Cinematic Portraits of Evil: Christian de Chalonge’s Docteur Peti ...

Introduction

The ravages of the First World War ensured that the deeply cherished Enlightenment ideals of reason, individualism and intellectual supremacy finally crumbled and dissolved. As the Dadaists and Surrealists demonstrated in overtly defiant avant-garde postures and various public spectacles, the essential purposelessness and futility of such unprecedented carnage and bloodshed had finally shattered all intellectual illusions ever pertaining to human meaning and logic. ¹ The steady stream of political developments which led to the onset of war were equally incidental and senseless, while incessant killings between deadlocked armies exposed the equal guilt and reprehensibility of all warring parties.

Numerous artists—many of whom perished during the war—found themselves involved in the bloody battles, and their chilling accounts—the cultural canons of poems, novels, essays, paintings and diaries on the horrors of this war—are all dominated