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THE FIRST PURELY abstract films were Hans Richter’s RHYTHM 21 and Viking Eggeling’s DIAGONAL SYMPHONY, both produced in 1921 in Berlin during the so-called “Sturm und Drang” period of the arts in Germany that followed World War I. All who now work in the experimental film field are in direct line of descent from those Richter and Eggeling experiments of thirty years ago, and those of Walter Ruttmann, whose earliest work dates from 1922.

To be sure, CALIGARI (1919) was an experimental film, and so were parts of GANCE’S LA ROUE (1920) and Germainc Dulac’s LA FÊTE ESPAGNOLE (1920). But these films were not entirely divorced from the theatre. It is also true that Louis Delluc and Canudo – especially the former – were the first to realize the expressive potential of the so-called “pure cinema. * Nevertheless, the line really starts with Richter and Eggeling in Germany.

Eggeling died before he could realize the full extent of his theories, but Richter continued to experiment, and never swerved from his ideals. Soon others began experimenting-in Germany, France and Russia. Each school started and developed independently.

Many of the earliest experimenters came from painting, as did Richter, Eggeling and Ruttmann; some, like Man Ray, from photography; others from journalism, like René Clair; or from film criticism, like Delluc, Brunius, Lods.

Film experiment in America began comparatively late-at the end of the twenties. Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand made MANHATTA in 1921, but with the exception of Robert Flaherty’s 24 DOLLAR ISLAND in 1925, there was nothing until after BALLET MÉCANIQUE by Léger, the Man Ray films, and other European products had been shown here.

Yet one cannot deny the experimental intentions of von Sternberg in THE SALVATION HUNTERS (1925) and WOMAN OF THE SEA (1926), and of certain documentaries.

But I do not want to go into that. I want to keep this discussion to non-objective, non-representational films-the purest flowering of experiment in the film.

So I reiterate: experiment in abstract cinema, or pure cinema, dates from 1921 in Germany and its most consistent devotee has been Hans Richter. Others toyed with it a while and gave it up, to return to their previous work or to go into something else.

Cavalcanti and Renoir are as far from their RIEN QUE LES HEURES and FILLE DE L’EAU as it is possible to get. Man Ray does commercial photography. Léger is painting again. Brunius writes film criticism. Fischinger makes films when he can, which is less and less often. Bunuel has gone from surrealism to the most harrowing realism (in LOS OLVIDADOS). Dali is giving lectures enlivened by exhibitions of how he paints. René Clair is turning out romances. One has not heard from Henri Chomette in years. There is no further work from Jean Epstein or Vertov. The Comte Etienne de Beaumont, producer of the exquisite A QUOI REVANT LES JEUNES Films? Has retired to his estates. The l’Herbier of L’INHUMAINE and the Gance of LA ROUE are replaced by the l’Herbier of THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII and the Gance of VENUS AVEUGLE. Claude Autant-Lara has gone from FAIT-DIVERS to such epics of sex as DEVIL IN THE FLESH and OCCUPÉ TOI D’AMELIE. Marcel Duchamp plays chess. What of Kirsanov, Gremillon, Greville?

As for Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Canudo, Ruttmann, and the sweetest singer of them all, Jean Vigo – they are no more.

Only Richter remains, and his DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY (1944) is a kind of summation, an apotheosis of a tradition, a confirmation of his theories of 30 years before, in which he still believes. In it he united the talents of his old comrades-in-arms of the avant-garde-Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Darius Milhaud, et al.

I visited Richter recently in his walk-up studio apartment on East Sixtieth Street. The steep climb winded me and I asked him why artists have to live in eagle’s nests. Is it because Parnassus was on Olympus? He laughed. “Certainly not! If you were on Mount Everest you would hardly he any closer to the stars than if you were in the Carlsbad Caverns. Is the coffee too strong? Wait, I’ll make some more.”

While he was at it I scanned the Hans Richter paintings that cover his walls. They had the logic of mathematical problems, a graceful and patrician balance of design. Their coloring was vivid and sunny-each canvas seemed, in the surety with which it was blocked out, like an apothegm.

I thought of his films, blocked out like his canvases, in “cinematic weights and measures,” especially the delicately balanced FILM STUDY (1926), the dream-like fluidity of which was interrupted rhythmically with percussive shocks-the film’s own “heartbeats.” And his EVERYTHING TURNS! (1929), a satirical cross-cut of carnival life, all of which was like watching an acrobat balancing precariously atop a column of swaying chairs. In his films, as in his painting, there was a preoccupation with balance, an extension in an of his logician’s mind, of his penchant for an ordered philosophy of life in which there are no surprises, and everything ends with quod erat demonstrandum. I could not help thinking that he was a kind of solitary.

“What made you turn from painting to film?” I asked, when he brought the coffee.
“The research Eggeling and I did made me aware of dynamic problems that couldn’t be solved on canvas,” he replied. “If there had not been film, I would doubtless have been satisfied to extend the scope of scrolls, which are a kind of extension of canvas. Or, maybe I would have invented the film-who knows?” This last with a smile, as he added:

“If an Egyptian Pharaoh could think of having figures painted on the columns of his palace in a progression of postures, so that, when racing by in his chariot, he could watch a ‘moving picture,’ I might have come up with some such idea, too. At the risk of repeating myself: who knows?”
Then:
“Film was not invented for the purpose of helping the painter solve dynamic problems, however. But film does serve the artist in this respect.
“In the cinema of today the place of the experimental film – I hope that phrase will soon be supplanted by ‘film poetry’ – is exactly the place occupied by poetry in literature. You ask what is the value of the experimental film today and what has been its influence on the so-called commercial film. To a wrong question you cannot get a right answer. The value of the experimental film isn’t in its influence or lack of influence on the commercial film. It exists for its own sake, as poetry does. That doesn’t mean that commercial films cannot-have poetry-very often they do. A poet like Cocteau has proved it. I’m not sure whether his Orpheus is purely commercial or purely poetic. I think it wavers between the two, but his earlier BLOOD OF A POET is pure poetry. No doubt about it.”

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