Ricciotto Canudo
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Ricciotto_Canudo.jpg/250px-Ricciotto_Canudo.jpg)
Ricciotto Canudo (French: [kanydo]; 2 January 1877, Gioia del Colle – 10 November 1923, Paris) was an early Italian film theoretician who lived primarily in France. In 1913 he published a bimonthly avant-garde magazine entitled Montjoie!, promoting Cubism in particular. He saw cinema as "plastic art in motion", and gave cinema the label "the Sixth Art",[1][2] later changed to "the Seventh Art", still current in French and Spanish, among others. Canudo subsequently added dance as a precursor to the sixth—a third rhythmic art with music and poetry—making cinema the seventh art.[3][4][5]
Work
In his manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art, published in 1911, Canudo argued that cinema was a new art, "a superb conciliation of the Rhythms of Space (the Plastic Arts) and the Rhythms of Time (Music and Poetry)", a synthesis of the five ancient arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry (cf. Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics).[6]
Canudo later added dance as a sixth precursor, a third rhythmic art with music and poetry, making cinema the seventh art.[7]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Montjoie%2C_Ricciotto_Canudo%2C_Andr%C3%A9_Salmon%2C_sculpture_by_Joseph_Csaky%2C_3rd_issue%2C_18_March%2C_1914.jpg/250px-Montjoie%2C_Ricciotto_Canudo%2C_Andr%C3%A9_Salmon%2C_sculpture_by_Joseph_Csaky%2C_3rd_issue%2C_18_March%2C_1914.jpg)
Montjoie!
During 1913-1914, he published a bimonthly avant-garde magazine entitled Montjoie!, organe de l'impérialisme artistique Francais. Participating artists included Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Raynal, Albert Gleizes and Joseph Csaky. The magazine paid special attention to poetry, prose, articles on art, literature, music and history. The contributors included André Salmon, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Fernand Léger, Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Alfredo Casella, Raoul Dufy, Stefan Zweig, Robert Delaunay, Max Jacob, and Emile Verhaeren.[9][10]
The first issue was published on 10 February, 1913. The second included an essay signed by Igor Stravinsky presenting his new ballet The Rite of Spring as a religious work of faith grounded in a pagan, pantheistic conception.[11] A special issue in the second volume of Montjolie, published March 18, 1914, was devoted entirely to the 30th Salon des Indépendants. The article written by André Salmon included photographs of works by Joseph Csaky, Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Alice Bailly, Jacques Villon, Sonia Delaunay, André Lhote, Roger de La Fresnaye, Moise Kisling, Ossip Zadkine, Lucien Laforge and Valentine de Saint-Point.[10] Publication of the magazine stopped in June 1914, on the eve of the First World War.[12]
In 1920 he established an avant-garde magazine Le Gazette de sept arts, and a film club, CASA (Club des amis du septième art), in 1921.[13] His best-known essay "Reflections on the Seventh Art" ("Réflexions sur le septième art") was published in 1923 after a number of earlier drafts, all published in Italy or France.[14]
Other writings
- La ville sans chef, Paris 1910
- Music as a religion of the future, London 1913
- L'usine aux images, Paris 1926. (A collection of his essays)
Notes
- ^ L'Intransigeant, 1 April, 1922
- ^ abel, richard. french film theory and criticism 1907-1959. Princeton university press. pp. 58–65.
- ^ Manifeste des sept arts, coll. Carré d'Art, Séguier, Paris, 1995
- ^ La gazette des sept arts, 1922
- ^ Manifeste du septième art, La gazette des sept arts, 1923
- ^ Giovanni Dotoli, Ricciotto Canudo ou le cinéma comme art, Preface by Jean-Louis Leutrat, Fasano-Paris, Schena-Didier Érudition, 1999
- ^ Bordwell, David (1997). On the History of Film Style. Harvard University Press. p. 29. ISBN 0-674-63429-2.
- ^ Montjoie!, 18 March 1913
- ^ Montjolie, Gallica
- ^ a b Montjolie, kubisme Archived 2013-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Parino, Francesco. Alfreo Casella and “The Montjoie!-Affair”. Repercussions 10 (2007): 96-123
- ^ Noémi Blumenkranz-Onimus, "Montjoie! ou l'héroïque croisade pour une nouvelle culture", 1913, Paris, Klincksieck, tome 2, 1971
- ^ Aitken, Ian (2001). European film theory and cinema: a critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press. p. 75. ISBN 0-7486-1168-1.
- ^ Canudo, Quaderni del Novecento Francese, Rome, Bulzoni, 1976
References
- French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907–1939 by Richard Abel (Editor), Princeton University Press, (1993) ISBN 0-691-00062-X
- The Birth of the Sixth Art pp. 58–66
- Reflections on the Seventh Art pp. 291–303
- The Visual Turn by Angela Dalle Vacche (Editor), Rutgers University Press, (2002), ISBN 0-8135-3173-X
External links
- Montjoie!, Special edition for the Salon des Artistes Indépendants, 18 March 1913
- Montjoie!, January-February 1914, N. 1 - N. 2
- Montjoie!, March 1914, N. 3
- Montjoie!, April, May, June, 1914, N.4, N. 5, N. 6
- Text on Manifeste des sept arts, Université de Metz
- Biography of Ricciotto Canudo by l'Amicale des Anciens de la Légion Etrangère de Paris
- Film theorists
- 1879 births
- 1923 deaths
- Italian film critics
- 20th-century male writers
- 20th-century French poets
- 20th-century French novelists
- 20th-century French musicologists
- French art critics
- French screenwriters
- French film critics
- Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
- Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)