Entr'acte

René Clair's gleefully anarchic Dadaist short — originally screened during the intermission of a Francis Picabia ballet, and designed to provoke, confuse, and delight in equal measure. A chess game on a Parisian rooftop, a funeral procession where the hearse is pulled by a camel, a ballerina filmed from below who turns out to be a bearded man, a rollercoaster ride that accelerates into pure abstraction — Clair and Picabia throw images at the screen with the mischievous abandon of children smashing toys. Erik Satie's hypnotic score, composed to accompany the film, is inseparable from its effect. Cameos by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picabia himself anchor the film in the Dada movement's gleeful demolition of bourgeois taste. Twenty-two minutes of pure cinematic anarchy, and still one of the most entertaining avant-garde films ever made.