ARTAUD - Scenarios and Arguments

Scenarios and Arguments
Author(s): Antonin Artaud, Victor Corti and Simone Sanzenbach

Source: The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 1966), pp. 166-185
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1125280
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166
SCENARIOSAND
ARGUMENTS
ANTONIN ARTAUD
QUESTIONSAND ANSWERS
Question: What sort of films do you like?

Answer: I like all sorts of films. But no real motion pictures have ever been made. I
think we can accept only one sort of film; the kind where every effective means of
sensual stimulation is used. Motion pictures involve a complete reversal of our
scale of values, a complete revolution in sight, logic, and perspective. Films are more
ebullient than phosphorous and more captivating than love. Why do we insist on
perpetually using themes which neutralize the effectiveness of film because they
belong to the theatre?
Question: What sort of films would you like to see made?
Answer: I demand weird, fantastic films; philosophically speaking, poetic films and
psychic films. Nothing I have said excludes either psychology or love, nor does it mean
jettisoning any of our human feelings. But it does mean films in which those things
which make up the heart and mind are ground down and then remixed, as this will
endow them with undiscovered cinematographic features. Motion pictures call for
exaggerated subjects and detailed psychology. They require repetition, emphasis,
afterthoughts. Aspects of the human soul. We are all cruel in films. Therefore this
art's rhythm and speed give it an unparalleled, powerful formula, and its characteristic
detachment from life and illusory appearance require precise screening and the
SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS
167
incarnation of different elements. For this reason they require extraordinary themes,
climacteric degrees in the soul, and a visionary atmosphere.
Motion pictures are a remarkable stimulant. They work directly on the brain cells.
When this art's exhilaration has been blended in the right proportions, it will leave
the theatre far behind and we will relegate the latter to the attic of our memories.
Theatre already involves trickery. We patronize it far more to see the actors than
the works they perform-in any case it is they first and foremost who work on us.
But the actors are only a living symbol in motion pictures. They are the whole stage,
the author's thoughts, the sequence of events. For this reason we never give them a
second thought. Chaplin plays Chaplin, Pickford plays Pickford, and Fairbanks plays
Fairbanks. They are the film. We could not visualize it without them. Yet while they
appear in the foreground, they do not obscure anything else. That is why they do not
exist, and nothing comes between the work and us. Motion pictures have a poisonously
harmless and direct quality; they get right under our skin like a morphine injection.
For this reason, a film's subject matter must not be inferior to the film's active potential
-and must spring from fantasy.
Probable date: 1924-1925. Oeuvres Completes.
Vol. III: Gallimard, 1961. Translated by
VICTOR CORTI.
EIGHTEENSECONDS
In a street, at night, on the curb, under a street-lamp, a man in black stares. He is
toying nervously with his cane. A watch dangles from his left hand.
Close-up of the watch with the hand showing the seconds.
The seconds pass with infinite slowness on the screen.
On the eighteenth second, the drama will be finished.
The time which will be shown on the screen is the inner time of the meditating man.
It is not objective, normal time, which lasts exactly eighteen real seconds. The images
shown on the screen are the images in the man's mind. The main interest of the
script is that the events described happen within eighteen real seconds, while the
description on the screen of these same events takes one or two hours.
The audience will see the images which unfold in the man's mind.
This man is an actor. He is on the verge of attaining success and fame, or at least
a certain renown, and he is just about to win the woman he has loved for a long time.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
168
He has been struck by a strange disease. He has become unable to reach his own
thoughts.He is completelylucid; but whateverthoughtcomes to his mind, he is unable
to give it a form: he cannot translateit. The necessary words fail him. He is reduced
to watching series of images unfolding in his mind, a surplus of contradictoryand
unrelated images.
He is incapable of sharing in the life of others or of participatingin any activity.
Vision of the man at the doctor's. Arms crossed, with hands convulsively clasped.
The doctor, enormous, towering above him. The diagnosis drops from the doctor's
lips like a verdict.
The man is now under a street-lamp,at the very moment when he becomes intensely
conscious of his condition. He curses Fate, and thinks: just at the time when I was
beginningto really live! And to conquer the heart of the woman I love, who gave herself so reluctantly.
Vision of the woman, very beautiful,enigmatic.Her face is hard and cold.
Vision of the woman as the man imagines her to be.
