Anémic Cinéma
Seven minutes of spinning: Duchamp's optical discs pulse in and out of depth, alternating with rotating spiral texts whose French puns grind their obscenities slowly enough to read. Signed by his alter ego Rrose Sélavy, it is the readymade principle applied to cinema — anagram title included: Anémic is Cinéma, drained and rearranged.
- 1926
- Experimental film
About Marcel Duchamp
Precision optics, erotic engineering
Duchamp had been building motorized optical machines since 1920 — 'precision optics', he called the pursuit, half in earnest — and Anémic Cinéma mounts their results on film: rotoreliefs whose flat spirals throb into cones and back, hypnotic and faintly indecent. Between them turn discs of text, spiral sentences of alliterative French wordplay that the viewer must ride like a record needle. Man Ray and the young Marc Allégret worked the camera in Paris; the film was shown privately, one avant-garde to another.
It is the least anemic film imaginable about anemia: nothing happens, twice — motion without progress, language without statement — and in that refusal it states Duchamp's whole program more compactly than any object he signed. Cinema, the newest art, is welcomed by being politely emptied.
Timeline
1920
Duchamp began building motorized “precision optics” — the spinning optical machines whose results the film would record.
1926
Released, made with Man Ray and Marc Allégret and signed by his alter ego Rrose Sélavy: seven minutes alternating spinning discs with rotating spirals of French puns.
1935
Duchamp issued the spinning discs commercially as the Rotoreliefs, a boxed set of optical discs he tried to sell at a Paris inventors' fair.
Frequently asked questions
What is Anémic Cinéma?
A seven-minute film Marcel Duchamp made in 1926, alternating spinning optical discs with rotating spirals of French puns. He signed it with his feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy.
Why the strange title?
“Anémic” is an anagram of “cinéma” — the word drained and rearranged. It sets the tone for a film of motion that goes nowhere.
Who made it with him?
Man Ray and Marc Allégret helped shoot it.
What are the spinning discs?
Duchamp's “rotoreliefs”: flat spirals that appear to swell into three dimensions as they turn, drawn from the motorized “precision optics” he had been building since 1920.
What does it mean?
By design, almost nothing “happens” — motion without progress, language without statement. It applies the readymade principle to film, and states Duchamp's program as compactly as any object he made.
Is it connected to his other work?
Yes. The optical discs became the commercially issued Rotoreliefs in 1935, and the Rrose Sélavy signature ties the film to Duchamp's wordplay and alter-ego works.
