On The Figure In General And The Body In Particular:

Figurative Invention In Cinema

By (author) Nicole Brenez Translated by Ted Fendt

Publication date:

11 July 2023

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781839987809

Films fill our imagination with figures, figurines, and talismans. They ceaselessly rework the same archetypes and invent troubling prototypes – especially when they establish a deeper relationship to reality. How do we understand these presences that are both so characteristic and so diverse in cinema? How does film deal with bodies, movements, and gestures? Why are we so drawn to these shadows, silhouettes, and hypothetical beings? What organizes the figurative values at work in a film? How do cinematic creatures circulate from film to film and image to image? How does film articulate the links between the abstract and figurative? Is it possible to write a history of figurative forms? Starting from films themselves and works that are both classical (Sergei Eisenstein, Roberto Rossellini, Orson Welles) and contemporary (Abel Ferrara, Brian DePalma, Patricia Mazuy), celebrated (Robert Bresson, John Cassavetes, Ken Jacobs, Paul Sharits) and overlooked (Al Razutis, Jean Genet, Monte Hellman, and John Travolta), from auteurs as well as aesthetic questions (representations of dance, the naked body, character development…), the essays in this volume, most available for the first in English, aim to open a field that has been neglected by analysis, while also suggesting the tools necessary to understanding figurative phenomena specific to cinema.

Introduction; Part 1: Figurative Economies, 1. Why Must the Dead Be Killed?:Observations on John Woo, 2. Capitalism: Jack Smith, 3. “Unusual Approach to Bodies”: Robert Bresson with Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, and Monte Hellman, 4. Sketch/Skip/Excessive Synthesis: Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, John McTiernan’s Predator; Part 2: Adventures of the Classical Body in Modern Cinema, 1. S.M. Eisenstein, Bella Figura, and Formal Deflagration, 2. Anti-Bodies: Instances of the Classical Body in the Work of Jean Genet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Gus Van Sant, 3. Short-Circuit: Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate; Part 3: New Abstractions in Figurative Invention, 1. The Contemporary Character, 2. The Being According to the Image: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, 3. “’Cause it sounds more French”: On a Secondary Character in Maurice Pialat’s Police, 4. Thefts: Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket; Part 4: Summonses – Figures of the Actor, 1. The Actor as Affective Citizen: Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore, 2. Lassie, Unfaithful to Dogs: Fred M. Wilcox’s Lassie Come Home, 3. “Die for Mr. Jensen”: John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence, 4. John Woo by John Woo: The Take and the Shot; Part 5: Image Circuits, 1. Travolta Himself: Dance and the Circulation of Images – Fantasy, Phantasm, and Phantasmata, 2. Thirst: Barbara Loden’s Wanda, 3. The Visual Study: The Forces of a Cinematic Form – Al Razutis, Ken Jacobs, Brian De Palma, 4. The First Shot: Philippe Garrel’s Liberté, la nuit, 5. Anti-Oedipus: John Woo’s Heroes Shed No Tears; Part 6: Theoretical Invention, 1. “As You Are”: Representation and Figuration – Questions of Terminology in the Work of Barthes, Eisenstein, Benjamin, and Epstein, 2. The Physics of Cinema: Introduction to the Literary and Filmic Oeuvre of Paul Sharits, 3. In the Meantime: Kirk Tougas’ The Politics of Perception, 4. Epilogue: The Accident; Bibliography; Index

“This is the most valuable volume by a French cinephile in English to have appeared since the translations of André Bazin and Serge Daney—a book that I believe filmgoers will still be learning from half a century from now. Brenez’s originality is as stupefying as her erudition.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum, American film critic, USA.