Landscape, flowers, luscious light.
The man gestures and curses: Ha! I would rather be anybody-even that miserable
hunchbackwho peddles his newspapersin the evening-if I could possess my mind in
its entirety,and be able to think!
Quick shot of the peddler in the street; then in his room, holding his head in his
hands, as if he were holding the globe. He really owns his mind. He can hope to
conquer the world, and he has every right to believe that he will actually conquer
the world some day. Because he has INTELLIGENCE. He does not know all the
potentialitiesof his being, he may hope to possess everything:love, fame, power. In
the meantime, he works and keeps searching.
Vision of the peddler gesticulatingin front of his window; of the cities which move
and shake under his feet. Back to his table. With books. The finger pointing. Flights
of women in the air. Accumulationof thrones.
If he can only discover the central problem, the core from which all the other problems stem, he will be able to hope to conquer the world. If he can find, not even the
solution, but only the nature of this central problem; if he can only formulate the
problem.
Well, well! what about the hump on his back? maybe the hump will be removed too,
as a fringe benefit.
Vision of the peddler at the center of a crystal ball. Light as in a Rembrandtpaint-
169
ing. In the center, a luminous point. The ball becomes the globe. The globe becomes
opaque. The peddler disappearsfrom its center and jumps out like a Jack-in-the-box,
with his hump on his back.
And there he goes, looking for the problem. We see him in smoky bistros, in the
middle of groups searching for vague ideals. Ritual meetings. Men make vehement
speeches. The hunchbacklistens, seated at a table. Shaking his head, disappointed.In
the middle of the groups, a woman. He recognizes her: it is She! He screams: Ah,
stop her! She is a spy. Noisy confusion. Everybodystands up. The woman runs away.
He is thrashedby the crowd and thrown out.
He exclaims:What did I do? I betrayedher, I love her!
The woman at home. At the feet of her father. I recognizedhim, she says. He is mad.
And he goes farther away, still searching. We see the man on a road, with a stick.
Then in front of his table, rummagingthrough books-in close up the cover of one
book: the Kabbala. Suddenly there is a knock at the door. Policemen come in. They
seize him and put him in a straightjacket:he is takento a'ninsane asylum. He becomes
truly mad. He is seen strugglingwith the bars of his cell. He screams: I shall find the
central problem, the problem to which all the others are tied like grapes to a cluster,
and then-no more madness,no more world, no more spirit, mostly nothing.
But a revolutionempties the prisons and the asylums;the doors open. He is liberated.
You are the mystic, people shout, you are our Master, come. Humbly, he says: no.
But they take him along. He is told: be king, climb on the throne.
Everybody goes away; he is left alone. Huge silence. Magic surprise. Suddenly, he
thinks: I am the master of everything, I can have everything. He can have everything, indeed, except the possession of his own mind. He is not yet the master of his
own mind.
But what is the mind? What is it made of? If only it were possible to be the master
of one's body. To have all the powers, to be able to do everything with one's hand,
and one's body. Meanwhile,the books pile up on his table. He goes to sleep.
In the middle of this mental dreaming,a new Dream will arrive.
To be able to do everything:to be an orator, a painter, an actor. Yes, but isn't he
already an actor?Yes, indeed he is an actor. And there he is; he sees himself on the
stage with his hump, at his mistress'feet; she acts with him. His hump is false too; it is
acted. And his mistress is his real mistress, his mistress in real life. A magnificant
theatre, crammedwith people, and the king is in his box. But it is he who plays the
part of the king. He is king, and he looks at himself on the stage. And the king is not
a hunchback.He has discoveredthe truth:the hunchbackon the stage is only an effigy
of himself, a traitor who stole his woman and his mind. Then he stands up and
shouts: Arrest him. Noisy confusion. Vast motion. The actors call out to him. The
woman shouts at him: You are no longer yourself, you have lost the hump on your
ANTONIN ARTAUD
170
back, I do not know you any more. He is mad! And in the same instant, the two
characters merge and become one on the screen. The whole theatre shakes, the
columns, the chandeliers shake. They shake faster and faster. On this shaking
background,shaking images follow one another: the king, the peddler, the hunchback actor, the madman, the asylum, the crowds, and the man is again on the sidewalk, under the street-lamp,his watch dangling from his left hand, his cane moving
with the same nervous motion.
Hardly eighteen seconds have gone by; he devotes one last thought to his miserable
fate, then without hesitation or emotion of any kind, he takes a revolver from his
pocket and shoots himself in the temple.
1925-1926: published in Les Cahiers de la
Pleiade, Spring, 1949. Translated by SIMONE
SANZENBACH.
TWO NATIONSON THEOUTER

