“One day a tall young man appeared...and introduced himself as a cameraman from Hollywood.

...Dudley Murphy said some very flattering things about my work and suggested we do a film together. He

had all the professional material, he said; with my ideas and his technique something new could be

produced, We became quite friendly, spent a few days together discussing subject matter — I insisted on

my Dada approach if we were to work together, to which he readily agreed after I had explained it at some

length.”

Man Ray, Self Portrait (1963)

“One day when I was visiting Ezra Pound...he told me that a friend of his, Fernand Léger, wanted to

make a movie. Also George Antheil, the young protégé of Stravinsky would like to make a movie. So he

brought the three of us together and we decided to make one. ...[The basic concept was] a belief that

surprise of image and rhythm would make a pure film without drawing on any of the other arts, such as

writing, acting, painting. ...So Léger and I financed our film equally, with the understanding that he

would have the European rights of the finished film and I would have the American rights. ...We talked

over ideas and I set out with my camera and the film, executing the ideas we had talked over and

photographing things that stimulated my imagination around Paris.”

Dudley Murphy, “Murphy by Murphy” (unpublished memoir, 1966)