De Brug (followed by Philips-Radio)

The bridge is De Hef (De Koningsbrug) over the Koningshaven, linking the Noordereiland with the Feijenoord districts of Rotterdam. It is a huge railroad lift bridge inaugurated in 1927, serving the Breda-Rotterdam line. De Hef is parallel with a smaller double bascule bridge (De Koninginnebrug) dedicated to the street traffic (this one replaced in 1929 an older swing bridge). I found a video on the web, showing the moment De Hef was assembled:

Koningsbrug te Rotterdam (1929)
(video by BeeldenGeluid)

Well, this bridge is De Brug: Joris Ivens created in 1929 a masterpiece. The miracle is that the masterpiece consists strictly in showing the process of operating the lift of the bridge: rising to allow a ship to pass bellow, coming down to allow the railway activity to go on.

Ivens (like Vertov) had a productionist approach. Productionism (производственичество) was one of the flavors of Constructivism (конструктивизм). There would be much to say, of course, about the strong political commitment of the Avant-Garde of the Twenties and the deep influence of their convictions into their art, but, to make it short: Productionist artists were interested mainly in capturing a process of production as an ongoing work. The result of the process was for them secondary. If you find this explanation too dry, then let's make use of a joke told by Yuri Tsivian in his analysis of Vertov's movies: a Productionist artist would have destroyed the building rather than the scaffolding.

So De Brug is a Productionist movie. Here is the plot, as synthesized by David Carless:

Close shots of a railway train underway: track racing underneath, steam escaping, cars coupling, gears ratcheting, signals changing. The train reaches a lift bridge which must rise to allow a merchantman to pass below... Bridge section and counterweight move choreographically. The balletic motion of beam relative to girder creates an elegant, abstract expression of the precision of technology... The lift operator sets the bridge to the correct height then returns it to the original position. The train carries on its way, passing prosaically over the ship canal.

And the question raises itself again: what makes it a masterpiece? The answer is that Ivens approached its subject with a deep poetic insight. The bridge became a whole universe, full of life, with all the charms and the unexpected twists, with all the knowns and the unknowns, with all the wonders, with all the inexorable, a universe full of much more than it let you see.

So there is a universe, the bridge. But this was not enough. The story needed also a character, to face the universe, to oppose it, to affirm its right to exist. This is the train, coming in front of the bridge, stopping, waiting till it's allowed to go on.

Yes, here is the mastercraft of Ivens: a prosaic train and bridge became engaged in a dialog full of intrinsic tension and majesty.

And here is the movie of Ivens, De Brug. Enjoy!

(video by Billi Brass Quintet)

After De Brug, Regen will follow in the life of Ivens, maybe one of the greatest movies ever. De Brug is much less known, and that's a pity: you'll find in it the same poetical genius.

Philips-Radio was then made by Ivens, in 1931. I watched a fragment of it last year: the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC hosted an exhibition dedicated to the Avant-Garde of the Twenties.

Philips-Radio is much more clearly Productionist: the product is made in front of your eyes (it is much more like Man with a Movie Camera: the movie of Ivens shows the production of the radio devices while the movie of Vertov shows the production of the movie itself). Here is the plot for Philips-Radio, told by the same David Carless:

An industrial film which shows the operations inside the Philips Radio plant: In a mêlée of activity, glassblowers make delicate glass bulbs. Machinery assists the bulb manufacture. A virtuoso glassblower begins a more complex tube used in radio broadcasting; it is then turned, fired, and sculpted. Conveyors carry partially completed units. Workers perform their various specific assembly-line tasks. Cases are manufactured and machined, wire harnesses are assembled, loudspeakers are produced. As radios near completion, they are run through a series of tests. Engineers and draughtsmen define future developments. In a closing stop-motion sequence, in a style reminiscent of Norman McLaren, a group of loudspeakers performs a playful dance. The film overall is a poetic depiction of an industrial process.

Philips-Radio, 1931
(video by PA3DMI)

Well, Philips-Radio is a Productionist work, that's obvious, though it shows an ambiguous attitude towards the industrial process. We are far from the enthusiasm in the movies of Vertov. Let's come back for a second to De Brug: we had there a universe (the bridge) and a character facing the universe (the train). Here in Philips-Radio, the universe is the manufacturing process, and no character comes to face it, to oppose it, to enter in dialogue, to affirm its right to exist (I repeated here the arguments that I used in speaking about De Brug). There are the workers, only they are just parts of the technological process: the process is not opposed by anything. And a universe not challenged by anything is ultimately a void world. Is it here a critique of the capitalist ways? I think so.


(Joris Ivens)