Marcel Duchamp’s only film is an essential work of 1920s avant-garde cinema. Notable for its optical effects and its nonsensical humour in the spirit of Dadaist derision, the film explores the perception of volume and monocular relief through cinematic movement. Anémic cinéma alternates ten shots of rotating discs designed by the artist, producing various kinetic relief patterns, with nine spiralling discs containing short texts – puns, alliterations, and absurd or erotic spoonerisms. The result is both a pioneering experiment in purely graphic cinema and an innovation in “reading on screen” subverting the conventional intertitles of the silent era. Made with the technical collaboration of Man Ray and Marc Allégret, the film was painstakingly shot frame-by-frame over two weeks, using discs mounted on a bicycle wheel and rotated manually. Through the interplay between surface inscriptions, cinematic depth, and wordplay, Duchamp’s “eccentric” experience remains foundational.

Cinédoc Paris Films Coop