Pas de deux (1968) User Reviews

Glad I Gave This A Second Look

[ccthemovieman-1 · 7/10 · 13 July 2007]

Wow, am I glad I decided to give this animated short feature a second look. I only last two minutes the first time and thought to myself, "Unless you are ballet dancer or big fan of ballet, this film would be almost impossible to like and sit through." Watching 13 minutes of two silhouetted-illuminated ballet dancers do their thing against a black background would be unbelievably boring.

Well, I was wrong.

Norm McClaren proves once again you don't need bold colors to make an incredible visual feast. This is black-and-white and words almost are too difficult to come by in trying to explain, without getting technical, how beautiful this film looks.

One female dancer morphs into two and then back to one several times. After about five minutes, she is joined by a male dancers and the images really get wild. I don't think I've seen two more graceful figures than these two.

I admit my mind wandered off track a couple of brief times but for most of this, I was totally mesmerized. This movie was part of the DVD "Leonard Maltin's Animation Favorites From The National Film Board Of Canada.

Stunningly beautiful

[Mudsharkbytes · 9/10 · 11 May 2008]

Reading some of the comments about how 'well, it's okay for the background" or "boring - I didn't get it", provoked me to share my observations.

When I was studying the art of film animation for a college class in the mid 70s, I would check out 16mm movie prints from the local library and have weekend 'film festivals' in my basement with a borrowed projector, which is where I first saw "Pas De Deux".

We had already watched many McLaren films so we were prepared for something that would be a visual feast. "Pas De Deux" did not disappoint in this respect, but unlike the other McLaren films we had seen, this one had an unexpected emotional content we were unprepared for.

One dancer, dramatically lit from the edges only against a solid black background, so she appears almost like an outline, enthralled with herself, splits herself into 'partners' which sometimes step out of her form, sometimes remain in place after she moves, to follow her movements, or sometimes become reflections that overlap.

The camera pulls away and a man, similarly lit, is revealed watching her.

After a bit of her playing 'hard to get', the two join together and proceed to create one of the most visually moving dance segments in the history of film. Multiple afterimages spring from the two dancers and blend to create moving shapes of unearthly beauty. The sense of joy, abandon and love between the two dancers is intensified by these techniques. Sometimes the movements are very slow with the afterimages close together, giving a sense of the two individuals melting into one - sometime they spring across the screen in opposite directions, leaving behind complex forms. All this to the minimalistic accompaniment of strings (largely holding onto static harmony) and pan-pipe solo. The music is about as perfect an accompaniment to the dance as you could hope for.

We were stunned and re-watched it several times.

I did not get an opportunity to see "Pas De Deux" again for many years (It's not a particularly easy film to find). Recently I found a watchable copy online and was able to see it again(it's on google video). Certainly the techniques of animation have improved since this film was created, but I would be hard pressed to find an animated film that has more Art (with a capital "A") or humanity then this beauty packs into its short 13 or so minutes.

Uneven, but enjoyable and worth watching

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 30 January 2001]

This one is hard to describe, Two ballet dancers perform a piece while various visual effect are added to augment the performance. Some of the effects are stunning, while others are very jarring and don't quite work. Intriguing idea that works most of the time. If you've seen "A Chairy Tale" or "Neighbours" and enjoyed them, you'll like this. But it is unusual and somewhat off-kilter at times. Recommended for those who like the unusual or special photographic effects. Bear in mind that it is over 30 years old.

A revolutionary film, deserving of its place in the history of animation

[ston · 14 October 1999]

The thing about this film is that yes, it is a little hard to approach. It was made in the context of the world of animation in 1968. No one had ever done anything like this before. McLaren chose the dance as the subject for his film not necessarily because he loved ballet (though I would guess he probably _did_ like ballet) but because the form of the dance very much lended itsself to the technique being employed (among other less craft-oriented and more art-oriented decisions). The technique used in this film had never been seen before. We look at it now and it seems like nothing special, but no one had ever thought of this multiple-exposure technique before McLaren. This is generally considered to be McLaren's magnum opus, and it is valuable viewing by any student of animation. Wathing it not as entertainment, though, but with an eye toward composition, staging, timing, and so on.

Sublime phantasmagoria in transcendental choreography

[Polaris_DiB · 10/10 · 15 July 2010]

From Maya Deren's A Study in Choreography for Camera to Bruce Connor's Breakaway, experimental filmmakers have been integrating choreographed dancing to specially tuned cinematic techniques to add a new element in the dance between performers, motion capture, and spectators. McLaren's own history in Oskar Fischinger-like animated synaesthesia shows a patience and care in the apparatus of motion to well adapt him for this sort of live-action work. Utilizing wide-screen lens for depth, primary key lighting for outline, and probably hours at a frame print machine for editing, McLaren takes the formalism of ballet and transcends it into the formalism of cinematography, creating a fully synthesized whole.