EDGEOF MONGOLIA
Two nations on the outer edges of Mongolia are arguing for reasons inscrutable to
Europeans;
they are about to start a war which will set the whole of the Far East aflame;
the League of Nations sends note after note which only serve to blur the dispute;
Russian gold is at the bottom of all this, of course;
the French consul floundersabout in this baseless conflict in the midst of all sorts of
hard bargaining;
a lama tells him the psychologicalcauses of the dispute, which consist of problemsof
tone and sound more than form;
there is one way of bringingpeace; send these people a Surrealistpoem;
an attemptis made to wire one; but the elusive, truncatedpoem fans the flames;
hostilitiesare about to begin;
only one thing left to do;
send a mail plane;
it reachesits destinationafter a thousandadventures.
Scene in which the lama teaches the consul what to say to them; Surrealismrevealed
to the consul.
Frenchdiplomatsshrugtheir shoulders:
funny scenes with Poincare,Briandgoing off on a toot to Montparnasse;
171
love intervenes;
a woman intervenes;
a certain Surrealism defined.
Dizzy speed, sound;
how the plane swims over time;
aviation running into occult mists.
Long pataphysical analysis of the dispute in which the absurd is mingled with paradox
and profound logic.
Surrealism wells up inside cocktails,
an Eiffel tower of alcohol;
liquors tiered upward in density;
mental music of strength and intensity;
in the liquor they understand China;
the need for absolute urgency;
Briand's cigarette swells up like an elephant's trunk.
Their horrible discomfort at being transported in ungovernable, vibrationless machinery, representing a direct line of action.
Resultant lack of communication or atmosphere;
the whirling propellor imitates the shimmering of poetry;
airstreams splash, eddy.
Thus the person-poem motif appears;
up to now all poems were words;
painting aimed at creating a transitory, almost verbal feeling;
characters created by actors didn't hang in the air;
we need poems which increase and multiply, counterbalancing China's strength.
The Dream of liquor's radiations;
their colors and strength mapped out like towns.
What a checkerboard for politicians!
Child-people races, had on with words.
These Mongols,
these Tartars,
these Afghans,
you think they're fighting about mines or towns;
wrong, they're fighting about words.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
172
The power of meaning,
the supremacy of quality.
Act out a play. Ten thousand meanings overlap every phrase, every word, the
slightest intonation. Add parallel intonations, seek them all out, see the result.
Watch my expression as I speak.
Although the main importance of what I have to say appears to derive from my speech,
this too is wrong, for the smallest of my facial muscles can mould feelings, I can create
imaginary, worlds, snapshots, simply by giving free rein to all the overtones of my
internal desire, my love of life.
Watch.
It projects:
revolution in China,
cretinization of child-peoples,
fear of the beyond,
sixth-sense,
faith in the League of Nations,
a fakir's thought,
waiting for inspiration,
man spying on his double,
reckonings of astrology,
Orient against Occident,
clairvoyance of seers,
America's blindness,
a conjuror's legerdemain,
a juggler's preciseness,
a sorcerer's discerning spirit.
What couldn't be stirred up with effects like these.
Now the consul is stupid;
he cables;
the French government's disbelief;
the bungling little sorcerer appears;
how he strikes our bosses;
their journey to Montparnasse;
in their dreams they send the scribe.
But at the same time a real plane has brought parchment gold from England to the
Soviet allies' opponents and everything is settled through fear of complications.
No date; probably 1926. Oeuvres Completes,

