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August 1996, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Dan Streible <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:09:17 -0600
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text/plain
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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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