Objects in Ecstasy (1933)

Thanks to Kim for the inspiration.

I’ll write more about this haunting weird controversial little movie later but for now I just wanted to mention that much of the film is fragmented, we see pieces of people, sides of their faces, hands, feet … a visualization of the dissociation our heroine feels within her own marriage. Nothing is whole, nothing is complete. Things are split off from the larger picture. It’s a wonderful device. This is a film told without too much metaphor, which is rather shocking, considering the year it was made (1933). It is the story of a woman who just got married to a man and on her wedding night discovers that he doesn’t like sex. There is no euphemistic portrayal of this situation. It is blatant.

Like I said, I do want to write more about it (and Hedy Lamarr’s wonderful brave performance, and the dreamboat Aribert Mog) but for now, I wanted to just mention in passing the filming of objects throughout the film.

Not only people are filmed in fragments and pieces. But objects. The objects, at times, take on a life of their own, especially in one erotic sequence during a windstorm when Lamarr’s character makes the decision to “go to him” in the middle of the night … But from the beginning, we don’t just get a straight narrative, with wide shots, and masters, moving into closeup … We see parts of the action, and then there is a cutaway to an object in the room. The objects have import. It is up to us to assign them meaning. The tassels on the end of a rug being smoothed out by a man’s hand are not just tassels. They become an evocation of an entire emotional state. I loved that about the film. Later in the movie, when she begins to blossom sexually, we still see things in fragments, but now it becomes erotic, a burlesque dancer with feathers, what we don’t see is not what is missing … but what is hidden. A vital difference. She becomes whole, a full woman. And now, a hand twirling the tassels of a rug has a very different meaning – it is lazy, languid, like a woman dangling her fingers into a lake from a rowboat … The same gesture we saw earlier from her uptight husband is now about the relaxation that comes over her post-orgasm (literally! I told you this film was controversial!), and the feeling of love and trust and satisfaction she now experiences … NOT about a fussbudget rigid dude trying to keep things neat on his honeymoon.

I have this “thing about things”, anyway, as I have covered before. I love contemplating the life of objects. Objects do seem alive to me.

More on Ecstasy later, but for now: some objects from the film.

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4 Responses to Objects in Ecstasy (1933)

  1. george says:

    Sheila

    Exceptional insight on “Ecstasy”. The story is minimalist, as is the presentation. There’s also a bit of “bourgeois vs workers” nonsense thrown in. The only way to enjoy this movie is to “zoom in” as you suggest.

    By the way, that’s two nineteen year old debuts in a row. Lauren Bacall and now Hedy Lamarr. Any chance of a trend? Lana Turner next, maybe?

  2. red says:

    George – that whole “all glory to the workers” montage at the end of Ecstasy is SO weird and out of place! It’s a WPA mural come to life and what the hell is it doing there?? hahahaha

    It was beautifully shot but I was thinking: Uhm … where’s my sexually frustrated heroine? Where the hell did she go?? Who are these bare-chested singing Aryan youths swinging hammers? What the hell is going on?? Ha!!

  3. red says:

    Oh, and thank you, as always for your comments. :)

    I’m working on another post about Ecstasy – focusing on the controversial themes and also the closeups of Ms. Hedy that dominate the film … stay tuned!!

  4. Ecstasy: “The Most Talked About Picture In the World”

    With that tagline, who could resist? Here is the original poster for the film. Provocative, isn’t it? Ecstasy, directed by Czech Gustav Machatý, was notorious by the time it hit the screens in the US, in 1935. It had been…

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