Dulac’s three 1929 “abstract” films, Disque 957, Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque, and Thème et variations, were not isolated technical studies, but the results of a long period of reflection by the filmmaker, who sought to create a “pure” or “integral” cinema that would capture the essence of the new medium and owe nothing to the other arts. The first of these three studies, each designed to be played silent, was Disque 957. This film, conceived of as a “visual impression…in listening to Frédéric Chopin’s Preludes 5 and 6,” had its origins in a 1918 narrative project on the life of the Romantic composer. Its title and its opening shot of “lightplay” on a spinning record not only announce the film’s dominant circular motif, but also evoke one of the filmmaker’s major sources of inspiration in the ser- pentine dances of Loïe Fuller.

Tami Williams