Le Ballet Mechanique (dir ledger, murphey)

So I haven't researched this film properly yet, I wanted to give my first honest impressions without any outside influence. I did however read that it is of Abstract form and as I was reading a document about that, (it uses this film as an example of abstract) I expected to be able to recognise the form and the patterns. However it left me like most experimental cinema, quite confused. I really searched for some sort of meaning however I have decided as it is abstract it does not necessarily need meaning and can just be "art for life's sake". So to split it into its visual motifs and its various sections. The first section seemed to centre around swinging things, anything that moved forward and back or that repetitively moved in a similar way. Most of these images were reflected off mirrors to show them distorted multiple times. The second section focused more on machinery which had fluid moving parts, this makes sense of the title as they were relatively rhythmic. The third part seemed to revolve around numbers and a statement that I could not understand (it was in French) along with reoccurring images from the previous section. If I had to think of any item I may look at differently in relation to the "art for life's sake" principle, I would say the baubles or the saucepans, not sure why but they were both taken out of their usual context and when you relate them with the other objects with similar motions they seem much less of an xmas decoration, however it seems like that might be slipping over to associational stuff. I am going to read the handout about Le Ballet Mechanique tomorrow and I will update this with a more informed review then.