The title Pas de Deux refers to the type of performance contained, as two dancers, a male and female, choreograph with each other. Another pas de deux is created between figure and camera, as both simultaneous interact to create a whole larger than the sum of the parts. Meanwhile, even the initial female's solo sequences reflect the general theme, as McLaren uses freeze frames and ghosting effects to effectively create a dancer choreographed with herself, obviously planned ahead of time so that the dancer is, in fact, dancing with her own shadow in mind.

The shapes of the dancers themselves are trascendent. With such a sharp outline, their silhouettes could have fallen flat and two-dimensional on screen, but with some effective editing techniques and wide lenses, this movie becomes more three dimensional than Avatar. At the height of motion and visual effects, the forms melt into each other and become smoke-like phantasmagoric displays, pushing the dancer's bodies into shape and motion unachievable without the apparatus of the camera on display (also, I believe the dance is in slow motion, but that may not be the case as ballet is famous for its ability to evoke a sense of weightlessness and fluidity). At the end of the pas de deux, the dancer's bodies literally melt into each other. I have never been able to get the idea of dance as virtual sex out of my mind, and that concept is obviously on McLaren's mind as well. Here you see displayed lovemaking beyond the wish-fulfillment fantasy of a wide range of cinema into the sublime of passion.

--PolarisDiB

Talk about serendipity --

[rulerattray-2 · 10/10 · 16 July 2007]

In 1969 I went to a middle-class matinée showing of "Easy Rider". At the break, we all got up to leave, happily surfeited with the phony, sad (and politically correct for the times) ending. Any southern redneck would shoot a hippy on sight. Okay. We bought that and started shifting around in preparation to leaving.

Then as I remember it, a single word appeared on a dead black screen. "Duo". A back-lit ballerina pirhoutted across that screen and danced away from her own still image. She did it again. We were mesmerized.

Ten seconds of stunned silence followed the last frame. The applause that followed had a quality I can only describe as "awed".

Breathtakingly beautiful, that's all.

A visual masterpiece

[cobybeck · 10/10 · 11 June 2006]

Stunning, enthralling, captivating, breathtaking.

A visual masterpiece composed from two dancers, clever back-lighting, a pan-pipe and some stop motion/multi-exposure effects. Proof that in the hands of an artist the sum surpasses the parts, must be seen to be believed! The progression from the simplest expression of human motion into a cascade of frames and forms draws the viewer from first to last image. The beauty of the initial simplicity turns into a delicious betrayal of epectations as subtle new effects are thrown into the mix. The music, passionate and stark, is a perfect match and even the synchronizing between aural and visual ebbs and flows is impeccable. Should be seen by anyone who enjoys film as art.

Started A Trend

[Theo Robertson · 8/10 · 12 March 2008]

I heard that Norman McLaren , the Scots born Canadian animator was a leading pioneer in his field and is famous the world over . Somewhat typically even a Scottish film buff like myself had little awareness of him until I chanced upon this musical short

PAS DA DEUX is a monochrome short featuring a pair of ballet dancers . Exactly , I was thinking the same " Oh a black and white film featuring a couple of dancers . Can things get anymore tedious . Wake me up when it's finished " but there's something rather hypnotic about the way the music and the choreography merge together . I'm also reliably informed that this was the very first time that " after image " had been achieved on film , something that became very popular years later in everything from DOCTOR WHO to MTV pop videos .

It seems somewhat bitterly unfair - though again typical - that everyone in the world is aware of BRAVEHEART , a Hollywood movie filmed in Ireland , starring an American brought up in Australia , but not even Scots are aware of their compatriot who made such an innovative and much copied visual technique

For a thirty-five-year-old animation it still holds up well

[amok1980 · 7/10 · 18 January 2002]

Short National Film Board animation of two ballet dancers. Perhaps best suited for visuals at a club or as background entertainment at a party. It didn't particularly interest me, but for a thirty-five-year-old animation it still holds up well.

The art of movement

[ackstasis · 10/10 · 9 December 2008]

I don't much like ballet. In fact, of all the popular dances out there, ballet strikes me as the most uninteresting and tedious. At least, that was until I watched Norman McLaren's 'Pas de deux (1968).' Suddenly, every movement seemed gentle and graceful, hypnotic and inspiring. McLaren uses optical effects to bring out the majesty of human motion, to create a dizzying duet of silhouettes, dancing a routine that slows down and transcends time and space. Utilising an optical printer to reprint images from one frame of film to the next, McLaren elegantly manipulates the typical flow of time and motion. This was an achievement with which the animator was well-acquainted. In his most famous short, 'Neighbours (1952),' Mclaren parodied the typical mechanics of movement, in which pixilation (stop-motion of live-actors) was employed to create a disorientatingly-unreal morality play – though I found that particular short to be too unsubtle and obvious to be of any real note as a war-allegory.

