Lucy Fischer - Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History

Cinema by Design

FILM AND CULTURE SERIES

FILM AND CULTURE

A series of Columbia University Press

EDITED BY JOHN BELTON

What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic

HENRY JENKINS

Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle

MARTIN RUBIN

Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II

THOMAS DOHERTY

Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy

WILLIAM PAUL

Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s

ED SIKOV

Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema

REY CHOW

The Cinema of Max Ophuls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman

SUSAN M. WHITE

Black Women as Cultural Readers

JACQUELINE BOBO

Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film

DARRELL WILLIAM DAVIS

Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema

RHONA J. BERENSTEIN

This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age

GAYLYN STUDLAR

Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond

ROBIN WOOD

The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music

JEFF SMITH

Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture

MICHAEL ANDEREGG

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 19301934

THOMAS DOHERTY

Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity

JAMES LASTRA

Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts

BEN SINGER

Series list continues on

Cinema by Design

ART NOUVEAU, MODERNISM, AND FILM HISTORY

By Lucy Fischer

Columbia University Press

New York, NY

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2017 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54422-1

Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Cinema by Design is on file at the Library of Congress under LCCN 2016050676.

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Cover design: Lisa Hamm

Cover image: Photofest

To my husband Mark and my sister Madeleine who accompanied me on many Art Nouveau pilgrimages around the world and made those experiences richer, happier, and more meaningful.

If film must equal the other arts, it is by seeking the same degree of beauty.

Claude Chabrol, The Taste for Beauty , trans. Carol Volk (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73

Contents

FIGURES

PLATES

A s always with a scholarly project that ranges over many years, there are numerous people and institutions to thank for their help. At the University of Pittsburgh, I would like express my gratitude for Dean N. John Cooper who gave me a special research fund for work on this book that made travel and scholarly related purchases possible. I would also like to thank Ronald Linden of the European Union Center of Excellence for grants that funded travel abroad to visit museums and architectural sites in various countries. Similarly, the University Center for International Studies helped offset the price for the rights of various images that I needed to purchase from museums and private sources to illustrate the book, as well as the subvention cost of including a color insert in the volume. As always, I wish to thank my chair Don Bialostosky for additional funds that were granted to me through the department of English that helped me attend conferences at which I could present my work and receive feedback. Jennifer Florian, Film Studies administrative assistant, has assisted me with this project as with so many in the pasthelping to keep track of my grant finances, processing my travel arrangements, handling reimbursements, scanning hordes of materials, and making sure that my unruly arsenal of library books was returned in a timely fashion. I would also like to thank my research assistant Matthew Carlin who helped to assemble bibliographies, locate print materials, check and format footnotes, proofread copy, and format images. I am grateful for the feedback that I received from film studies colleagues in response to various talks that I presented at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and Birkbeck, University of London. Finally, I would like to thank Jon Lewis who invited me to edit and contribute to a book on art direction and production design for Rutgers University Press; a section of is derived from the first chapter of that volume.

At Columbia University Press, I wish to thank Jennifer Crewe, director and president, for her assistance squiring the manuscript through the approval process with the board, as well as to express my respect and appreciation for Series Editor John Belton. Furthermore, Jonathan Fiedler was a tremendous help in making sure that my materials were in proper shape for submission. And Paul Vincent assisted with the laborious task of copy editing.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for providing the love, calm, and support that makes all else possible. My husband Mark Wicclair has always been a champion of my career, beginning with my decision to pursue doctoral studies. I am indebted as well to my sister Madeleine Fish, who (like Mark) accompanied me on numerous European trips in which Art Nouveau was on the agenda (whether they wanted it to be or not). My son David Wicclair and his wife Brandi Leigh Wicclair provide continuing joy that rounds out my life.

The emergence of cinema was part of the euphoria of modernity.

Viva Paci, The Attraction of the Intelligent Eye

T his is a book based upon a passion and a hunch. The passion is for the oft-maligned style known as Art Nouveau; and the hunch is that the form has an intriguing but unacknowledged relation to film history. My passion began during the Art Nouveau revival of the 1960s and 1970s when I found myself buying reproduction jewelry (without knowing the style it represented), and treasuring a set of coasters I received that were emblazoned with Alphonse Mucha poster images. This fervor continued as I became an aficionado of flea markets and found myself collecting antique Art Nouveau jewelry and artifacts (candlesticks, matchbox holders, trays, and vases). My hunch about Art Nouveau and film followed from my prior work on Art Deco and the cinema (a bond that has been more established in film studies). I thought to pursue the study of design and film one generation further backto the turn of the twentieth century. However, in searching the indexes and tables of contents of countless volumes on the subject, I found only a scant mention of Art Nouveau.

On the one hand, this was discouraging and made me think that, perhaps, my intuition was unfounded. On the other, it piqued my academic interest and my hope that I might be the first to give the movement its due. This initiated a scavenger huntfor cinematic traces, remains, hints, and fragments of the historic trend. And while I feel this study will prove my original instinct sound, I have learned why references to Art Nouveau in film studies have been so hard to find. The movements presence is often partial or obscured; its account, scattered and elliptical; and its reputation, dubioushaving often been relegated to the art historical abject.