Rain (1929 film)
Rain is a Dutch short film from the year 1929. The views of the city of Amsterdam in the rain count to the most famous work of Joris Ivens documentary filmmaker, who had staged rain along with Mannus Franken. This silent film is considered an outstanding example of the European avant-garde film of the late 1920s and was included in the Dutch film canon. He was dubbed in 1932, another musical adaptation by the Austrian composer Hanns Eisler was known under the name Fourteen Ways of Describing the Rain.
Content
The film begins with a view of the canals and the streets of Amsterdam. The bustling life on the main roads and in the channels is observed. Slowly the sky darkens, a wind pulls on. The first drops of rain fall and form rings on the water in the canals.
People tighten their umbrellas and close the windows of their homes, the gutters fill with water. During the downpour is getting stronger, the camera glides over puddles and looking through drop -shrouded windows. From a tram out of the traffic is observed in the rain.
Finally, the rain decreases and the sky tears open again. The sun is reflected on the wet pavement and in the canals. Life returns to the streets.
Genesis
Rain was next to the socially critical short film surf the only filmmaker Joris Ivens and cooperation of Mannus Franken, both of which were still in their infancy. Ivens and Franks in 1927 jointly established the Dutch film league, which they wanted to make known to the European avant-garde film in the Netherlands. Ivens, the son of a manufacturer of photographic accessories began to turn even experimental films and completed in 1928 with De Brug his first publicly listed film in which he portrayed a bascule bridge in Rotterdam.
While Ivens later in his autobiography stated that the idea came to him to rain during the filming of De Brug, letters prove that Franken had proposed the subject already in October 1927 Ivens. Ivens was thrilled franc idea and immediately started shooting. Getting settings have already been demonstrated in late 1927 in a private setting, but Ivens worked two more years of rain, during which he performed in parallel other film projects. A hand-held camera, a raincoat and rubber boots were getting ready for the project and Ivens had instructed Known to inform him when rain showers in suit were. The low light conditions during the rain put special demands on Ivens. Only with a fully open aperture on the camera get him the desired images, he used this footage from Agfa and renounced filters for color correction. A total of four months Ivens collected recordings of Amsterdam in the rain.
In addition to waiting for rain weather also the cut of the film was delayed, Ivens had increasing problems, zusammenzuschneiden the existing, and is still growing film, which Ivens and Franks did without intertitles. They exchanged over the months regularly ideas for the assembly of the individual settings, but since Franken was staying during the time in Paris and rarely Ivens visited in Amsterdam, this was largely solely responsible for the camera work, directing and film editing. Franken felt pushed into the background, but Ivens reiterated that he had always stressed franc contribution as a source of ideas for test screenings of the rough cut.
After drafts were presented by rain in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, the premiere of the finished film eventually found on 14 December 1929 at the cinema, the film league, the De Uitkijk instead.
Despite the alienation while working on the rain and the parallel twisted short film surf francs and Ivens were planning another joint project, which was but ultimately not realized. Both went separate ways from now on as a documentary filmmaker.
Performance history
After the premiere of rain in the theater of the Dutch Filmliga the film was performed by numerous European film clubs and proved to be a great success. Ivens, who had met the Soviet director Vsevolod Pudovkin early 1929, went at the invitation of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries ( VOKS ) in the Soviet Union, where he presented alongside other Dutch films also rain in January 1930. The Moscow public was interested to Ivens and his films, in the press, but his socially critical films were mainly discussed. Demonstrations in Leningrad, the Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia followed to rain proved especially among the ideas in Tbilisi as a crowd favorite. As Ivens returned to Amsterdam in April 1930, he had sold many copies of his films in the Soviet Union, moreover, he began to be interested in the communist ideology.
1931 Ivens went back for a longer stay to Moscow. From there, he commissioned in 1932 the editor Helen van Dongen and the composer Lou Lichtveld to create a sound film version of the rain. Lichtveld had seen on numerous films of the Dutch film League for the background music. As part of the dubbing some changes have been made at the intersection. But Lichtvelds impressionistic music found little favor, Ivens himself later distanced himself from the dubbing.