'Pas de deux,' on the other hand, is completely graceful is every respect. Human bodies diverge, are occasionally suspended in time, but often dance alongside their mirror-images. Finally, with perfect precision, the corresponding images fuse into one single entity, and the ballet continues. Time is a fleeting concept; once a particular moment has passed us by, it is lost in eternity and can never be retrieved. McLaren recognises movement as the chief indicator of passing moments, and so, as he toys with the movement of human bodies, he also toys with human notions of time, capturing and replaying otherwise lost moments for us to experience once again. By the film's end, the two ballet dancers are all but indistinguishable, perceived only as a blur of transitory silhouettes, moving as a subtle mist that only vaguely resembles the human form. Like translucent ghosts, the dancers perform their routine, every movement, rather than existing only for a fleeting movement, remaining on screen long enough for us to saviour its grace and dignity.

Pas de Deux

[CinemaSerf · 7/10 · 6 April 2024]

It's really hard to describe this work of art, so I'm not going to try. Suffice to say that whether or not you are a fan of ballet, I doubt you will be able to watch this without becoming enthralled. Monochrome throughout, and using some very effective stop-frame photographic techniques, we follow Margaret Mercier and Vincent Warren's gorgeously choreographed duet take shape. The panpipes from Dobre Constantin are hauntingly effective at enveloping this inspired presentation of symmetry and imagery and it's simplicity has got to be a key to it's success. Give it ten minutes, you will enjoy it.

Bodies ballet, diaphanous movements painted

[ricardo-morel-oliveira · 10/10 · 18 February 2019]

I do not know how CinePoetry manifests itself in the illusory and dreamlike 24 frames per second leaving the solid material, the film, to surround us and spread and dazzle. The theoreticians of vast wisdom have not yet reached a single and firm conclusion on the subject, which is, however, too subjective (which must have its core of understanding in the way of seeing, in the way of doing), but , I believe that Norman McLaren, a scottish filmmaker based in Canada who directed the film, which basically comes down to be a couple formed by light and shadow dancing and dancing and dancing all over the pitch for 13 minutes as if they floated ethereal (these ghosts in the infinite ball) , well, he certainly in the daily practice of manipulating the frames must have bumped into some cinematic cosmic epiphany that, in fragments, either consciously or unconsciously, he inserted here and there in what for me is his masterpiece, "Pas De Deux" ( 1968), an animation that does not detach from my brain with its timed revolt rehearsed in a beautiful ballet tête-à-tête with only two characters on the Big Screen - one he one she, and, sincere, that's enough (two that are two that are one).

ps: translation brazilian portuguese/english made by Google (blame on it)

It just didn't work for me

[Tito-8 · 2/10 · 2 July 1999]

I can fully understand why this is a critically acclaimed Canadian short, but I nevertheless found a way to hate it. Enjoyment of this film is entirely dependent on the viewer liking the dancing and/or the music. As you may have guessed, I did not particularly like the music, and I hated the dancing. I was bored less than a minute into this film, and even though it is a SHORT, it was still way too long in my view. If you like dance, then perhaps it might be worth a look, but all others should definitely avoid this film.

Yes, this is one of the great Canadian shorts.

[fiddybop · 19 August 2002]

Yes, this is one of the great Canadian shorts, etc. etc.

I'm more interested in why someone could find this film boring, insisting that one had to have an interest in the dance and/or music in order to find something to like about it.

I'm not a "dance person" myself and in fact admittedly rarely have anything to do with dance performance, dance films, etc. This film is not about the dancing, though.

It's about human movement in particular, with the form of this dance being used as a means to a much more imaginative end. By utilizing dance as a mode of discovering the beauty of human grace and movement, McLaren can explore these movements in fascinating ways, using optical printing to trail print or multiple-expose their movements, using still imagery as well.

The result is an effect of three-dimensionalizing the movements (not the dancers, who are obviously already 3-D) - giving substance and shape to otherwise intangible, time-sensitive events. This film is just as incredible and breathtaking as the chrono-photographs of Etienne Jules-Marey, and in fact Pas de Deux is very much a brother of Marey's work. McLaren even lit his dancers similarly to Marey's subjects, to get an almost line-drawing effect from his subjects.

To dwell on the dance itself and whether or not you "like it" is completely missing the point of McLaren's filmmaking and artistry here. He had an incredible sense of the potential for movement and beauty, often to be found in unique and unlikely places.

See this film at all costs and try to look beyond the dance content/music content (if that bothers you), and you will hopefully find that Norman McLaren created a masterpiece in his exploration of time and motion, mined entirely from the particularly graceful movements of ballet dancers.

