Visões de Musas1: Kiki de Montparnasse

L'Étoile de Mer, Man Ray (1928)
Man Ray's film l'etoile de mer was adapted from his friend Robert Desnos's poem "la 'place de l'etoile". The title of Man Ray's film means the starfish. To Man Ray the star fish represented the embodiment of a lost love. Both Desnos and Man Ray thought that the starfish "inhabited liquid depths as well as heavenly reaches." This was very surrealistic thinking that appealed to Man Ray's affinity for vague objects.

The film stared his wife Kiki as the female lead and because of this the film can be called somewhat autobiographical. It is about a woman (Kiki) and a man who drift apart from one another. One of the most interesting aspects of this film is that it was shot through a sheet of glass which helped to emphasize the nature of the romance between the two lead characters, which was thin and fragile. Starfish also make plenty of appearances throughout the film. Every time there was some sort of conflict there would be a starfish somewhere on the screen. L'etoile de mer expressed Man Ray's doubts about being able to hold onto Kiki. In the end his worries proved to be true, as he and his wife separated just after the opening of the film in Paris.

Ryan Doyon, 1998

L'Étoile de Mer está disponível para download, cortesia da fantástica Ubu Web.
Kiki de Montparnasse na Wikipedia
Selected Gallery de Kiki de Montparnasse