Few notions on the word and the flesh
Because he has a short memory, man accumulates countless aide-mémoires.
Confronted with these bulging repositories, man is assailed by a fear of being engulfed by this mass of words. To assure his liberty, he builds fortresses.
Thus begins the narration to Alain Resnais' 1956 short film Toute la Mémoire du Monde, a portrayal of Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, and more specifically it's mission to include every existing piece of published French writing in it's collection. These surprisingly postmodern words are accompanied by a look into the library's, well - bulging repositry, suggestive of a Borgesian, metaphysical labyrinth of knowledge. Out of the basement an onto the surface, a less chaotic but equally compelling sight follows when the camera takes us through miles and miles of bookshelves. As the film proceeds, Resnais seems to grow more confident of the expediency of Bibliothèque's mission, in spite of the collection's wildly expanding nature. Maurice Jarre's music, initially sinister in mood, lightens up while we're shown the methodical precision by which every document is labeled, classified, indexed and put in it's prescribed place.
Maybe it's the part-time librarian in me talking, but I'm left less convinced about the possibilities of maintaining an archive of such gargantuan proportions in perfect order. Whatever the prologue might suggest, it seems the library is presented as an allegory for an ideal modernity, where all information fits in the neatly organised hierarchy. Correspondingly, each book, manuscript or publication, the narrator insists, can be delivered on request for studying purposes. However, in the process of being transmitted through the endless hallways to the room full of awaiting researchers, the books go through a metamorphosis of sorts:
It is no longer the same book. It used to be part of an abstract, universal, indifferent memory. There, all books are equal, all enjoyed attention as tender as that shown by God towards man. Here it is, selected, preferred, indispensable to its reader, torn from its world to feed these paper-crunching pseudo-insects, irremediably different from true insects in that each is bound to its own distinct business.
--
Here we catch a glimpse of a future in which all mysteries are resolved. A time when we are handed the keys to this and other universes. And this will come about because these readers, each working on his slice of universal memory, will lay the fragments of a single secret end to end, a secret with a beautiful name, a secret called happiness.
In Toute Le Mémoire du Monde the relation to the past is obsessively rational: historical data has to be meticulously recorded and organised if we are to make any sense of the world as it is. At its most poetic, the film does cast the possibility of fulfilling "the modern project" in an uncertain light, as if the documents that made up the library's universal memory were sacred contrary to their use in the benefit of more profane ends. Still, Toute Le Mémoire is first and foremost a documentary, depicting a more or less concrete reality. Comparable to the secrets solved by the "pseudo-insects" infesting the Bibliothèque's reading room, one might imagine Resnais' film to get allocated to its exact place within the cosmology created to maintain the order inside the "fortress".
At first it might appear Georges Franju's Le Sang des Bêtes (Blood of the Beasts, 1949) has a similar motivation, although it takes place in a wholly different kind of Parisian institution, the slaughterhouse. It doesn't take long to realise this is hardly the case. Franju's raw images are a rare beauty to behold, even so far as to making it difficult to accept they're from this world at all. In Le Sang des Bêtes the past is seen through an explicitly Romantic viewpoint: slaughterhouses, situated in the outskirts of Paris, are not only surrounded by thrift shop memorabilia, but are in themselves relics of a bygone era. But while the slaughterhouses remind us of an ideal, unattainable past, they also function as institutions of systematic, mass-produced death, pointing towards the ruthless and cold heart of modernity.
In a recent interview the makers of Wondershowzen argued that meat can be used as a metaphor for any number of meanings. It's a pity then to witness how the images of slaughtered animals are currently used almost exclusively for shock value and/or to illustrate the cruelty of the modes of meat production. In contrast, Franju's take on the subject matter is extremely fresh and rewarding. Every image exemplifies his matchless sense for the surreal, perhaps most memorably in a shot depicting a room full of headless, limbless calves, caught in an involuntary, hypnotic twitching motion. To see a living thing slowly changing into meat in such a beautiful, cruel and violent manner is pretty much like tapping straight in to the subconscious.
Animal and meat are fixed and separate categories in our conception of the world. Such being the case, disturbing these distinctions has a more profound effect than, say, meddling with the taxonomy by which the shelves of Bibliothèque Nationale are organised. After watching the two films in succession, I'm still tempted to point out some similarities. On the more obvious side is the way the transitory processes are tied in to the concept of modernity. Books are classified and entered into the "world memory", and later transformed again by the researcher for the purpose of extending this mass of information. Likewise, creatures are herded and traded, until they become subject for the final transformation under the butchers blade.
This would hardly be interesting as such, were it not for the fact that both Resnais and Franju have a heartfelt, if complicated, relation to the past, manifest in the fascinating ambiguities of their works. Modern efficiency is what (supposedly) makes Bibliothèque Nationale work, and as an institution it also serves the ideology of constant progress. Resnais makes lucid observations about an attempt to rationalise something which is very hard to make sense of; but for all the talk about the "world memory", Resnais seems more interested in the endless amount of individual memories and stories concealed inside the library.
Franju takes a contrary stand by studying a superficially prosaic act (preparing meat) in a manner which defies conventional reason. The slaughterhouse and it's location are presented in a series of immensely surreal landscapes that transcend the vulgarity of the modern world, with only the narration serving as a link between them:
On the outskirts of Paris, the vacant lots where the poor children play are scattered with unique relics of riches past. Displayed and offered for the delight of curio seekers, poets and strolling lovers here, on the edge of the city life, amid trucks and trains...
A stark contrast is drawn between the austere surroundings and the atrocities committed inside the slaughterhouse. Although the butchers use traditional methods that have little to do with the contemporary meat industry, allusions to modernity are unavoidable. As if to sever these ties, Franju portrays the butchers as a part of the old world, about to give way for something more efficient and less humane. Since a certain Romanticist streak is apparent all through the film, it is not that surprising that Franju decides show his compassion for them by quoting Baudelaire:
I shall strike you without anger / And without hate, like a butcher, wrote Baudelaire. Without anger, without hate, with the simple cheerfulness of killers who whistle or sing as they slit throats, for they must earn their own daily bread and that of others with the wages of a difficult and often dangerous profession.
Both directors are better known for their other works: Alain Resnais elaborated on the theme of memory in such classics as Nuit et brouillard, Hiroshima mon amour and L'Année dernière à Marienbad; Georges Franju, on the other hand, was probably the last French director to apply elements of horror and fantastique in his movies and still manage to gather considerable respect from the film cognoscenti of his own country.
For anyone interested in either director's work I would recommend the films discussed above. For myself I'd recommend considering twice before starting to ramble on about something as random as this. Alas, too late!