In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema

369 Pages·2019·44.935 MB·English

by  Ivone Margulies

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In Person
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In Person
Reenactment in Postwar
and Contemporary Cinema
Ivone Margulies
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Margulies, Ivone, author.
Title: In person : reenactment in postwar and contemporary
cinema / Ivone Margulies.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018014403| ISBN 9780190496821 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780190496838 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190496852 (companion website) |
ISBN 9780190496845 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190914028 (Epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Realism in motion pictures. | Motion pictures— History— 20th century.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.R3 M36 2019 | DDC 791.43612—d c23 LC
record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2018014403
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction— Estrangement and Exemplarity: In- Person Reenactment 1
Exemplarity 8
Stages of Actualization 11
In Person Reenactment: The Book 13
1. Casting Relatives: The Spectrum of Substitution 19
Orson Welles’s Four Men in a Raft (It’s All True) 25
Endurance: Kinship and the Exceptional Body 29
Reenacting Heredity: Sons 33
2. Neorealist Reenactment as Postwar Pedagogy 37
Zavattini’s “Last Judgment” Cinema 40
The Story of Caterina 47
Footprints: Streetwalkers and Maggiorani’s Back 54
Attempted Suicide: Antonioni’s Singularities 57
Anonymous Stars: Donatella Marrosu and Anna Magnani 67
3. Celebrity Reenactment, Biopic, and the Mortal Body 77
Sophia: Her Own Story 84
Bazin’s Cine- mythographies 92
Cinema’s Existential Arena 94
Torero! Replicants 98
Mexican Ciné- verdad, Carlos Velo, Hugo Butler, and Zavattini 104
4. A Sort of Psychodrama: Verité Moments 58– 61 113
Role- play: The Real in Balance 120
Provisional Closure: Reflexivity and Death in The Human Pyramid 124
Chronicle of a Summer (1960– 1961) as Autocritique (1958) 130
A “Nascent” Register: Group Dynamics and the Worker 136
5. Ascetic Stages: Reenactment in Post- Holocaust Cinema 141
Pedovision: Ritual, Wandering Words 147
Marceline Loridan, Testimony With (out) an “I” 153
Splitting: Oumarou Ganda’s Solo 162
The Karski Report— Of a Report 167
Filming and Refilming: Phatic Reenactment 171
Ascetic Stages, Next 178
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6. Trial Stages: Rithy Panh’s Parajuridical Cinema 183
Solo Routines: The Critical Valence of Alienation 188
Paintings, Desks, Files, and Faces: Reflexive Platforms 192
S21’s Judicial Context 200
Parajuridical Scenarios and the Confessional Imperative 205
An Internal Chorus: Files and Faces 209
7. Reenactment and A- filiation in Serras da Desordem 219
“When Is Carapiru?” 221
Twenty Years Later: Brazilian Films on “First” and
Recurrent Contact 228
Leading to Serras 236
The Actor as Agent: Carapiru, Pereio, and Tonacci 240
A- filiation 245
Disrupted Transmission 249
Conclusion: Senseless Mimesis 253
Select Bibliography 263
Notes 269
Index 321
[ vi ] Contents
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book’s long gestation demands lengthy acknowledgments. Mark Cohen, who
followed all of its sinews, from its impossible ambitions to its current incarnation,
comes first. His intelligence, demand for clarity, love, and wit are essential— for the
book, but mainly for all the life and time in between.
A number of friends helped with their support, scholarship, and insight: I
thank, in particular, Sam DiIorio, Katherine Model, Joe McElhaney, Kaira Cabanas,
Rebekah Rutkoff, and Alessandra Raengo for their intellectual generosity and exten-
sive comments on particular chapters. Noa Steimatsky is a constant, much needed
interlocutor. My writing group can be credited for helping me finish the book. Leah
Anderst, Jill Stevenson, Jennifer Dixon, and Peter Schaeffer commented on multiple
chapter versions, and the sense of process developed in our wonderful gatherings
has become a model for my work.
Friends in the United States and abroad suggested additional objects of study
and facilitated access to new materials: Elaine Charnov (as Margaret Mead Festival
