between science and surrealism, the films of Jean Painlevé to discover at the Jeu de Paume in Paris

The delicate head of a seahorse, the dance of an octopus, a hermit crab fight: these images can be discovered in Paris at the Jeu de Paume, which presents the first major exhibition of the poetic and fascinating work of Jean Painlevé. The latter has filmed the marine world all his life, between science and art, between research, pedagogy and surrealism.

In an article exhibited at the Jeu de Paume, Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) underlined the “demonstrative superiority of the animated photo over the word alone, the blackboard, the book, the still image”. For the student in particular, it makes “alive” the explanations read or heard, he wrote. In these lines, in addition to the advantages for scientific research (magnification, slowing down of the image) he evoked “the eminently plastic side that can be brought out in a documentary film, as long as you have some imagination”.

Jean Painlevé was first and foremost a scientist: he entered medical school in 1921, studied biology and made his first film, The stickleback egg, in 1927. At the same time, he shot sequences for a play by Yvan Goll, became friends with the Soviet filmmaker Einsenstein and the French director Jean Vigo. He will exhibit his photos with Brassaï, Man Ray and Roger Parry. Although he was never part of the surrealist movement, he is close to its members, who were often fascinated by his images. We had been able to discover some of them during the great exhibition of the Center Pompidou on surrealist photography.

On one side, we discover photos of Jean Painlevé, a graceful starfish which seems suspended in the air, hardly recognizable and almost abstract images which border on the fantastic, like a detail of a shrimp’s head or the eye of a a spider, a lobster claw that looks like a caricature of Charles de Gaulle, octopus suckers like a big jewel.

The octopus is an animal which particularly fascinated him, from childhood, he said, and which would have led him to study zoology. He devoted one of his first films to him, silent and in black and white, in 1927. Then another in color in the 1960s, where he filmed the fascinating gait, the loving dance and the coupling of the animal, the eggs organized in long cords that the female triturates. All to music by Pierre Henry. Because Jean Painlevé attaches great importance to the music of his films, jazz or contemporary, dramatic or light, which contributes to their particular tone.

Jean Painlevé has made more than 200 films. Among other things, there is the one dedicated to the hermit crab, this crustacean which takes up residence in the empty shells of molluscs to protect its abdomen exposed to aggression. We witness comic scenes where a badly housed individual chases one of his congeners from his larger shell.

Another is forced to abandon the beautiful home he had found, too heavy for him. Others, wearing a large, rather ridiculous hat, have embedded themselves in an anemone. There is also a general fight.

Jean Painlevé’s first field of exploration was the seaside, in Brittany. He also shot some films in the laboratory, such as the most famous, that on the hippocampus (1931-1934). In the middle of the algae of the Archachon basin, he had difficulty filming these fantastic little animals, the only fish to move vertically, their strange gait, the males who carry the eggs in their belly and give birth. He did it in an aquarium, at the studio of the Institute of Scientific Cinematography in Montparnasse.

If he was recognized by the scientific community, his films were also widely shown in avant-garde cinemas and film clubs (he was also president of the French Federation of film clubs created on his initiative in 1946). His political commitment (he was a member of the World Committee against War and Fascism before the war, then resistant under the occupation), in cinema and in science are inseparable: he directed the cinema center of the National Conservatory of Arts and professions, he was responsible for the French Cinematheque in the free zone, then Director General of French Cinema in the provisional government in 1944.

You need to plan some time to visit the Jeu de Paume exhibition and savor all the poetry of the dozen films screened there.

“Jean Painlevé, feet in the water”, Palm Game, 1 Place de la Concorde, Paris 1st.
Every day except Monday. Tuesday 12 p.m.-9 p.m., Wednesday to Friday 12 p.m.-8 p.m., weekends 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Prices: €12 / €9 / €7.50. From June 8 to September 18