Dani Kirby (piano/voice) and Mat Ward (bass guitar) perform a new original score for Germaine Dulac’s ground-breaking Impressionist film The Smiling Madame Beudet.

The Smiling Madame Beudet is credited as the first Feminist movie, made in 1923. The protagonist Madame Beudet is trapped in a suffocating marriage with her only escape being music and the fantasy that she lives in a different world. Her husband is domineering, boorish and frequently pretends to shoot himself (sometimes in front of guests) to taunt and belittle her. Far from portraying Madame Beudet as a victim it casts her as a heroine who, rather than submitting to a life of cruelty, seeks to assert her desires and free herself from the bonds of domestic misogyny.

Dulac uses groundbreaking cinematic artistry to embellish and add detail to both the narrative and the investigation of sexism and gendered roles through techniques such as super-imposition, ultra contrasting of focus, slow-motion, repetition of shots, abstraction and extreme camera angles. These techniques powerfully enforce the Dulac’s desire to show both the oppressiveness of the situation and the absolute need for an imagining of a better life.

Whilst previous scores accompanying The Smiling Madame Beudet have followed a traditional narrative form Kirby and Ward’s music explores the sub-text and philosophical underpinnings of the film with emphasis on the meta-narrative behind the protagonist’s story - which is a timeless critique of marriage, gender and sexism. Cinematically this is expressed through Dulac’s focus on Madame Beduet’s internal world as she moves between the disparity of escapism and reality. It is Madame Beduet’s complex voice and thoughts, as a metaphor for the broader issues of the film that Kirby and Ward are striving to articulate with this new original score.

Primal Regression Therapy are a Tasmanian based experimental sound project. Beginning as a power electronics/noise duo in 2017, PRT have since expanded into soundscape-based drones and improvisation. Instrumentally they have also expanded, from synth-based noise and drum machines to wind-instruments, guitar and live percussion and electronics.