Short Take: Ian Hugo’s “Bells of Atlantis” (1952/3)
Anaïs Nin is known for her diaries, her astutely and sensitively observed novels and short stories and one of the greats of belles lettres in 20th century literature. Her liaisons are well-known and her bigamy a thing of moderate scandal (she did get her marriage to her second husband Rupert Pole annulled, after all).
What is not greatly known or appreciated is her work with her first husband, Hugh Parker Guiler/Ian Hugo, the electronic composers Bebe and Louis Barron, and Kenneth Anger.
Ian Hugo studied and worked with William Stanley Hayter in Hayter’s atelier as an engraver in the 20s and 30s of the last century and turned to film in the fifties. While I haven’t any of his other works to compare this to, “Bells of Atlantis” is available on YouTube and it is a true find.
When I first stumbled across it recently, I was apprehensive that this was going to be along the lines of Hans Richter’s more abstruse work. To be sure, there are similarities, but “Bells…” is more transcendent, not abstract but as poetic as anything Richter did. The presence of Nin’s narration of her own prose poem(1) and the writer’s visible presence on screen in fleeting moments conjures up a dreamworld Atlantis, something latent, deep within.
It’s a short, dreamlike work. One that repays repeated viewings. It’s something so diaphanous and so other that it almost reads as some interior space as opposed to a filmic expression. Upon its “Art of Cinema” premiere in 1953, Marianne Moore and others expressed their admiration for the film.(2)
The score by the Barrons is masterful. Best known for the first fully electronic score for a feature film for “Forbidden Planet”(3), the sounds are otherworldly but structured. I bought the soundtrack of the movie because I really enjoy the pairing of the Nin’s narration and their music. The aleatory nature of the soundtrack complements the found nature of the images on screen.
“Bells of Atlantis” was filmed in 1952 and a year later, Nin appeared in Kenneth Anger’s film “The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome as Astarte, the Assyrian goddess of fertility.
CODA/BONUS
Hugo produced a couple of dozen of other films, some of which are available on YouTube. “Levitation” from twenty years after “Bells of Atlantis” is lovely. It might be even more oneiric than “Bells…” with a richer color palette and a kind of nod to Max Ernst in the bird characters.
“Melodic Inversion” is closer in aesthetic to “Bells of Atlantis” but with something like a narrative of eroticism, voyeurism, jealousy, and betrayal. Nin plays both a woman spied upon and pursued and a woman scorned by Robert de Vries. I’m not sure who James Leo Herlihy plays but the film itself is phantasmogorical, layered with oleaginous color fields and transitions from intense saturation to negative and reversed prints. Unlike “Levitation” or “Bells…” electronic scores, “Melodic Inversion” calls on Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 4. Schoenberg’s atonality serves the images well and grounds the proceedings into something earthier.
MUBI has much more of his oeuvre and I look forward to digging deeper into his work.
NOTES
- From MacDonald, p. 257.
Text of prose poem by Anaïs Nin which inspired the film “BELLS OF ATLANTIS”
1953 p. 257
as recited by the author
My first vision of earth was water-veiled.
I am of the race of men and women
Who see all things through a curtain of sea.
Part I
I remember my first birth in water.
I sway and float, stand on boneless toes Listening for distant sounds—
Sounds beyond the reach of human ears, Seeing things beyond the reach of human eyes.
Born full of memories of the bells of Atlantis, Always listening for lost sounds
And searching for lost colors.
Lost in the colors of the Atlantis
The colors running into one another Without frontiers.
It was like yawning.
I loved the ease and the blindness Of the suave voyages on the water Bearing one through obstacles.
Far beneath the level of storms I slept.
I moved within color and music
Like inside a sea-diamond.
There were no currents of thoughts,
Only the caress and flow of desire
Mingling, touching, travelling, withdrawing, wandering— The endless bottoms of peace;
Part II
(As woman’s profile passes left to right across the screen)
“This Atlantis could only be found at night By the route of the dream”
Part III
(As woman’s body is found lying still at the foot of the ship’s prow)
“The terror and joy of murders accomplished in silence”
(As woman appears with arms outstretched in form of a cross) “A monster brought me up to the surface”
(As hands climb up plank, with red sun behind)
“When anger has corroded me I rise; I always rise after the crucification— And I am in terror of my ascensions.”
2. MacDonald, pp. 249 - 250.
Comments on film “Bells of Atlantis”
I have seen many films which are expressed in words, images and sounds which now constitute a
familiar language—and today I might even say in a language of the past.
What impresses me about Ian Hugo’s “Bells of Atlantis” is that its theme, highly poetic in itself, is expressed by means of new words, images and sounds which poets, painters and musicians will at one recognize and hail as of today and tomorrow.
Julio del Diego (painter) New York, July 22, 1953.
Ian Hugo’s intensities of color, ascending to a climax without delay or regression, seem to me remarkable camera work—complemented by the clarity and desisiveness of Louis and Beebe Barron’s electronic music.
Because authoritative, never forced, the voice of Anais Nin lends the implied theme depth—the idea of the lost continent in ourselves—for which “Bells of Atlantis” is the perfect title.
Marianne Moore
New York, July 18, 1953.
“This is one of the most poetic experiences I have had in the cinema”
William Inge
Author of “Come Back Little Sheba” etc
3. According to the Press Kit for Art in Cinema, “Bells of Atlantis” may be the first fully electronic film score. MacDonald, p. 270:
[Original press kit for The Bells of Atlantis sent to Art In Cinema:]
“BELLS OF ATLANTIS”
Produced and photographed Running time 10 min. by Ian Hugo. Film 16 mm Kodachrome
Music by Louis and Beebe Barron Colour effects by Len Lye and Ian Hugo
Acted and recited by Anais Nin
This film, which represents a new attempt at superimposition of colours and images, takes words for inspiration and a point of departure. It is based on a prose poem of Anaïs Nin and attempts to evoke latent human memories of first sensations and the earliest beginnings of consciousness.
Anaïs Nin, who acts the sole role in the film, and recites, has done this I believe successfully, in her prose poem, which has been well-known for many years, and the film attempts to make a cinematic counterpoint to her words. Like all attempts to carry over from one art to another, the filmic form has had to be a recreation in other terms, and a counterpoint rather than a translation.
Above all an attempt has been made to use real images with abstract forms, separately and combined, with voice narration and music to express one integrated theme.
The music by Louis and Beebe Barron is an innovation. It is the first orchestrated all-electronic music composed for a film. The original material was pre-formed electronic circuits (no live sounds or microphone used) and was then subjected to electronic situations which create total effect.
In the abstract colour effects he had the collaboration of his friend Len Lye, well-known for his film “Color Box” shown at the Festival of Venice along with his new film “Fox Chase.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY/FURTHER READING
Ian Hugo. http://www.owlapps.net/owlapps_apps/articles?id=13402115&lang=en
Ian Hugo: Filmmaker. The Official Anais Nin Blog. March 10, 2009. https://anaisninjournal.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/
MacDonald, Scott. Art in Cinema - Documents Toward a History of the Film Society. Temple University Press. Philadelphia PA. 2006
Susan Stone. The Barrons: Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music. National Public Radio/NPR. February 7, 2005. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4486840
Watch “Bells of Atlantis,” an Experimental Film with Early Electronic Music Featuring Anaïs Nin (1952). Open Culture. https://www.openculture.com/2018/01/watch-bells-of-atlantis-an-experimental-film-with-early-electronic-music-featuring-anais-nin-1952.html
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