An Optical Poem (1938)

A dance of shapes A title card tells us this is an experiment in conveying the mental images of music in a visual form Liszts Second Hungarian Rhapsody is the music The shapes all twodimensional are circles primarily with some squares and rectangles and a few triangles The shapes move rhythmically to the music receding from view or moving across the screen Red circles on a blue background light blue squares white rectangles Then a red background of many circles with a few in the foreground Red gives way to blue then to white Shapes reappear as Liszts themes reoccur Then with a few staccato notes and images its over