Domietta Torlasco
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758024
- eISBN:
- 9780804786775
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758024.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's ...
More
This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Cavani's The Night Porter, and Pasolini's Oedipus Rex. The center around which these films revolve is the image of the crime scene—the spatial and temporal configuration in which a crime is committed, witnessed, and investigated. By pushing the detective story to its extreme limits, they articulate forms of time that defy any clear-cut distinction between past, present, and future—presenting an uncertain temporality which can be made visible but not calculated, and challenging notions of visual mastery and social control. If the detective story proper begins with a death that has already taken place, the death which seems to count the most in these films is the one that is yet to occur—the investigator's own death. In a time of relentless anticipation, what appears in front of the investigator's eyes is not the past as it was, but the past as it will have been in relation to the time of his or her search.Less
This book interrogates the relationship between time and vision as it emerges in five Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s: Antonioni's Blow-Up and The Passenger, Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Cavani's The Night Porter, and Pasolini's Oedipus Rex. The center around which these films revolve is the image of the crime scene—the spatial and temporal configuration in which a crime is committed, witnessed, and investigated. By pushing the detective story to its extreme limits, they articulate forms of time that defy any clear-cut distinction between past, present, and future—presenting an uncertain temporality which can be made visible but not calculated, and challenging notions of visual mastery and social control. If the detective story proper begins with a death that has already taken place, the death which seems to count the most in these films is the one that is yet to occur—the investigator's own death. In a time of relentless anticipation, what appears in front of the investigator's eyes is not the past as it was, but the past as it will have been in relation to the time of his or her search.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758024
- eISBN:
- 9780804786775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758024.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter explores the intimacy of vision and death in the film The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani. It explains that this film represents the return to the crime scene with respect to ...
More
This chapter explores the intimacy of vision and death in the film The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani. It explains that this film represents the return to the crime scene with respect to both the victim's and the aggressor's compulsion to repeat. It shows that the intermittent appearance of closely related forms in the film's flashbacks generate configurations in which the present can no longer be isolated from the past and the future. This chapter also questions Cavani's assumption that the survivor of a violent crime will ultimately fulfill her role as witness by testifying in a court of law.Less
This chapter explores the intimacy of vision and death in the film The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani. It explains that this film represents the return to the crime scene with respect to both the victim's and the aggressor's compulsion to repeat. It shows that the intermittent appearance of closely related forms in the film's flashbacks generate configurations in which the present can no longer be isolated from the past and the future. This chapter also questions Cavani's assumption that the survivor of a violent crime will ultimately fulfill her role as witness by testifying in a court of law.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758024
- eISBN:
- 9780804786775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758024.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of ...
More
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of the films Blow-Up and The Passenger directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani, Oedipus Rex directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Spider's Stratagem directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. These films revolve around the image of the crime scene and present a crime to be “seen” in the folds of the landscape as well as on the faces of people and things. This volume discusses the vicissitudes of cinematic vision through an intermingling of media and proposes a writing of spectatorship that attempts to retrace the patterns and rhythms through which each film says or shows that something “will have been.”Less
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about crime in Italian films in the early 1960s and late 1970s. It explores the phenomenology and provides a psychoanalysis of the films Blow-Up and The Passenger directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani, Oedipus Rex directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Spider's Stratagem directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. These films revolve around the image of the crime scene and present a crime to be “seen” in the folds of the landscape as well as on the faces of people and things. This volume discusses the vicissitudes of cinematic vision through an intermingling of media and proposes a writing of spectatorship that attempts to retrace the patterns and rhythms through which each film says or shows that something “will have been.”
A. T. McKenna
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813168715
- eISBN:
- 9780813168814
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813168715.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines two counterculture films made by Levine during his tenure at Avco, the deterioration of his relationship with Mike Nichols, and his return to independence upon resigning from ...
More
This chapter examines two counterculture films made by Levine during his tenure at Avco, the deterioration of his relationship with Mike Nichols, and his return to independence upon resigning from Avco. His politics were somewhat ambiguous, but he made two significant films in 1970 that were rooted in contemporary countercultural concerns, Bright College Years and Soldier Blue, and both show his commitment to supporting interesting films even in his quietest years. Levine also made two further films with Mike Nichols while still at Avco: Carnal Knowledge was reasonably successful, but Day of the Dolphin was a failure. This chapter analyzes all of these films in the context of Levine’s disillusionment at Avco. It also details his promotional campaign for his first post-Avco success, The Night Porter. The Avco years were quiet for Levine, but on becoming an independent once again, he returned to movie promotion with a gusto not seen since his involvement in The Graduate.Less
This chapter examines two counterculture films made by Levine during his tenure at Avco, the deterioration of his relationship with Mike Nichols, and his return to independence upon resigning from Avco. His politics were somewhat ambiguous, but he made two significant films in 1970 that were rooted in contemporary countercultural concerns, Bright College Years and Soldier Blue, and both show his commitment to supporting interesting films even in his quietest years. Levine also made two further films with Mike Nichols while still at Avco: Carnal Knowledge was reasonably successful, but Day of the Dolphin was a failure. This chapter analyzes all of these films in the context of Levine’s disillusionment at Avco. It also details his promotional campaign for his first post-Avco success, The Night Porter. The Avco years were quiet for Levine, but on becoming an independent once again, he returned to movie promotion with a gusto not seen since his involvement in The Graduate.
