Cinema Poetry 11 - Menilmontant

Cinema Poetry is a video blog devoted to bringing you some of the most poetic scenes and sequences in the history of cinema. French Impressionist Cinema in the 1920's provided the world with some of the most astonishing visual poetry it has ever seen, though sadly most of it is unseen nowadays. In Menilmontant, after the brutal murder of their parents, two young girls move to the city, where they have to grow up fast. One meets a man while the other languishes in their apartment, lonely and dreaming of what she is missing. The affair is brief; the man casts the girl aside and begins to see the other sister. But the first is pregnant, and when she has his child, she contemplates a terrible act. Menilmontant is nearly impossible to excerpt, since the 38 minute film flows by almost seamlessly, bridging and mixing time and space in an ethereal and deeply emotional collage. I don't know how it's possible, but in this film even a simple tilt shot down to a cracked brick street can carry meanings of despair and abandonment more powerful than any dialogue could ever convey.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Cinema
• Poetry
• Menilmontant
• Kirsanoff
• French
• Impressionism
• Paul
• Mercer

[theanswerisegg]

hi there, looove the music score, could you tell me what it is pls? thanx for posting this!

[amt253]

Paul Mercer wrote it as an original score for the Kino edition of the film, a release called "Avant Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920's and 1930's"

[antitart]

Hey... and if you put his name in the search terms a lot of people will come here to check it out. He has a large fanbase of people like me, who scour the internet for traces of his work...

[amt253]

Didn't think of that. Thank you.  "Paul Mercer" has been added to the tags.

[PoetryETrain]

This is good, very well done, thank you, we added this to our playlists, thank you.

[VanRippestein]

hahahaha i was just thinking: "This is beautifull, where can i get this film?"

Then i read your reply and found out that i already own it on dvd, but haven't seen it yet. Thanks for the reminder :)

[spankbandit]

C'est Bon.

[artohline37]

Wow, that's one of the best so far. Amazing!  I had no idea the French made stuff that great that early!