Return To Reason

Appearing for the first time in a 4K digital restoration, these four films by Man Ray take us back to the heady days of surrealism, when the essential properties of cinema could be turned against narrative logic, producing moods and gestures more akin to poetry and music. This collection takes its name from Ray’s earliest film LE RETOUR À LA RAISON, from 1923, its title an example of subversive irony. These are not “reasonable” films. Instead, they partake in unconscious impulses, Cubist formalism and free-form ludic pleasures.
The first and last of the films presented here—L’ÉTOILE DE MER (1928) and LES MYSTÈRES DU CHÂTEAU DE DÉ (1929)—suggest free-associative genre films, specifically a romance and a comedy, respectively. The other two—RETOUR and EMAK-BAKIA (1926)— employ the basic chemistry of film to generate true abstraction: the ordinary re-visioned into sensual, geometric forms. The four films are accompanied by a new score composed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, performed by their band SQÜRL. Their music is deeply responsive to the contours of Ray’s films, with rippling waves of guitar, droning synthesisers and hypnotic looping rhythms. (Michael Sicinski)