Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations

Notes

231 Notes Abbreviations 2º Folio size 4º Quarto size 8º Octavo size BiFi Bibliothèque du film, La Cinémathèque française, Paris BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris BNF-ASP Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des arts du spectacle CRH Fonds de la Commission de Recherche Historique de la Cinémathèque française, BiFi Écrits Germaine Dulac, Écrits sur le cinéma (1919–1937), preface by Prosper Hillairet (Paris: Paris expérimental, 1994) FGD Fonds Germaine Dulac, Bibliothèque du film OURS L’Office universitaire de recherche socialiste, Paris Notes to Introduction 1. Sandy Flitterman-Lewis’s insightful dissertation and resulting book, To Desire Differently, addresses the work of French filmmakers Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, and Agnès Varda. Her book played a crucial role in introducing Dulac in the United States. See also T. Williams, “Entretien avec Sandy Flitterman-Lewis.” 2. The undated sixty-page manuscript, compiled from Dulac’s lectures and articles by Marie-Anne Colson-Malleville and personal assistant Anita Estève, treats different phases and preoccupations of the filmmaker’s work. GD, “Projet de livre sur le cinema,” FGD 1371. 3. T. Williams, ed., “Germaine Dulac, au-delà des impressions.” 4. Ford, “Germaine Dulac.” Flitterman-Lewis, “Heart of the Avant-Garde.” See also Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire Differently, 47–97. Exceptions include my essay on Dulac’s prewar journalism, “La Naissance d’une avant-gardiste, 1906–1913,” and Valérie Vignaux’s article on the archive as object, “Les Papiers intimes de Germaine Dulac ou le corps de l’archive.” 232 N O T E S T O I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D C H A P T E R 1 5. GD, “Les Arts contre le cinéma.” See also “Coupures de presse,” 1923–26, FGD 4343. Chapter 1. “How I Became a Film Director” 1. Pierre de Coulevain is a pseudonym of Jeanne Philomène Laperche, author of the theosophical novel Le Roman Merveilleux (1913). GD, “Comment je suis,” 44. 2. Ford, “Germaine Dulac,”4. 3. Madeleine Claire Waymel Saisset-Schneider (GD’s mother) to Maggie Vanves. December 18, [1900], FGD 4534; Notes of Madeleine Saisset-Schneider, n.d., FGD 4536; “Faire-part du décès de Madeleine Saisset-Schneider,” May 14, 1918, FGD 4537; Sister Marie-Lucie Saignol to GD, October 14, 1900, FGD 4528. Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire Differently, 48. 4. See Desclaux, “Nos Metteurs en scène.” 5. The Schneider legacy was so significant that Dulac’s paternal grandfather, Julien Aristide Adelaïde Saisset-Schneider (née Saisset, d. 1892), added his wife’s last name to his own, making Dulac’s father the firstborn Saisset-Schneider. Dulac’s relationship to her family heritage was not one of simple awareness but rather one of long-held fascination, reflection, and deliberation. Despite her political views, she was sensitive to this background, drawing up an elaborate family tree going back to the thirteenth century. “Généalogie en ligne directe de Charlotte, Elisabeth, Germaine Saisset-Schneider [ca. 1922],” FGD 4542. 6. Winock, La Belle Époque, 111–13. 7. “Papiers du lieutenant-général Antoine-Virgile Saisset-Schneider (pseud.), homme politique dont Le National [de 1834], 28 juillet 1847,” FGD 4544. 8. For more on the life of Charles Schneider, see Dominique Schneidre, Fortune de mère. 9. Winock, La Belle Époque, 111. 10. These handwritten documents are cataloged in FGD. See “Poèmes,” FGD 4436; “Projets, notes et pensées,” FGD 4493; and “Compositions littéraires scolaires, 1901– 1902,” FGD 4497. 11. Madeleine Saisset-Schneider to GD, July 14, 1904, FGD 4519. See also Exposition des primitifs français au palais du Louvre. The exhibit included works of the French primitifs, among them Nicolas Froment, Jean Clouet, and Jean d’Orléans. 12. Albert Dulac to GD, January 4, 1915, FGD 2350. 13. See chapter 2. GD, “Trois Rencontres avec Loïe Fuller.” 14. GD, “La Musique du silence,” Écrits, 106–8. This “crisis of the word” and penchant for “silence” and anti-ventriloquist “wordlessness” can be seen in numerous arts including modern pantomime and symbolist theater of the Belle Époque. (See T. Williams, “The ‘Silent’ Arts.”) 15. GD, “Comment je suis,” 43. 16. Interview with Mme Djemil Anik, CRH 030, 1. In turn-of-the-century France, music remained very much a live activity. During this period (phonographic recordings were limited to brief extracts, generally of less than three minutes), the pastimes [3.144...