As Joris Ivens in 1936 emigrated to the United States, he was a welcome guest at screenings of his films. His early work has played a crucial focus of interest. The New York Museum of Modern Art acquired a copy of Ivens of rain, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took Ivens on as a member and dedicated to him in 1941 a retrospective.
Also in 1941, the Austrian composer Hanns Eisler another soundtrack for rain. Eisler and Ivens had previously worked together on several films, the new composition of rain was however during Eisler's New York residence as part of a film music project, which he had developed with the assistance of Theodor W. Adorno. Eisler's composition, however, was best known as a chamber music piece Fourteen Ways of Describing the Rain, as a sound version of the film of rain, the music has been performed in his lifetime Eisler only twice (1947 and 1948 in Los Angeles, New York).
In the late 1970s the musicologist Berndt Heller attempted a reconstruction of rain Eisler's film music. Since the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam just a collection of fragmentary texts possessed, Heller was looking for more complete versions. The Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique in Brussels had the 1932er version with Lichtvelds music, but Heller eventually used for his reconstruction of the even longer original version of 1929, which was kept at the Museum of Modern Art and the Moscow Film Archive. It turned out that in the reconstruction published in 1980 the picture and sound were not running synchronously. Only after 2002, the original music recordings were rediscovered in 1941, it was proved that Eisler had chosen not the original version, but the processing of 1932 as the basis for his music. A new restoration of rain followed, in 2005 were finally restored original version of 1929, the processing of 1932 and the reconstructed version with Eisler's Film Music published jointly by the European Foundation Joris Ivens on DVD.
Reception
Although rain was only the beginning of the 60 year career of documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, he is now considered one of the most famous films of the Dutchman. Here, rain is fundamentally different from Ivens ' later works that addressed political and social issues. For the film historian Charles Musser is Ivens ' development of avant-garde filmmakers to politically engaged documentary representative of the overall development of the film genre in the 1930s.
Contemporary reviews described Rain as a " ciné poeme " as a cinematic poem. The correspondent of France Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Couran compared the impression of rain during a demonstration in Paris with the intoxicating effects of opium. A few days before the official premiere praised De Nieuwe Rotterdammer Ivens ' franc and " exceptionally beautiful and sharp, often witty look " on the topic of " rain ". The Marxist film critic Harry A. Potamkin, however, described the rain as interesting objective study of sobriety, he had ever seen.
Film critics saw rain in the tradition of the New Objectivity, which Ivens acted as his companion of Henrik Scholte 's view, more as an engineer than a poet. The Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs described rain in his 1930 published book The Spirit of the film as an example of an absolute film, in which only the visual impression, but the facts are not decisive. The rain shown in the film was not a certain rain that had once fallen somewhere. " No time and space imagination keeps these impressions together ," said Balázs. Only those impressions are important, and only the image is the reality.
The Dutch film critic L. J. Jordaan, 30 years later, however, saw next to Ivens ' sense of technical subtleties in the implementation of rain the influence of the poet Mannus Franken, which expresses itself in the subtle romanticism of the film.
Modern film scholars have rain as part of the European avant-garde movement in a number of other " city symphonies " as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin - Symphony of a Great City Dziga Vertov or the man with the camera. Here, however, we must, as film historian Richard M. Barsam, Ivens ' franc and rain compared to Ruttmann Berlin Symphony look more like a sonata. Rain offers a lyrical, impressionistic image of a city. For the historian Erik Barnouw finally rain is perhaps the best example of " painter - as - documentarist film " ( painter as documentarist ).
2007 Rain was included as one of 16 films in the Dutch film canon. Selections were made by a committee of experts led by the politician Jeltje van Nieuwe Hoven. Rain is the oldest of four documentaries in the list and Ivens ' only film that was included in the film canon.