director) introduced me to Zhang Yuan’s Sons; Bruni Burrest suggested pertinent
titles (as Human Rights Film Festival director) and Patricia Mourão referred me to
Tonacci’s Serras da Desordem, the brilliant film whose analysis caps the book. Sylvie
Lindeperg and Frederique Berthet helped me feel in tune with the historical scholar-
ship around post- Holocaust cinema. Richard Peña facilitated my contact with Abbas
Kiarostami and helped with access to Velo’s Torero!; Ismail Xavier, whose work is
a continuing inspiration, and conversations with the late Andrea Tonacci and with
Cristina Amaral, gave me extra insight on the making of Serras.
In addition, I want to thank friends and family who helped in various stages of the
book’s research and writing: Sonia Dain Margulies, Aida Marques, Roberta Saraiva
Coutinho, Bernardo Carvalho, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Deborah Danowski,
Ella Shohat, Robert Stam, Immy Humes, Katherine Hurbis Cherrier, Mick Hurbis
Cherrier, Sara Venosa and Angelo Venosa, Eduardo and Maristela Margulies, and
Eliane Keane.
Tim Corrigan, Dudley Andrew, Natalia Brizuela, Jonathan Kahana, Antonia Lant,
Romy Golan, Denilson Lopes, Jens Andermann, and Claudiu Turcus’s invitations
to speak at various symposia and conferences on cinematic temporality, realism,
and corporeality in cinema led to reflections that are now integral to this book.
The same is true of the “Powers of Cinema” workshops developed by Lynn Higgins,
Steven Ungar, and Dalton Kraus. I thank in particular DiIorio, Ungar, Higgins, the
late Philip Watts, and Nathalie Rachlin for their engagement with my work on Jean
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Rouch and sociodrama. Corrigan and Karen Redrobe’s invitation to teach a course
on reenactment at the University of Pennsylvania provided a welcome chance for
testing some of my ideas. Deborah Danowski’s translation of an early version of
this book’s argument into coherent Portuguese facilitated my communication with
Brazilian audiences.
A Mellon Resident fellowship to co- direct a seminar on “The Aftermath” at the
Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2007– 2008 helped focus
my reflection on the relationship between memorials, trials, and performance, and
I thank the director Aoebhiann Sweeney and Michael Washburn for their encour-
agement and logistical help in organizing the public programs: “The Trial: Stages
of Truth,” Interdisciplinary Conference on the Trial and Performance (with
Stephanie Golob) and “Documenting Catharsis: A Series on War and Reckoning.” The
broader questions raised by the seminar participants and invitees were formative
material for the book.
At Anthology Film Archives, Jed Rapfogel and John Mhiripiri have been won-
derful, knowledgeable resources. The chapters on post- Holocaust cinema and Rithy
Panh were developed out of research done in Paris at the Memorial du Shoah, an
institution commendable for considering genocide as a global phenomenon. Bifi and
the Bibliothèque Nationale were great sources for French materials, and I want to
thank the São Paulo Cinemateca staff for their help with materials related to Tonacci
and to Eduardo Coutinho. Rosa Gaiarsa at UCLA Archives as well as the staff at the
National Library in Washington, DC, were instrumental in the viewing of various
reenactment films, in particular sports and actors’ biopics.
A number of CUNY and Hunter College research awards enriched this project, pro-
viding each of the chapters with a solid and broader context. PSCCUNY awards and
Presidential travel awards made possible extensive research in France, Brazil, and
the United States. The Fund for Academic Development at Hunter College supported
much needed editorial help.
Erik Butler’s fine editing and the book’s wonderful cover, designed by Sula
Danowski, make me especially proud of its presentation.
At Oxford University Press, Norm Hirschy has been a delight to work with. An at-
tentive editor, he has efficiently steered the book along its various production stages.
I want to thank as well Lauralee Yeary and Aishwarya Krishnamoorthy for their help
with revision, marketing, and design.
I dedicate this book to Mark Cohen and Alex Margulies Cohen with all my love.
[ viii ] Acknowledgments
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In Person