Frankensteinian : Le Robot (1970)

A reflection on technology, here’s a short sketch directed by Adrian Maben for a 1970 episode of Variances, the avant-garde arts and culture TV magazine broadcast over the French ORTF between 1969 and 1975. Set to electronic music, Le Robot's mime channels the Frankenstein Monster — and, perhaps, Caligari’s Cesar  — in black suit and neck bolts. The Frankenstein inspiration becomes even more evident when the Robot asserts itself at the end.

If you watch closely, you’ll figure out the tricks employed to sometimes startling effect by the unidentified performer. Typical of a time when television was often live and resolutely experimental, the whole sequence, some five and half minutes, is done in a single take, no editing.

Variances explored the arts of its time and its archives, bits and pieces of it available on the INA.fr (French National Institute of Audiovisual) includes performances and interviews with artists, musicians — Serge Gainsbourgh, for example — and writers and film directors — among them François Truffault and Jean-Pierre Melville. INA has over 350,000 videos on its sites, for free or pay viewing.

Scottish-born director Adrian Maben worked for the French ORTF in the early Seventies, and went on to create documentaries about Hieronymus Bosch and Magritte, the Helmut Newton film Frames from the Edge (1989) and his most famous work, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972).

The INA.fr site, and the Le Robot page.