The discussion of slow-motion seemed to invite references that went=
further
and further back in time. Here's a reference to a slow-motion film=
of a
boxing match that was being screened in Paris in the early twenties.=
=20
In Paris, 1922, a year after his fight with Jack Dempsey,=
French
boxing idol Georges Carpentier lost his light-heavyweight title to=
an
unknown boxer from Senegal called Battling Siki -- this despite the=
usual
rumor that the fight had been set up for Carpentier "to make a good
newsreel film" by knocking out Siki. The film played widely in France,=
but
the conditions of its reception led to interpretations quite distinct=
from
previous fight films. Writing in PARIS-JOURNAL, the surrealist Robert
D=E9snos provocatively suggested that the movie was an illustration=
of
cinema's powers of eroticism. "It's because, despite everything,=
it is
protected by an objective representation of reality that the cinema=
escapes
the control of its legal guardians. It transforms external elements=
to the
point of creating a new universe: this is how the SLOW-MOTION film=
of the
Siki-Carpentier fight in fact simulates gestures of passion." =20
-- Robert D=E9snos, "Eroticism," PARIS-JOURNAL, April 20,=
1923,
reprinted in Paul Hammond, ed., THE SHADOW OF ITS SHADOW: SURREALIST
WRITINGS ON CINEMA (London: BFI, 1978), pp. 122-23; and in D=E9snos,
CINEMA, (Editions Gallimard, 1966), pp. 101-03. (A citation pointed=
out
to me by filmmaker Laurie Block.)
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