Hans Richter links his own experiments with geometric forms, as well as those of Viking Eggeling, with "the upheaval of World War I." Richter wrote, "The overwhelming freedom which the 'abstract,' "pure,' 'absolute,' 'non-objective,' 'concrete' and 'universal' form offered...carried responsibilities. The 'heap of fragments' left to us by the cubists did not offer us an over-all principle...I myself felt the need...to penetrate the chaos which threatened from every direction. It appeared a physical necessity to articulate the multi-colored darkness with a definite simplicity." Fernand Léger, too, links his Ballet mécanique to "the War (which) had thrust me, as a soldier, into the heart of a mechanical atmosphere. Here I discovered the beauty of the fragment." In contrast, Germaine Dulac, whose Themes and Variations was intended as a response to Léger's film, sought a cinema comparable to music, "an art of the eye, made of perceptual inspiration evolving in its continuity and reaching, just as music does, our thoughts and feelings. . ." --Kathy Geritz