The Polish-Jewish husband and wife team Franciszka and Stefan Themerson rank among the key figures in the artistic avant-garde. Working across various forms of media throughout their respective careers, the Themersons also produced a series of experimental short films in the 1930s and 1940s, only a few of which survive today. Their 1931 film EUROPA was highly celebrated in its day and, for a long time, was presumed lost. In 2019, the German Federal Archives restituted what is assumed to be the only surviving print, confiscated by the Nazis in Paris in 1940, to the descendants of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson.
In swift cuts, fleeting shots of plants are superimposed on fragments of every-day life. Jellyfish, a typewriter, gasmasks, a piano, marching legs, a pipe, bread, faces, a guitar, abstract shapes, a boxer, and Christ merge into a Surrealist tableau in black-and-white. The jerky camera moves up a trouser leg. In another shot bizarrely corresponding with the trouser shot, we see a tree trunk rising to the sky. One returning motif is a pounding heart. In a dreamlike stream of images, EUROPA masterfully interweaves horror with humor. The absurdities and alienations of modern city life meet visions of a posthuman reality, overtaken by natural forces.
Excessively using experimental techniques, EUROPA ranks among other famous works from the period, such as Hans Richter’s GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST (VORMITTAGSSPUK,1927) or Man Ray’s THE STARFISH (L’ÉTOILEDE MER, 1928). And yet, EUROPA has a very unique feel to it. Unlike, forinstance, Soviet montage films, the Themersons cast a dark shadow on acceleration, capitalism, and technology. Their view on human civilization is bleak and dystopian. A modernist apocalypse, EUROPA portrays a world in rapid decline. Juxtaposed images of war, ecological disaster and the menacing rise of fascism culminate in a visual cacophony. EUROPA does not convey much hope for a bright future of mankind. And yet, there is a subtle beauty, evoked by the cosmic images of natural elements such as plants, leaves and the sky.
Isabel Jacobs, in: East European Film Bulletin, Vol. 118, October 2021