Vol. III: Gallimard, 1961. Translated by
VICTOR CORTI.
173
CINEMAAND ABSTRACTION
Pure motion pictures are a mistake; in fact, so are any attempts which seek to reveal
the essence of art, for both detract from the art's method of representing objects.
There is a very human characteristic which ordains that things can only stimulate
the mind through expressly physical existence, through sufficiently definite, tangible
forms. A certain type of non-objective abstract painting may exist, but to a certain
extent any pleasure we derive from it is hypothetical, while nonetheless satisfying to
the mind. Basic film concepts seem to be founded on the use of existing objects and
forms, which can be made to express anything, as natural classification is deep and
truly infinite.
The Shell and the Clergyman makes use of nature as created and attempts to restore
some of the mystery of its deepest structural secrets. In this film, therefore, we should
not try to detect logic or sequences beyond those inherent in objects, but rather
interpret the pictures-which clearly develop in this direction, in their most deepseated intrinsic sense, since this meaning arises from the exterior world and moves
towards the interior. The Shell and the Clergyman does not tell a story but exhibits
a sequence of states of mind, each one deducible from the next in the same way that
mental images obey a deductive process without the mind having produced a reasonable chain of events. True psychic situations can be formulated from the clash of
objects and gestures; thought, trapped between them, endeavors to find a subtle
loophole for its escape. Objects exist solely as functions of form, volume, light, airand especially as functions of nakedly detached emotion, slipping between pictured
paths and attaining a sky-like area where it completely unfurls.
The characters are all brain or all heart. Woman displays her animal desires, assumes
the form of her desire; the earthly shimmering of her instincts makes her compulsively
invariable, yet different in each repeated metamorphosis....
October, 1927, Le Monde Illustre, No. 3645.
Translated by VICTOR CORTI.
THESHELLAND THECLERGYMAN
... We must look to films with purely visual situations whose drama comes from
optic shock, the stuff of sight itself, and not from psychological circumlocutions
which are only texts visually interpreted. This does not involve finding the visual
equivalent of spoken language, as the visual language would only be a bad paraphrase
of it, but making the essence of language itself really come to life, putting action on
a level where interpretation is unnecessary and where this action would influence the
brain almost intuitively.
This scenario is not the reproduction of a dream and should not be considered as
ANTONIN ARTAUD
174
such. I would not try to excuse its obvious incoherence by mitigating it with dreams.
Dreams have something more than their own logic. They have their own existence,
in which nothing but dark and intelligent truths appear. This scenario tries to find the
mind's dark truths in self-generative images which do not take their meaning from
the situations in which they develop, but rather from a sort of powerful inner need
which lights them up with merciless clarity.
Motion pictures primarily make use of the flesh and blood of things, reality's substance. They magnify matter and make its deepest essence appear in its affinity with
the nature it sprang from. Images are born, are inferred from one another pictorially,
assert an objective synthesis more searching than anything abstract, create worlds
which demand nothing of anyone or anything. But this purely visual work, this sort
of transubstantiation of elements evokes an inorganic language, rousing the mind by
osmosis without verbal transposition. Because they work with matter itself, motion
pictures create situations from the impact of objects, forms, repulsions and attractions. They do not divorce themselves from life, but rediscover the earliest classification of things. In this sense, the more successful films are governed by a certain type
of humor, like the early Malecs and the least human Chaplins. Motion pictures strewn
with dreams which give one a physical feeling of life let loose, triumph in the most
exaggerated humor....
In the following scenario, I have sought to put this idea into effect; a visual motion
picture in which psychology itself is engulfed in the action.... Not that motion
pictures must divorce themselves from all psychology; on the contrary, they must
give this psychology a much more lively and active form, omitting those links which
try to make the origins of our actions appear in a truly stupid light instead of showing
them to us in primitive, deep-seated cruelty.
The Scenario
The camera focuses on a man dressed in black, who is absorbed in measuring out
a liquid into beakers of different heights and sizes. He uses a sort of oyster shell for
this decanting, smashing each beaker after use. The assortment of flasks around him
is incredible. At a certain moment a door opens and an officer appears looking
debonair, smug, and bloated. He is weighed down with decorations and drags a huge
sabre after him. He is there like a spider, at times in dark corners, at times on the
ceiling. The officer jumps each time a flask smashes. But then the officer is behind
the back of the man dressed in black. He takes the oyster shell out of his hands.
Plainly surprised, the man lets him. The officer circles the room several times with
the shell, then all of a sudden draws his sword from its scabbard and smashes the
shell a gigantic blow. The whole room trembles. The lamps waver and a sabre tip
gleams in each quivering shot. The officer goes out with heavy steps and the man
dressed in black, who looks very much like a clergyman, goes out after him on all
fours.
Skimming over the street cobbles, the clergyman goes by on all fours. A succession
of street corners. An open carriage drawn by four horses suddenly appears. In this
