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by Charles DEKEUKELEIRE
1929 / 35mm / b&w / silent / 1 screen / 50' 52 |
"This is the story of my anxiety, which found it useful to present itself under the guise of an innocent plot... (...) The script is a violent interrogation of everything that constitutes, deep within me, the mystery of my consciousness." — Charles Dekeukeleire
After two non-narrative experimental films, Dekeukeleire created Histoire de detective, still in an experimental vein but this time with a narrative structure.
Mrs. Jonathan, worried about her husband’s condition, hires detective T. to follow him. The detective uses a camera to monitor his every move—evoking the "kino-eye" of Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera—making cinema and its process the main characters. The investigation becomes the story of a film, complete with its shooting challenges, editing, and projection.
Made with more resources than his previous films, Dekeukeleire continued collaborating with friends from Belgian artistic circles: painter Victor Servranckx designed the intertitles, poet Maurice Casteels contributed to the script, poet and filmmaker Pierre Bourgeois played the detective, and interior architect and designer Maurice Gaspard portrayed Mr. Jonathan.
"For Histoire de détective, made in 1929, journalist Paul Werrie notes the joy of creation and the bursting inventiveness. The camera’s gaze lingers eagerly on the overlooked everyday, the oppressed, the gestures, the objects. For example, on apples lined up in an attic. They are brought down, poured onto a table, under the automatic eye of the camera. Then a game is organized. The meditation inspired by these apples is now followed by a joyful improvisation, resulting in the loveliest ballet in the world, a ballet of apples, a delightful visual invention. In fact, the role of the detective is entrusted to the camera itself. Thus, poverty and the lack of means, blocking the easy paths, force the vocation to discover unexpected, unusual ways to express itself, or to dig deeper. Hence the sudden and fresh burst of images." — Henri Storck
"Histoire de détective is, both in its narrative structure and formal freedom, one of the essential films of the 1920s avant-garde." — Patrick de Haas
| distribution format | DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|---|---|
| screen | 1,33 (single screen) |
| speed | 25 fps |
| sound | sound |
| rental fee | 176,00 € |
| distribution format | Digital file on server (FHD) |
|---|---|
| screen | 1,33 (single screen) |
| speed | 25 fps |
| sound | sound |
| rental fee | 176,00 € |