Spellbinding Visually

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 18 July 2019]

This is one of a kind. Granted, others have copied it since. A pair of dancers form the anchor for this film. It is a beautiful integration of lines separating and rejoining. The music is beautiful and striking. It has a kaleidoscopic sense to it as figures separate and then interact. I wish reviewers wouldn't say things like, I didn't like it because it was ballet and I'm bored by ballet. That would be like criticizing a baseball movie because you find baseball boring. Why watch it in the first place?

a Canadian delight

[myriamlenys · 10/10 · 11 January 2020]

As far as I understand, the dancers were filmed in real time, with the resulting footage then painstakingly superimposed, layer after layer after layer, in order to create time-lapse effects. But this is as far as I get and I may be wrong even here - any attempt at technical description is far beyond my poor competence.

Happily one can admire this Canadian masterpiece even without much insight in its technical background.

In "Pas de deux", a male and a female dancer dance with each other - but they also dance as, and with, their past, present and future selves. Multiplied into near-infinity, they become much more than their present selves : they grow to include everything they were, everything they could have been, everything they are, everything they will or can be. They stretch and morph and extend ; they turn into towers of possibility ; they disappear into whirlpools of movement and light ; they become fire, flight, illusion rather than flesh, energy rather than matter.

A true masterpiece : an ode to the beauty of the human body, to the beauty of the ballet, to the beauty of movement.

nobody puts stroboscopic appearances in a corner

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 5 July 2017]

Norman McLaren's mystifying "Pas de deux" (released as "Duo" in the US) depicts Margaret Mercier and Vincent Warren ballet-dancing to the tune of Romanian pan flute music. Photographed on high-contrast stock, the short has a stroboscopic look to it. It just goes to show that dance is as much a form of art as painting or cinema, and that movies don't need words to tell a story.

It's probably appropriate that I watched this right after the 150th anniversary of Canada's founding, since it's one of the many great things that the world's second-largest country has produced. Very impressive. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film but lost to "Robert Kennedy Remembered".

Available on the National Film Board of Canada's website.

PAS DE DEUX {Short} (Norman McLaren, 1968) **

[Bunuel1976 · 4/10 · 21 February 2014]

The third Oscar-nominated short from McLaren I have watched in quick succession and, in view of its specialized subject, the least appealing to this viewer.

For dance aficionados, watching a live action duo of ballet performers (initially a female but eventually joined by a male counterpart) strut their stuff in unison, by themselves or in tandem with their own reflection – aided by McLaren's own particular brand of animated trickery – would probably prove an exhilarating experience.

However, at just over 13 minutes in length, the initial novelty factor soon wears off and results in mere tedium for the uninitiated.

admirable

[Kirpianuscus · 28 February 2018]

This term could sound strange. a ballet show, mixture of white and black, an impressive director, inspired choreography. what could surprise ? at first sigh - nothing. in essence - something who is a sort of version of pure magic. not for technical solutions. not for the meet of silhouettes. but for a reason escaping from a precise definition. because it is one of animations who are more than a simple experience. but a comprehensive explanation of every day beauty of life.

Perfect if you are spending the evening with Frasier or Niles Crane

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 17 July 2008]

Technically speaking, this is a reasonably well made animated short film from Canada. While it's not very traditional, I can respect the time and effort and artistry of this film. What it consists of are drawings and outlines of people performing ballet as it is set to classical music.

If Frasier or Niles Crane or Billy Elliot are coming by for the evening or if you really, really love ballet, then no doubt you will love this film and think it's amazing. If, on the other hand, you are not a lover of ballet, then it will probably be a major chore getting through the thing--and this is probably more so for kids or adults who have short attention spans. As for me, I guess I'm rather low-brow as I really disliked the film and couldn't wait for it to end. Sorry.

13 minutes of ballet and animation

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 11 August 2015]

This black-and-white film is among Scottish animation director Norman McLaren's most known works. And not only is it still fairly popular today, it won a BAFTA back in the 1960s and was nominated for an Academy Award too, but lost to a documentary about the death of Robert Kennedy. However, I must say that McLaren's way of riding the fine line between live action and animation is not really my preferred choice. His Oscar winning short film didn't do a whole lot for me and I cannot say anything else about this one either. Yes it is an aesthetic movie and the animation emphasizes the two dancers' movements nicely, but still something is missing for me to say I was really entertained by this one. This is also one of the more known works from the NFB and soon celebrates its 50th anniversary. If "Neighbors" is McLaren's statement on chaos, then this is his take on harmony. I also felt that it looked much older than 1968, maybe mostly because of the black-and-white. Still, I would only recommend watching this one to fans of ballet or people who dance themselves. Everybody else is not missing much. Oh yeah, and you don't need to be able to understand French as nobody is speaking in this one, just dancing.