A Convention of Crazy Bugs: Mack Sennett and the US’s Immigrant Unconscious

Abstract

When André Breton and his surrealist chums were prowling the streets of Nantes and Paris in search of the merveilleux in the early 1930s, seeking out chance encounters in cafés, liberating strange objects from flea markets and junkyards, and cutting out absurd newspaper stories and advertisements, they also drew up strict rules for what Breton called ‘magnetic’ cinema-going. One should ‘zigzag’ from flea-pit to fleapit, he commanded (respectable bourgeois theatres were to be avoided unless one disrupted proceedings by bringing in a five-course dinner or arguing loudly), dropping into films randomly (never at the start and preferably without learning either the title or the plot of the film) and departing at the first sign of boredom. One should snuffle out ‘charged’ images from among the drek and the clichés: those strange, unforgettable shots that seemed to somehow fall between the cracks of the film narrative — odd camera angles, over-stated camera movements (Freud would say over-determined), spontaneous gestures, outrageously grotesque faces, deliriously excessive emotions or erotic suggestions. Of course, some films were better for this purpose than others: generally American rather than French ones (Breton despised cultural chauvinism), hysterical melodramas, gratuitously violent westerns, cliff-hanger-driven serials (Pearl White was a particular favourite) and most especially slapstick comedies, with their automated aggression, logic-resistant stunts and vulgar debunking of middleclass dignity.