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Le Ventre législatif

Baissez le rideau !

 

In 1927, Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker, began to dream of making a film of Marx’s Capital. For many reasons, including the difficulty of turning a text into film as highly theoretical as Marx’s book, he never managed to quite fulfill his aim. From this aborted project remain around twenty pieces of rough paper that reveal how Eisenstein tried to solve that challenge[1].

 

Among his sources of inspiration, we find many texts, from Marx’s Capital, to Joyce’s Ulysses, including Zola’s Money. Surprisingly enough, he hardly mentioned any visual material but Daumier’s two caricatures : Le Ventre législatif and Baissez le rideau ! From Eisenstein’s notes, one understands that he was attracted by them for their depiction of political life under Louis-Philippe’s régime as a great masquerade, in the very theatrical sense of the term The King held all the powers, including the economical ones, despite his trying to present himself as a “Citizen King”.

 

Refering to the character of Robert Macaire (representing in reality the King), Marx himself used the theatrical device to describe the French society of 1848 in The Class struggles in France. But one cannot rely only on the political content of those caricatures in order to understand Eisenstein’s choice about those two special caricatures, as Daumier made countless  political caricatures nurtured by such a theatrical metaphor.

 

Though Eisenstein doesn’t write about it in his notes, one can suppose that he was, first of all, interested by the formal aspects of those two Daumier’s prints. Indeed, Eisenstein has always been fascinated by the way Daumier rendered movement, as a  basis of cinema to come. If one looks at Le Ventre législatif, one cannot be but struck by its dynamics, conveyed by the curved lines of the benches, which could be compared, from a retrospective look, with film strips. The deputies are depicted in an almost horizontal, panoramic shot.

 

If, keeping in mind Le Ventre législatif, we turn now to Baissez le rideau !,  we can also read it as a cinematic composition. As Eisenstein’s notes suggest, he would have built a filmic sequence beginning with a shot inspired by the Ventre législatif while developing it with another shot inspired by Baissez le rideau ! And indeed, if we take those two caricatures together, we will note that they match perfectly : the assembly of deputies depicted in Le Ventre législatif appear also in Baissez le rideau !, but seen from the background, as if the viewer of the first picture had taken a step back.

 

Both pictures, in their composition, are hence tied together by the equivalent of a backward panoramic movement. To link those two caricatures by a camera movement would have allowed Eisenstein to reveal that Louis-Philippe is in reality the ruler of the legislative assembly. This causal effect is also enhanced by some « plastic » evidence: the proeminent stomach of Louis-Philippe’s heavy silhouette in the second image echoes the grotesque and monstruous legislative belly of the first one.

 

 

Text by Ada Ackerman, July 2013

 



[1] Sergei Eisenstein, “Notes for a film of Capital”, October n°2, Summer 1976, pp. 3-26.