After his Milan city symphony Stramilano (1929), Corrado D’Errico (1902–41) made a few other films showing affinities with Futurism. It is generally assumed that D’Errico is the author of Elogio della velocità (Eulogy of Speed, 1931), which consists of a series of (often comical) contrasts visualizing speed, including the juxtaposition of a turtle and a train. Trains had already become a cultural icon of industrial modernity in the nineteenth century and, in line with the Futurist celebration of speed and the machine, trains and railways also abound in Futurist paintings by Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severeni among others. In the 1920s, the arrival in the city by train had also become a staple image in city symphonies.
Trains and stations are the main focus of D’Errico’s 1933 Impressioni di vita n.1: ritmi di stazione (Impressions of Life Nr. 1: Railway Station Rhythms), which opens with an intertitle stating,
From the very first lights of the day, when the world of steel awakens, the life of a grand station breaths the rhythms of the metropolis, until the last lights go to sleep on the rails for a very short night.
Light is, indeed, an important motif in the film, which contains beautiful chiaroscuro shots showing light beams entering station halls as well as imagery of atmospheric effects involving smoke, steam, and reflections on glass and steel surfaces. In his visual symphony, D’Errico also alternates close-ups of manual and mechanical movements, creating a lighthearted study of the impact of mechanization on human behavior—an aspect that is emphasized by the use of music by George Gershwin and Arthur Honneger on the soundtrack. Strikingly, D’Errico also presents the station as a city within the city. With its hurrying crowds, shops, restaurants, newspaper stands, hectic traffic outside the building, advertisements, and neon signs, Ritmi di stazione is a veritable city symphony.
Steven Jacobs
further reading
Lista, Giovanni, Cinéma et photographie futuristes (Milan: Skira, 2008), 125–31.
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