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7.2
/10
3,002 Ratings

RETURN TO REASON

Le retour à la raison

Directed by Man Ray
France, 1923
Short, Avant-Garde
  • 33 minutes

Synopsis

In Return to Reason, Man Ray extended his experimentation with photography to the moving image, sprinkling salt and pepper onto one piece of film or pins onto another… The final segment introduces his legendary model, Kiki of Montparnasse, naked, her body illuminated in stripes of light.

Synopsis

In Return to Reason, Man Ray extended his experimentation with photography to the moving image, sprinkling salt and pepper onto one piece of film or pins onto another… The final segment introduces his legendary model, Kiki of Montparnasse, naked, her body illuminated in stripes of light.

Our take

Alternating between concealed, hidden, exposed and defamiliarized objects, shapes, and a swirl of geometric forms constitute this avant-garde short from Man Ray. In what he self-referentially dubbed a “rayograph,” Return to Reason builds and becomes a series of two and three dimensional sequences.