophetic.                                (dont le coup d'envoi avait été donné par
                                                 le Symposium de Brighton en 1978, orga.
                                                  nisé par la Fédération internationale des
 SELECTED BY:                                     archives du film), où les chercheurs
 ANDRE GAUDREAULT                                 anglais et nord-américains avaient
                                                  d'ailleurs tenu le haut du pavé (la France
 Irène Bessière, Jean A. Gili (sous la direc-     en avait été relativement absente, si ce
 tion de), Histoire du cinéma. Probléma           n'est de la participation de Noël Burch,
 tique des sources (Paris: Institut National      chercheur français d'origine américaine,
 d'Histoire de l'Art/Maison des Sciences de       comme on sait). Pour François Albera, qui
 l'Homme/Centre de Recherches sur l'His-          signe l'une des introductions à l'ouvrage,
 toire et l'Esthétique du Cinéma et Asso-         ce mouvement de redécouverte du ciné.
 ciation Française de Recherche sur l'His-        ma des premiers temps a d'ailleurs
 toire du Cinéma, 2004)                            "donné naissance au plus formidable
                                                  bouleversement épistémologique que
      La France, du moins celle de la recher l'histoire du cinéma ait connu"(p. I2).
 che en cinéma, a, on le sait, fini par retro-      On peut penser que l'onde de choc pro-
 uver sa fibre historienne. Ce n'est qu'un        voquée par le militantisme soutenu de
 juste retour de balancier pour une nation        l'AFRHC depuis sa fondation y est vrai
 qui avait donné au monde ses seuls histo         semblablement pour quelque chose dans
 riens du cinéma d'envergure mondiale             la création, en bout de ligne, du contexte
 (Sadoul et Mitry). Comme le font remar-          ayant favorisé l'intégration récente du
 quer dans leur "Avant-propos" (p. 5), les        cinéma dans le champ scientifique de
 deux responsables de la publication de cet       l'Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art.
ouvrage, on a en effet vu, au cours des          L'ouvrage qui nous intéresse ici, intitulé
années 80, les questions d'histoire du            Histoire du cinéma. Problématique des
cinéma reprendre, lentement, leur place           sources - sous la direction d'Irène Bessid
aux côtés des questions de théorie du             re (de l'INHA) et de Jean Gili (de l'AFRHC)
cinéma. Après une période, assez longue          -, constitue les Actes du colloque, qui s'est
tout de même (en gros les années 70), au         tenu en novembre 2002, inaugurant ladi
cours de laquelle l'Histoire n'avait plus du      te intégration.
tout bonne presse, et au cours de laquelle          Il y a donc eu solution de continuité
les études cinématographiques réussis-            entre les années 60 et les années 80 dans
saient avec brio, mais sans l'Histoire, leur     le développement et l'expression de la

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