"The profane world consists of all that we can know through our senses; it is the natural world of everyday life that we can experience as either comprehensible or at least ultimately knowable." *
Taken from 'breakdowns' of Warner Brothers films from 1936 to 1949 this found footage has been edited and manipulated to show the moments when actors fall out of characters because of an unexpected event or forgetting a line. It shows some of the most famous actors of the time such as Humphrey Bogard and Betty Davis, actors who have over time been elevated to the level of near-godliness. For me and my generation who could have never seen these people as living human beings walking around like regular people, they have a this element of fiction attached to their person. It almost seems as if they were never real people. The time this footage has been taken from is also a time that wasn't as camera-crazy as it is now. During the making of those films there wouldn't be the same amount of camera's present constantly photographing and filming everything the stars did on the set and in between takes. My hyposthesis is therefore that these actors could become more themselves when the filming ended than the actors today can. Because what is most important in this work is to see their behaviour the split second when the acting ends and the real person shows through.
Part of the real person showing through appeared to involve swearing. The title of this work therefore contains the word profanum to refer to the real world, the real person as opposed the the sacrum or the holy, the revered world and person. I believe in the power of swearing, especially in an era when this was not as common as it is now. The Production Code (or Hays Code) was strongly in place at that time, so these moments, filmed by accident, could never be shown to the public. I find this restriction between something that was just as much needed by people then as it is know; the relief of swearing, and between the fictional world as it was shown in film, a medium that was supposed to be the pinnacle of realism, extremely fascinating.
*Wikipedia's definition of 'profanum'