Having close contacts with the avant-garde group and journal 7 Arts, which propagated the theories of Constructivism, Belgian director Charles Dekeukeleire (1905–71) made several experimental films in the 1920s. His 1932 Visions de Lourdes marks his shift to documentary cinema. A critical Catholic, Dekeukeleire made this documentary during a pilgrimage to Lourdes of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (Young Christian Workers) movement. Using a sober and straightforward style, Dekeukeleire shows us trains carrying diseased and disabled pilgrims, priests, nuns, monks, churches, crosses, statues, pilgrims, and endless processions. Dekeukeleire’s city poem focuses on the sensuality of natural elements, such as clouds, mountains, snow, and particularly the water at the shrine, which is supposed to have healing qualities.
Although the film testifies to the filmmaker’s faith and respect, it is also marked by his lucidity and his critical approach. Lourdes is also presented as a site of superstition and as a place of pilgrimage organized as an industrial machine producing commodities. Juxtaposing the magical and the industrial, the divine and the commercial, Dekeukeleire’s film comes close to Surrealism in its fascination for the irrational and the grotesque.
Steven Jacobs
further reading
Dubois, Philippe, “Petite suite en mineur à propos des premiers films de Charles Dekeukeleire,” Travelling 56–7 (1980): 90–5.
Thompson, Kristin, “(Re)discovering Charles Dekeukeleire,” Millennium Film Journal 7–9 (1980–1): 115–29.
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