The Games of Angels

Angel Games in a Machine World—Walerian Borowczyk’s Les jeux des anges (1964)

Earlier this month at the Goethe Institut of Paris, a gem of 1960s surrealist animation was projected : Les jeux des anges (1964), a 13-minute short made by Polish director Walerian Borowczyk (1923 – 2006). François Bonenfant, coordinateur pédagogique cinema et arts visuels at Fresnoy (Tourcoing, France), gave a brief introduction to the film, remarking that the short was “pictoral”, resembling a love-child of “Guernica and Francis Bacon”. Ambitious as it is to say, the film offers exactly that.

The film starts with a low rumble, the industrial sound of being within the bowels of a train, and almost-entirely black screen with a pan of grey that chugs along the bottom. This image stops, leading to the début of the film, without the spectator ever knowing what it was – a sign to come of the abstract surrealist imagery to come.

The scene is set when the camera focuses upon an empty grey cell – a prison? the inside of a machine? – garnished only with several open pipes and a few geometric openings in the walls. Although very much an animation, the camera movements imply that the scene is a painting: the camera slides from room to room methodically, showing the intricate inner workings of a non-peopled world, what could easily be interpreted as the inside of an empty vending machine, or a factory with no product or materials.

Suddenly the somber grey and black colors brighten, classical organ music simultaneously enlivens the tone, and three red objects are quickly covered by a grill, and the first figurative images are shown: headless, winged beings, the head of a 19th century lady. The rest of the film shows primarily objects within this gloomy machine-world : with sounds like ice or breaking glass, objects seem to be violently beheaded, head-objects roll like in a child’s marble games, and shape-shifting organic (and alternately non-organic) matter scuffle like small fighting...