carriage is the officer of a moment ago with a very beautiful woman with ash-blond
hair. Hiding around a street corner, the clergyman sees the carriage go by and he
175
scampersafter it. The carriagearrivesin front of a church. The officer and woman
get out, step into the church and go to the confessional.Both of them enter the confession-box.At the same time, the clergymanspringsforward,throws himself on the
officer.The officer'sface cracks, granulates,beams;the clergymanis no longer holding an officerbut a priest. It seems the woman with blond hair sees the priest as well
but from a differentangle. There is a series of close-ups of the priest's smooth,
affableface as it appearsin the woman'seyes; severe, dour, and forbiddingwhen it
looks at the clergyman.Night falls with startlingabruptness.The clergymanlifts the
priest at arm'slength and swings him up: the atmospherearoundhim becomes clear.
He is now on a mountaintop; interweavingrivers and plains are superimposedat his
feet. The priestflies from his hands like a shot, like a poppingcork, and falls dizzily
into space.
The woman and clergyman pray in the confessional.The clergyman'shead sways
like a leaf and suddenly something seems to be speaking inside him. He pulls his
sleeves up and slowly, ironically,softly, taps on the confessionalpartitionthree times.
The woman gets up. Then the clergymanbangs with his fist and opens the door like
a madman.The woman stands in front of him, watching him. He hurls himself on
her and rips the bodice of her dress off as if he wanted to lacerate her breasts. But
in the place of her breastsis a carapaceof shell. He tearsthis shell away and brandishes
176
ANTONIN ARTAUD
it in the air where it sparkles.He shakes it in the air franticallyand the scene changes
to a ballroom.
Couples enter; some mysteriouslyon tip-toe, others extremelybusy. The chandeliers
follow the movementsof the couples. All the women are wearingshort dresses,short
hair, flaunttheirlegs and stick out theirbusts.
A royal couple make their entrance-the officer and woman of a moment ago. They
sit on a dais. The couples hold one another tight. In one corner of the screen is a
man all alone, in the middle of a large empty area. He holds an oyster shell in his
hands and he is strangelyfascinatedat the sight of it. Little by little, we see it is the
clergyman.But, brushingeverythingin his path aside, this same clergyman enters,
holding the breast-platehe was shaking so frantically a moment before. He raises
the breast-plateup in the air as if he wanted to knock the couples down with it. But
at that instantall the couples standrootedto the spot, the woman with blond hair and
the officer are swallowed up into the air again, and this same woman reappearsat
the otherend of the room in the archwayof a door which has just opened.
This apparitionseems to terrify the clergyman.He lets the breast-platefall, and it
gives off an enormousflame in breaking.Then, as if he were seized by a feeling of
sudden bashfulness,he gathers his clothes close to him. But as he grasps the skirts
of his cassock to draw them aroundhis thighs, these skirt-tailsseem to stretch out,
177
forming an endless road into night. The clergyman and woman run desperately
throughthe night.
This race is interspersedwith hallucinatory sequences with the woman in different
guises: now with her cheek prodigiouslyswollen, now with her tongue sticking out,
stretchingout infinitely, with the clergyman hanging on to it like a rope. At times
her breasts are grotesquelydistended. At the end of the race the clergyman emerges
in a passagewaywith the woman swimming in a sort of cloud behind him. We suddenly see a great iron-studdeddoor. The door opens, pushed by an invisible hand, and
the clergyman enters walking backwards,beckoning to someone we cannot see. He
enters the large room. In this room is a huge glass bowl. He backs towards it, still
beckoning to the invisible person. The person seems close to him. His hands go out
as if he were enfolding a woman's body. And when he is holding this shadow, this
invisible double, quite securely, he throws himself on it, stranglingit. His face and
gestures are extremelysadistic. Then he inserts its severed head into the bowl.
He reappearsin the hall looking jaunty, twirling a key in his hand. He goes down
one passage;at the end of this passage is a door, he opens it with the key. After this
door is anotherpassage and at the end of this passage is a couple who are once more
none other than the same woman and the officer weighed down with decorations.
A chase begins. And fists pound at doors on all sides. The clergyman is now in a
ship's cabin. He gets out of his bunk, steps out on deck. The officeris there, weighed
down with chains. Then the clergymanseems to retire within himself and pray, but
when he raiseshis head, level with his eyes are two mouths which merge, disclosing a
woman beside the officerwho wasn't there a moment ago. The woman's body is suspended horizontallyin the air.
Then a paroxysmshakes him. Each finger of each hand seems to search for a neck.
But between his fingers and hands are phosphorescentskies and landscapes-and he
is all white, appearinglike a ghost. He and his ship pass understalactitegrottoes.
The ship very far off in a silver sea.
And close up, the clergyman'shead lying down, breathing.
From lower depths between his parted lips, from the slits between his eyelashes,
shimmeringmists emerge, which all gather in one corner of the screen, forming a
town scene or an extremelyradiantlandscape.The head finally disappearscompletely
and houses, landscapes, and towns pursue one another, twining and untwining in a
unique firmament,forming celestial lagoons, incandescent grottoes of stalactites and
under these grottoes, between these mists, amid these lagoons, the ship's silhouette
appears, reappearsin black on the white background of the towns, white on these
hallucinatorysettings which suddenly turn black.
Doors and windows open on all sides. Light floods into the room. What room? The
