Ballet mecanique

Once upon a time, long, long ago..1924.. in a land far, far away..Paris..there was a simmering stew pot on the stove. A cauldron of artists, writers, poets, film-makers being stirred by the big spoon of change. Dudley Murphy, an early film maker and Fernand Leger, also a film maker (and one of my favorite painters) envisioned a film and then went on to co-direct it. It stands today as a masterpiece in early experimental film: "Ballet mecanique." While the film seems to begin and end in pastoral and romantic images....a young woman happily swinging on a swing, and later, posing by the Lilac bush, virtually all imagery in between speaks of the mechanization and industrialization of life. The film was about 16 minutes long. All it needed was musical accompaniment.
Enter George Anthell. He moved to Paris just in time. He had just completed a European tour playing Chopin to mixed reviews. It seems the 23 year old had a habit of pounding the piano rather than playing it. Upon meeting Leger and Murphy he was in perfect synch with their ideas and composed a score for the film. And it was a rather insane kind of music for his time. The music called for 8 player pianos to play amidst the sounds of fans being struck by sticks and pieces of leather, along with bells, whistles, and sirens going off. Really brilliant. The piece turned out to be twice as long as the film and in the film's debut it was not used. (Anthell, nevertheless, is still included in the closing credits of the film) It wasn't until the 1990's that editing technology enabled a way of marrying the original film to an abridged version of Anthell's music.
You can learn much more about this if you are interested. Suffice it to say both film and music here foretell the sounds and imagery that were yet to come.

Ballet mecanique, in two parts: