C’est l’aviron (1944)
Article 5765 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-9-2020
Directed by Norman McLaren
Voice cast unknown
Country: Canada
What it is: Early music video

As a French song is performed, we see images from the point of view of a boat sailing through the water juxtaposed with images from the song appearing in the clouds.

It’s Norman McLaren again. This one is less conspicuously abstract than his previous entries in this series; most of the images are clearly recognizable as objects and people, and it has the general feel of a music video rather than as the visual equivalent of music. The images in the clouds represent things described in the song, but as the song is in French, I couldn’t actually match them up. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed this one; for one thing, I just enjoy watching the landscapes rising up out of the horizon as the boat sails along. Still, because it’s less abstract than his other works, this feels even farther away from the realm of fantastic content, but the fact that the title was included in the Walt Lee guide guaranteed it a review.