“Held together by nothing more than the animator’s imagination, this cubistic figure is perhaps Ginster’s closest relative in the culture of the 1920s: to paraphrase Roth, “Ginster in Kracauer’s novel, that’s Charlot in Ballet mécanique.” Not only does Léger’s Charlot fling his limbs in ways that recall the comedic scenes of Ginster learning to march or salute his superior officers. Both on screen and in Kracauer’s novel, body parts appear as exaggerated shapes or in close-ups and behave autonomously as if to question the unifying force of outdated notions such as consciousness, individuality, organic wholeness. In any event, this is how Ginster experiences his military training: “Continually up, then down, as if one were a toy a mother picks up so her infant can fling it out of the carriage again. Oftentimes regaining the upright state was immediately followed by marching. The legs were supposed to be hurled out from the body with such force that they flew across the entire barracks grounds—which would not have been so bad, quite the contrary, Ginster would have liked to liberate if not himself then at least a few body parts—but scarcely were the legs up in the air when they were forced back down to earth. He was still sensing how they detached themselves from him and already they were crashing down.”