Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

LobotomousMonk Decidedly, we haven't heard anything yet from Renoir, as Sur un Air de Charleston is a silent short film. There is surrealist dream logic in the drawing of the phone which then becomes real, as well as Dadaist elements like the slipping on the waxed ground. It is another effort by Renoir to play around with the medium... but perhaps something else is at the heart of the matter. The film hails jazz culture as being timeless and universal underscored by flipping colonialist stereotypes on their head (the white cannibal, the black space explorer/time traveler). There is a theme of savagery that runs through the film that I consider to be extremely tongue-in-cheek. I conjecture that the film was an homage to the Jazz Singer in many ways - perhaps not that particular film text per se, but more generally the hype that would have existed in the industry at the time about the shift to sound and the potential of films like the Jazz Singer to accomplish the feat. It is difficult to deny that Sur un Air de Charleston requires sound for the pleasure of spectators at the time (ironically there were none), but equally undeniable that the sound should come from a synchronized soundtrack. I simply feel this way because of the manipulation of the dancing through editing where Renoir presents the dance in three or more temporal states. It feels to me that Renoir was imagining sound techniques prior to their industrial application. Why not release the film at the time then? My two answers are that Renoir would have been unsatisfied with the anachronistic homage (the film was silent) and that he may not have sought to offend many of his filmmaker colleagues who would soon be reeling against the introduction of sound film.

JoeytheBrit This is an odd one and no mistake. In 2028, a black man (in black face and minstrel costume) pilots an orb to a savage land that once was Paris. There, he finds a native girl – a scantily-clad Catherine Hessling (Mrs Renoir) – who ties him to a post before dancing the Charleston. That's about all the story there is really. At one point, the girl draws a telephone which becomes real and uses it to a phone a group of bodiless angels (her hubby amongst them).Although the plot-free film quickly becomes rather tiresome because of its protracted dance sequences, it looks quite fascinating. Renoir repeatedly slows the motion while Hessling dances to turn what is essentially a frenetic jig into something altogether more sensuous, and the picture of a black-faced, top-hatted man dancing on a sunny, ruined street is one of those peculiar images that will forever be etched in my mind (even though I'll probably be asking if anyone knows which film it's from on the 'I Need to Know' board in a couple of years).The version I watched was completely silent, with no musical score at all. Some kind of music would have helped things along a bit, but I guess it would have been difficult to accompany all those slow-motion sequences effectively. Definitely worth a look for its curiosity value, but not really a film of much substance.

OldAle1 That's pretty much all that needs to be said about this bizarre exercise in reverse-colonialism, as an explorer (in blackface with very prominent white lips!) lands in his globular airship from Africa in the desolate "terra incognita" of France, 2028. There he espies a gorgeous native savage (Ms. Hessling) who treats him to an example of and a lesson in the Charleston, the "native dance of white people" or something such.Ms. Hessling is very sexy, the film is pretty erotic by 20s standards, there are some interesting special effects, but it's a silly trifle at best, and of course the blackface is....not something we want to remember from Jean Renoir. Nice print on the Lionsgate "early Renoir" 3-disc DVD set.

FerdinandVonGalitzien "Sur Un Air De Charleston" is a good example of the evil influences that came from beyond the Atlantic sea… strange customs, garments, gastronomy or dances; modernises that almost put an end the conservatives European habits.A reputable French director (a frenchified dichotomy… ) instead of listening day and night to "La Marseilleise", changed such martial and delicate music rhythm to Jazz, that out-of-tune Amerikan music that was fashionable during the mad 20's in Europe (with the exception of the aristocratic circles that preferred dancing in circles in to dizzy waltzes). So, due to Renoir's liking of Jazz and with some left over stock footage of his excellent and previous film "Nana" (1926), he decided to have a good time making this surreal, bizarre but funny musical silent film (a frenchified incongruity).In 2028, a mysterious African explorer puts his aircraft on Terra incognita. He meets a charming young native that is accompanied by a chimpanzee, who is going to introduce him to a dance of the wild natives (not the chimpanzee)…, that is to say, the Charleston.That's the bizarre story of the film, a perfect excuse to put and show the French (Dame Catherine Hessling, natürlich! ) dancing the Charleston wildly… forward, backward in fast and stop motion. Meanwhile the astonished African explorer (Herr Johnny Huggings, a black actor characterized as a negro!) learns to dance quickly and hastily.Obviously "Sur Un Air De Charleston" is a harmless, a private divertimento, a bizarre but charming short film made to show Renoir's wife's dancing talent. It is an oeuvre that includes the atmosphere that Herr Renoir was so fond of in some of his early films besides … all that Jazz.And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must dance St. Vitus's dance.