Philips-Radio
[Symphonie industrielle, Industrial Symphony]
(Joris Ivens, Netherlands 1931, 34 min., 35mm nitrate, sound, b/w)
Print source: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Dutch-born filmmaker Joris Ivens had a long and distinguished career directing nonfiction films imbued with poetic style, while often supporting leftist social and political causes. Influenced by Soviet Constructivism, Ivens established himself as a leading avant-garde filmmaker with two acclaimed shorts: Der Brug [The Bridge] (1928) and Regen [Rain] (1929). This success soon led to opportunities to direct several sponsored films. Among Ivens’s clients was Philips, the innovative Dutch company that had grown since its 1891 formation, quickly becoming a leading producer of light bulbs, vacuum tubes, and, as of 1927, a popular line of consumer radio components. The company’s advertising campaigns of the 1920s reflected the pinnacle of European graphic design, so it was very much in Philips’ character to give free rein to a rising visionary like Ivens.
Regarding his intentions with Philips-Radio, Ivens said, “Instead of a heroic parade of all the different departments, I decided to concentrate on how people work in a modern mechanized factory, showing the actual working conditions [and] exploiting every nuance of texture....” Often credited as the first Dutch sound film, Philips-Radio features minimal dialog and industrial sounds woven together with a modernist musical score by Ivens’ comrade, the Surinamese composer and activist Lou Lichtveld.
Upon completion, Philips-Radio was generally well received by the Philips management. However, Ivens later remarked that his pro-worker portrayal of the company did not sit well with all of Philips’ managers, with some complaining that “This film with all its negative images of our company is a disgrace and cannot be used for advertising.” Of the forty prints struck for initial distribution, only seven were used.
This is a 35mm nitrate black and white composite print on two reels, with spliced-in acetate English intertitles. Reel 1 has a shrinkage range of 1.25%; reel 2 has a shrinkage factor range of 1.15%–1.45%. Both reels display fair to moderate positive curl with some repairs and reinforcements needed, particularly in the perforation areas and around old splices.
– Gordon Nelson
La Petite Marchande d’allumettes
[The Little Match Girl]
(Jean Renoir, France 1928, 30 min. at 24 frames per sec., 35mm nitrate, silent, b/w)
Print source: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
There are two layers to La Petite Marchande d’allumettes. For Jean Renoir, it was, first and foremost, a technical tour de force. He was eager to try the new panchromatic film stock with its wide range of grays. Also, after a series of impressionistic films and a lavish “Stroheimian” adaptation of Nana (1926), Renoir was interested in making a film almost entirely based on special effects. This would be feasible in a very small studio, and Jean Tedesco, owner of Vieux Colombier, the leading avant-garde film theatre in Paris, turned its attic into a set. The new stock required different lighting, and with the help of an engineer from Philips, Renoir modified ordinary electric bulbs. An old car motor, cooled by tap water, generated electricity. Another friend turned his kitchen into a film lab to develop the negatives. Some scenes were shot by five cameras at different angles; another one was photographed by a handheld camera on horseback; miniature sets and mirrors were used extensively. As André Bazin wrote, “Renoir’s fascination with technical effects—the almost sensual pleasure he derives from the originality of his fantastic images—(...) is the basis of the film’s poetry.”
And that’s the second layer. “The Little Match Girl” is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most cruel and realistic stories. It is not even a fairy tale, strictly speaking, for all the wondrous and magical events are merely the delirium of a girl who is freezing to death in the snow. Glimmers of Andersen’s inevitable irony only heighten the tragic effect. Film adaptations (there were many) usually shift toward sentimentality. Renoir’s special effects, which he doesn’t even try to hide; Catherine Hessling’s grotesque acting; the giant toys and the toy sets—all are antidotes to sentimentality. Renoir was a thorough and appreciative reader of Andersen, and he sensed the realistic undercurrent of the writer’s fantasy. When Death appears in the form of a friendly jack-in-the-box, that’s true Andersen with his dry humor and Christian morality. Of all Renoir’s silent films, this fairy tale, this technical exercise is the closest precursor to his realistic masterpieces of the sound era.
MoMA acquired this print in 1936 from Renoir and Tedesco, and it has likely been struck specifically for that purpose. Aside from high shrinkage (up to 1.55%), it is in excellent condition.
– Peter Bagrov
Un Chien Andalou
[An Andalusian Dog]
(Luis Buñuel, France 1929, 18 min. at 22 frames per sec., 35mm nitrate, silent, b/w)
Print source: British Film Institute, London, UK
“Un Chien Andalou was born of the encounter between my dreams and Dalí’s,” wrote Luis Buñuel in his memoir My Last Breath. “I told him about a dream I’d had in which a long, tapering cloud sliced the moon in half, like a razor blade slicing through an eye. Dalí immediately told me that he’d seen a hand crawling with ants in a dream he’d had the previous night. ‘And what if we started right there and made a film?’ he wondered aloud....”
Buñuel and Dalí’s succès de scandale was written over six days at Dalí’s house in Figueras, Spain, in January 1929. Buñuel described this period as one of “total identification,” in which “our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” Their intention was “to profit by a mechanism analogous to dreams,” and—in contrast to the formalism of much 1920s avant-garde cinema—to resist any intended symbolism.
The film was shot over a fortnight in March 1929. In his autobiography The Secret Life, Dalí would recall working on the set like a sculptor: pouring glue over the donkeys to enhance their “putrefaction”; hacking at their eye sockets and mouths “so that it would appear that, although the donkeys were already rotting, they were still vomiting up a little more of their own death.”
The premiere was held at Paris’s Studio des Ursulines in June 1929, in front of an audience that included André Breton’s skeptical Surrealist group. Buñuel operated the gramophone accompaniment of Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and a pair of Argentine tangos, armed with a pocketful of stones to throw at the Surrealists in case of heckles. But the film was embraced, and Buñuel reciprocated. “Un Chien Andalou would not exist had surrealism not existed,” he wrote in November 1929, identifying the enemy instead as the bourgeoisie “that has found ‘beautiful’ or ‘poetic’ what is but a desperate, impassioned call to murder.”
This screening with gramophone accompaniment follows one held at the 2025 BFI Film on Film Festival, for which we sourced two 78 rpm Argentine tango discs that would have been available in 1929, and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. This 1929 release print comes from the BFI National Archive collection. The fine image quality more than makes up for the high number of splices (40 for 1438 feet) and shrinkage level (up to 1.4%).
– James Bell and Sonia Genaitay
This screening is free for passholders of the sold-out 10th Nitrate Picture Show. A limited number of single-screening tickets may be available for purchase in person at the Dryden Theatre box office on a rush-line basis. Rush tickets will be sold only if seats remain after the film’s spoken introduction has begun.