room with the glass bowl in it. Servants,cleaners invade the room with buckets and
brushes, rush to the windows. Everyone scrubs industriously, frantically, madly,
ANTONIN ARTAUD
178
everywhere.A stern governess, dressed all in black, enters holding a bible, goes and
sits at the window. Once we see her face, we realize it is still the same beautiful
woman. On a path outside, a priest is hurrying along and further away there is a
young girl in summer dress, holding a tennis racket. Her partner is an unknown
young man.
The priest enters the house. Menservantspop out on all sides and form an imposing
file. Due to the cleaninghowever,the glass bowl-nothing more or less than a vase full
of water-has to be moved. It passes from hand to hand. Now and again a head seems
to move in it. The governess has the two young people called in from the garden
because the priest has arrived.The young people are the woman and the clergyman.
It looks as if they are going to be married.But at the moment all the visions which
were going through the sleeping clergyman'smind appear, piling up on the screen.
The screen is cut in two by the appearanceof a huge ship. The ship disappears,but
the now headless clergyman comes down a stairway which seems to extend from
heaven, carrying a package wrapped in paper. Once in the room where everyone is
gathered,he unwraps the paper and takes out the glass bowl. Everybody'sattention
is strainedto the utmost. Then he leans down and breaks the glass bowl: he takes a
head out of it which is seen to be his own.
The head grimaces.
He holds it in his hands like a hat. The head rests on an oyster shell. As he brings the
oyster shell up to his lips, the head melts, transformingitself into a sort of blackish
liquidwhich he drinksas he closes his eyes.
November, 1927, Nouvelle Revue Francaise,
No. 170. Translated by VICTOR CORTI.
MOTIONPICTURESAND WITCHCRAFT
... I have always noticed a special quality in films, in the hidden movement and the
very substanceof the pictures. There is an unexpected and mysteriousside to motion
pictureswhich is not to be found in other arts. We can be sure each picture, no matter
how trivial or dull, arrives on the screen transmuted.The tiniest details, the most
unimportantobjects, take on their own particularlife and meaning; this, over and
above the value of the meaning of the pictures themselves,beyond the thoughts they
translateor the symbols they form. Film gives objectsa separateexistence by isolating
them so they become progressivelymore independentand detached from the object's
normal sense. Leaves, a bottle, a hand, live a quasi-animallife, seeking a useful
existence. There are the camera's distortions,too, or the unexpected use it makes of
the thingsit records.As each picturefades out, a certaindetail we had ignored catches
our imaginationwith singularforce, yet is the reverse of the expression sought after
in the film. There is also a physical intoxicationcommunicatedby the whirring film.
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ANTONIN ARTAUD
180
The mind is affected but is free from all identification. Pictures possess a virtual
power which probes into the mind and uncovers undreamt-ofpossibilities.
Motion pictures are fundamentallythe revelation of a complete, graphically communicated,occult world. But it is up to us to find the clue to this secret iife. There
are better ways of making us guess at the secret stirringsin the depths of the mind
than simple superimposedfilm montage. Uncut motion pictures, taken for what they
are, in the abstractgive off a certain amount of the atmospherewhich favors revelations. Using them to tell stories-exterior action-is to deprive them of the best of
their resources,to go against their deepest aims. Therefore motion pictures seem to
exist especially to express mental things, within the mind, not so much by the interplay of pictures but by something more tangible, re-establishingobjects, individual
substance without intermediariesor portrayal. Motion pictures have arrived at a
turningpoint in human thought, precisely at the moment when language is losing its
symbolicpower,when the mind is tired of simulation.
Clear thinkingis not enough. It sets life within a spent, disgustedworld. Whateveris
immediatelygraspable is clear, but the immediately graspable serves only as life's
outer shell. This all too familiar life has lost all its symbolic power and we are beginning to see it as the abnegation of life. And our day is excellent for saints and
sorcerers,perhapsbetter than ever before. An entire intangiblesubstantialityis taking
shape, coming into being, seeking to reach the light. Motion pictures bring us closer
to this substantiality.If motion pictures are not made to interpretdreams, or everything in waking life connected with the world of dreams, they do not exist. There is
nothing to distinguishthem from the theatre. However, since motion pictures are a
fast, direct language,they do not need slow, heavy logic in order to live and flourish.
Either motion pictures will come closer to the world of fantasy, this same fantasy
we daily realize all realityrests on, or they will not live long. Or rathermotion pictures
will become like paintingor poetry.What is sure is that most forms of expressionhave
had their day. For a long time now all good painting has served hardly any other
purpose than reproductionof the abstract. Thus it is not only a matter of choice.
There will not on the one hand be motion pictures which representlife and on the
other hand motion pictures which representthe workings of the mind. For life, or
what we call life, will become less and less separablefrom thought. A certain hidden
realm tends to surface. Motion pictures can transmutethe expression of this realm
betterthan any other art, since stupidorderand habitualclarity are its enemies....
Probable date: 1927 First published, in part,
in the catalogue of the Festival du Film Maudit,
1949. Translated by VICTOR CORTI.
THE REVOLTOF THE BUTCHER

