Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema

218 Pages·2022·9.786 MB·English

by  Benedict Morrison

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
OXFORD ENGLISH MONOGRAPHS
General Editors
ROS BALLASTER
PAULINA KEWES
LAURA MARCUS
HEATHER O’DONOGHUE
MATTHEW REYNOLDS
FIONA STAFFORD
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
Complicating
Articulation in
Art Cinema
BENEDICT MORRISON
1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Benedict Morrison 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021940257
ISBN 978–0–19–289406–9
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894069.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures ix
Introduction: Articulating Art Cinema 1
The Many Faces of Film Articulation 1
Cinema’s Forms of Articulation 2
The Critical State of Art Cinema 8
Eccentric Inarticulacy 20
Critical Eccentricity 25
The Articulated Structure of this Book 28
1. Articulation in Ruins: Complicating Style in Germania anno zero 31
At Point Zero: Mise en Scène and the Ruins of Meaning 31
Ironic Causation: Manifold Explanation in Eccentric Play 36
Between Styles: The Synthesis of Realism and Formativism? 42
In Place of Meaning: The Ethics of Inarticulacy 52
2. Telling Tales: Complicating Narration in Journal d’un curé
de campagne 56
The Diary’s Order Established 56
The Diary’s Order Challenged 63
The Diary’s Withdrawal from Time and Place 70
The Diary as Consolation 73
3. Untidying the Image: Complicating Editing in Belle de Jour 79
Cuts in the Film 79
Cuts in the Mind 82
A Surfeit of Significance 90
A Polluted Logic 93
An Irruption of Order 96
The Box Bursts Open 100
4. Queering Articulation: Complicating Bricolage in The Long
Day Closes 105
Post- traumatic Articulation 105
Bricolaged Echoes in the Silence 108
Cultural Articulations 111
Radical Recontextualizations in The Long Day Closes 113
Inarticulate Character 116
Queering Inarticulacy 119
Silent Characters without Beginning and End 124
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
vi Contents
5. The Technology of Articulation: Complicating Intermedia in
The Pillow Book 128
Losing Your Voice: Revenge in Place of Character 128
Dismembered Forms and the Inarticulate Body 131
Piles of Old Bones 134
Spinning Axes 139
Flattening Positions 143
Skin Deep 146
6. Indecipherable Lostness: Complicating Genre in Meek’s Cutoff 153
Articulating Genre 153
Meaning Cut Off 158
Getting Lost in the Western 162
Unstable Signifiers 164
The Threat of the Meaningless 168
Cultural Exchange 171
The Unknowing of Genre 174
Conclusion 180
The Haunted Cinema 180
Rhizomatic Structures 181
The Mythic Critic 183
Filmography 187
Bibliography 191
Index 201
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andrew Klevan for his dedicated and generous supervision
of the DPhil thesis of which this is a revised version. Without his constant sup-
port and inspirational friendship, this book would certainly not have been pos-
sible. I am grateful to the members of the Faculty of English at the University of
Oxford for their encouragement and advice. I am especially appreciative of the
kindness shown to me by Laura Marcus, who was always willing to discuss my
ideas; she and Ian Garwood, who together examined my thesis, offered sugges-
tions for improvement which have made a tremendous contribution to the subse-
quent revisions. Members of Merton College at the University of Oxford, and
Richard McCabe and Simon Jones in particular, provided friendship and encour-
agement while I completed my DPhil studies. I would also like to extend my
thanks to the AHRC, whose financial assistance made this research possible. I am
thankful to Eleanor Collins at Oxford University Press for her support in prepar-
ing this monograph for publication, and the anonymous readers of the draft
manuscripts, whose advice has helped me greatly.
My colleagues at the University of Exeter have been unstinting with their time,
expertise, and affection while I have been working on this book. I can think of no
finer place to work and no more exhilarating a group of academics to work
amongst. Angelique Richardson, Peter Riley, Debra Ramsay, and Ranita Chatterjee
have been especially generous in their support. I would also like to thank my
undergraduate and postgraduate students for the stimulating discussions that
have significantly contributed to my developing ideas.
Part of Chapter 4 appeared as ‘Inarticulate Lives: A Reading of the Opening to
Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes’, in Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism 8 (2019),
7–13. Part of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Dismembered Frames: Dialectic Intermedia
in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book’ in Open Screens 3(1):6 (2020), 1–31. I am
grateful to the editors of both journals for allowing me to reproduce the material
in revised form.
I offer my love and gratitude, as always, to my mother and father, my sister
Emily, and my friends Marco Alessi, Hannah Croft, Nathan Ellis, Victor Fedyashov,
Jorge Gonzalo, Derek Hollman, Alexander Karlberg, Anne Kelly, Kate Leadbetter,
Harrison Pearce, Miranda Pountney, Benji Walters, Sebastian Wedler, Harriet
Wragg, Jordy, Oscar, Princess, and Teddy. They have all helped to transform my
analysis and argument for the better. I owe an especial debt to my partner Andrzej
whose brilliance has shaped and sharpened my work and to whom I dedicate this
book with much love.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/08/21, SPi
List of Figures
1.1 The cinema of impoverishment in Germania anno zero 48
1.2 Pietà amongst ruins in Germania anno zero 51
2.1 The disordered world of Journal d’un curé de campagne 60
2.2 Inarticulate transitions in Journal d’un curé de campagne 74
3.1 Symbolic surfeit in Belle de Jour 86
3.2 Shades of surrealism in Belle de Jour 99
4.1 Bricolaged silence in The Long Day Closes 107
4.2 Staged homoeroticism in The Long Day Closes 125
5.1 Fluid distinctions in The Pillow Book 137
5.2 Montage as collage in The Pillow Book 140
6.1 The illegible landscape of Meek’s Cutoff 166
6.2 Unreadable glyphs in Meek’s Cutoff 171