a Berceuse de Broadway is the transcription in book form of a film that Pierre Alferi realized at the Pompidou
Center’s invitation for an evening dedicated to the theme of “grâce” in April 2002. This film, about 12 minutes long, composed of a handful of shots borrowed from Gold Diggers by Busby Berkeley (1935), was, originally, a silent film, or a silenced film more like it, a film in which Pierre Alferi cut the sound to better bring out the propositions that he had, as he puts it, “tattooed” on the image, in the manner of Godard in Histoire de cinéma (“Tendez l’oreille et écoutez la berceuse de Broadway, le brouhaha le tintamarre de la berceuse de Broadway…”). I say “originally” because it isn’t at all surprising to discover how he has resonorized the impression. You will swear you know the voice of the young woman who sings la berceuse, and whose head grows bigger here page after page as in a flipbook. You will swear you’ve heard, or least to have “heard,” the “grondement du métro, le vacarme des taxis, les filles qui brûlent les planches chez Angelo et Maxie, les clameurs, les rumeurs de la berceuse de Broadway” the first time that you see the film. All these sounds that the editing has revealed to the ear, the paper restitutes to the eye as if they had been fossilized in the image. “Grâce n°4: toutes les choses de l’art, toutes les choses du cinéma sont entraînées par un mécanisme à se reloger en elles-mêmes, à continuer de battre, chacune sa mesure.” This book beats its own time, in a strange way, as if enclosed life, the gestures and perhaps the calls for help of a crowd of souls held prisoner in engulfing arms of the American music hall. Be careful not to leave it open.Pierre Alferi rocks the craddle La Berceuse de Broadway is the transcription in book form of a film that Pierre Alferi realized at the Pompidou Center’s invitation for an evening dedicated to the theme of “grâce” in April 2002. This film, about 12 minutes long, composed of a handful of shots borrowed from Gold Diggers by Busby Berkeley (1935), was, originally, a silent film, or a silenced film more like it, a film in which Pierre Alferi cut the sound to better bring out the propositions that he had, as he puts it, “tattooed” on the image, in the manner of Godard in Histoire de cinéma (“Tendez l’oreille et écoutez la berceuse de Broadway, le brouhaha le tintamarre de la berceuse de Broadway…”).

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