The Shell and the Clergymanwas the first film ever written making use of subjective
images untaintedby farce. There were other films before it which brought about a
181
similar break in logical thought patterns,but farce provided a very clear explanation
for breaking the links between patterns. Even when applied to serious subjects, the
techniqueof these other films was closely modeled on farce. All of us can understand
farce, the common factor by which the mind communicates its secrets to us. The
Shell and The Clergymanwas the first film of a subjectivetype where an attemptwas
made to use something other than farce and even its comic sequences do not rely on
farce. The Revolt of the Butcher originates in a similar intellectual impulse, but the
factors which were latent in The Shell and the Clergyman-eroticism, savagery,
blood-lust, a thirst for violence, an obsession with horror, collapse of moral values,
social hypocrisy, lies, perjury,sadism, depravity,etc.-have been made as explicit as
possible.
It would be wrong to think that this scenario'ssole reason for being is the exposition
of repressed or animal emotions. Sexuality, repression, and the unconscious have
never seemed to me to be a sufficientreason for inspirationor thought. I only wanted
to get the film in its propermilieu.
The film is a talkie but the dialogue only emphasizes the visual content. The sound
is there in space, like an object. And if I may say so, the sound should be accepted
on a visual level. The sound and voices have clearly been orchestrated,existing in
their own right and not as the physical result of movement or action; sound is not
directly co-ordinatedwith events. Sounds, voices, pictures, and breaks are all part
of the same objectiveworld in which movement counts before everythingelse. In the
end our eyes pick up and stress the action's implications.
The Scenario
Place de l'Ama. A highly nervous man feels he is about to run amok. He paces up
and down, waitingfor a woman who has not come.
Two a.m. The empty, deserted square. A butcher's van approaches very fast, suddenly swerves to avoid the man, and a carcass of beef rolls off. The butchers curse
the man, climb down and begin to load the carcass on their shoulders.The madman
looks interested and moves towards them, but his "interestedlook" is so terrifying
that the butchersjump in the van and hurryaway.
Increasinglyderanged, the maniac walks into Chez Francis. We feel his mania is
about to crystallizeinto a fit.
He sits down. The clientele's curiosity is aroused. Discussing at the bar. Are they
going to serve the madman?
A woman enters flamboyantly, immediately followed by a gigolo. The woman's
mannerannoys the maniac. He teeters between hate and desire. The gigolo is uneasy.
The woman is interestedin the madman;she smiles at him; at first he looks noncommittal,finallydecides to stick his tongue out at her.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
182
The gigolo gets up, goes over to provoke the madman. The maniac considers him
balefully, then, as the gigolo comes towards him, punches him in the face, saying
withoutraisinghis voice:
Mind they don't chop off your head.
That very instant, the waiter lets his tray clatter to the floor. The resoundingcrash
has a terrible effect on the madman. The gigolo becomes like putty in his hands.
But, when everybody in the cafe, now on their feet, closes in on him, the madman's
mind suddenlygoes blank. Everythingstops and we hear the rumble of the butcher's
van in the 'morningas the horses'hoofs treadthe asphalt.
The cafe noise again. The madman has recovered his wits but before his eyes he
sees the image of the van bowling along, bumping about in a corner of the screen
like miniaturemoving pictures cast on the ceiling of a dark room by light coming
from chinks between the curtains. Looking at the people in the cafe, who stare at
him like dumb animals,he shouts:
To the slaughterhouse!
It is suddenly very late.
All the bar's customers are there. They are barely recognizable,they stand lined up,
each goitrous or lame. The madman inspects them. They stand stock-still. He tugs
at their arms, lifts up their eyelids, inspectstheir mouths.The crowd moves off, spreads
out over the empty squarewith rows of wide avenues in the sky where only one man
remains.
We come on them again, running through the countryside, each individual rolling
down a steep slope on a particularobject.
Cut to the madman on the running board of a taxi going wildly fast. Inside, the
woman and the gigolo, obliviousto the outsideworld, are playingforfeits.
A huge butchersits on the roof.
The madmanlooks at the woman and focuses on her bust, which moves into a corner
of the screen. Around it are the points of a triangularknife which encircle it without
touchingit. (Like the needle of a sundial.)
Then the butcherholdingthis knife in his hand.
Now a short woman enters Chez Francis, after everything is over and the place is
empty. A policeman appears. At the instant she admits she had come to meet the
madmanbut was too late, he takes her to the police station.
183
She cries, squirms.

