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1

Frames, Windows, and Mirrors. Sensing Still Bodies in Films by Manoel de Oliveira

100%

Király H.

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

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2014

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vol. 8

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issue 1

7-20

EN

In the case of Oliveira’s Doomed Love (Amor de Perdição, 1978) (an adaptation of the homonymous classic Portuguese novel), Bresson’s model theory provides an adequate theoretical model for a melodrama in which characters, ‘hit by fate,’ are following their destinies as if ‘under hypnosis.’ Besides a typically frontal, iconic representation of bodies thoroughly framed by windows, doors, and mirrors, in this and many other films by Oliveira, the intermedial figure of tableau vivant also reveals the movement-stillness mechanisms of the medium of film by turning, under our eyes, the body into a picture. His Abraham’s Valley (Vale Abraão, 1993) is also relevant for a fetishistic representation of (female) feet and legs. This visual detail, somewhat reminding of Buñuel’s similar obsession, is not only subversive in terms of representation of socio-cultural taboos, but is also providing a compelling sensual experience of both the body and the medium.

2

The Tableau Vivant as a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary East European Cinema

88%

Pethő Á.

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

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2014

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vol. 9

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issue 1

51-76

EN

The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several examples from Hungarian and Russian films directed by György Pálfi, Kornél Mundruczó, Benedek Fliegauf, Béla Tarr, and Andrei Zvyagintsev. The tableau vivant in these films is not conceived primarily as an embodiment of a painting, the introduction of “the real into the image” (as Brigitte Peucker described), instead it appears more like the objectification of bodies as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the “sex appeal of the inorganic” or “the Egyptian moment in art.” As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a “big picture,” a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.). We may connect this feature of these tableaux vivants, therefore, to what Lyotard termed as the “figure of return,” and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art.

3

Pictorial Real, Historical Intermedial. Digital Aesthetics and the Representation of History in Eric Rohmer’sThe Lady and the Duke

75%

Tagliani G.

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

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2016

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vol. 12

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issue 1

27-44

EN

In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film’s paradoxical nature, caught in an undecidability between past and present.

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3 Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

1 Király H.

1 Pethő Á.

1 Tagliani G.

1 2016

2 2014

Frames, Windows, and Mirrors. Sensing Still Bodies in Films by Manoel de Oliveira

The Tableau Vivant as a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary East European Cinema

Pictorial Real, Historical Intermedial. Digital Aesthetics and the Representation of History in Eric Rohmer’sThe Lady and the Duke