A moment later she runs out of the station with all the policemen chasing her in
their shirtsleeves, putting on their coats.
They scatter without being able to catch her and we see them again, slowly marching
along together, playing bagpipes with enraptured expressions on their faces.
Elsewhere seminarists march in file, scatter and run in slow motion.
Elsewhere again, soldiers coming out of their barracks do the same.
The short woman running down a street and the butcher's van passing her travelling
very fast.
The taxi with the butcher, woman, gigolo, and madman arrives in front of the
slaughterhouse.
The butcher's van also arrives, making a great racket. The butcher from the taxi
and his helper climb down and unload the short woman's body carefully (if necessary
with a block and tackle). It is alive, its eyes are blinking, but it is stiff as a side of meat.
The madman rushes forward, but the butchers are carrying only a real side of beef,
balancing it between them. When he enters the slaughterhouse, he sees nothing but
butchers and their helpers, busy cutting carcasses into quarters which fall about
him like branches lopped off a tree.
The slaughterhouse is empty. He searches everywhere, in all the corners. In town,
the police, soldiers and seminarists ferret about.
He finally finds the short woman, now a doll and bone hard, under a pile of wood
shavings. But the butcher has seen him.
He goes mad with rage.
He is sad. He sits down, wipes his brow. The woman is there between them, laughing,
charming, and delightful in the midst of all this slaughter.
The butcher and madman are sad. They look at one another rather ominously. They
appear to be thinking things over.
Now the madman trembles, afraid.
This conversation is a real inquisition. The woman is there, all bloody, in a basket,
arms akimbo, dead. The tart and gigolo act as perjured witnesses.
A ring of policemen surround them. One of them laughs and digs the butcher in
the ribs, as if to say, speaking sotto voce:
ANTONIN ARTAUD
184
There's that business of yours again.
The head butcher gloomily gives in and the woman's body is laid out as if he was
going to cut it up into pieces. But then he cannot go on. He rolls up his sleeves, opens
his mouth, while the P.A. system amplifies a voice-speaking during a break in the
filmI'm fed up cutting up meat without eating it.
There is no one around him now. In a corner a pack of rats scurries away.
Then a table is laid for him. The woman, come to life, sets the table for him. Crystals
glitter. Flowers everywhere. A wedding day. The butcher is celebrating his wedding in
a dinner jacket that is a little too short for him. Two very tall priests hold his arms
while, dream-like, the whole picture spins slowly. The woman is seated in front of
the table in a bare-shouldered wedding gown. She shivers.
The madman returns with the whore and gigolo and in front of the doors of the
slaughterhouse they shake hands with him, consoling him in his cuckoldry.
Then the madman closes the iron gates and goes off driving a great herd of cattle in
front of him.
The townspeople, forewarned, go home. The regiment marches into the barracks.
The doors of the seminary close.
June, 1930: Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, No.
201. Translated by VICTOR CORTI.
THEPREMATURESENILITYOF FILM
... There are motion pictures where chance, that is the unexpected, that is, poetry,
is left out. Each detail stems from a completely conscious mental choice designed
to produce a definite, assured result. Poetry here is intellectual-it depends solely
on the particular sympathetic vibrations of objects perceived at their contact point
with motion pictures, and on a secondary level at that.
On the other hand, there are documentaries-and here we have the last stronghold
of film for film's sake. A leading part is left to the camera and to spontaneous and
direct development of reality's aspects. Full play is given to the poetry of living things
taken in their most innocent guise, or from an angle where they blend in with exterior
scenes....
185
The lens plunges in media res, creatingits own world. Motion picturesmay replace the
human eye, think for it, sift the world and only let the best of life remain alive after
such well-organized,mechanical elimination. The best, what is worth remembering,
those fragmentsof scenes which float to the surface of the memory-the lens automatically seeks to filter the remains. The lens classifies and digests life, offering the
emotions and soul predigestedfood and surrenderingus up to a cut-and-driedworld.
Besides, among those things worth recording,how can we be sure that the best and
most significantthings are not lost? The camera'sview of the world is fragmentary
and no matter how valuable the harmony it creates between objects, this harmony
has two slantsto it.
On the one hand the camera obeys its own choice, the internal laws of a fixed-focus
machine. But there is also the cameramanand director-individual human wills making their own choices.
In so far as the camera is left to its own devices it gives objects a settled order, one
which the eye recognizes as valid, correspondingto the memory and the mind's external habits. Would this order be valid if motion pictures pursued the experiment
more deeply, presentingnot only the ryhthmsof ordinarylife, but the dark, prolonged
conflict hidden beneath the surface of things-or the crushed, trampled,distended,
and dense picturesof life swarmingin the mind'sdeepest depths?. .
Life cannot be re-created.When living vibrationsare etched in a numberof eternally
fixed vibrations,they are henceforth dead. The motion picture world is closed, without any relationto experience.Its poetry is not to be found beyond but within pictures.
When it encountersthe mind, its decomposingforce breaks. There was poetry around
the lens, it is true, but only before the lens filteredit, before it was etched on film....
1933: Les Cahiers Jaunes, No. 4. Translated
by VICTOR CORTI.

ARTAUD - Scenarios and Arguments

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ARTAUD - Scenarios and Arguments

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Scenarios and Arguments

Author(s): Antonin Artaud, Victor Corti and Simone Sanzenbach

Question: What sort of films do you like?

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

TWO NATIONSON THEOUTER

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

No date; probably 1926. Oeuvres Completes,

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

THE REVOLTOF THE BUTCHER

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

She cries, squirms.

SCENARIOS AND ARGUMENTS

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