Nothing happens : Chantal Akerman's hyperrealist everyday

287 Pages·1996·18.35 MB·English

by  Margulies, Ivone

NOTHING HAPPENS

© 1996 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
00
Typeset in Melior by Keystone Typesetting. Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
appear on the last printed page oftbis book.
Frontispiece: Eating and writing. Chantal Akerman in Je tu il elle (1974).
Frame enlargement. print courtesy of World Artists Release.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Chantal Akerman's Films: The Politics ofthe Singular 1
1 NOTHING HAPPENS Time for the Everyday in Postwar Realist
Cinema 21
Charting the Everyday in Postwar Europe 24
A Realism of Surfaces: Bazin and Neorealist Film 27
From Surface to Structure: Barthes, Godard, and the Textualization
of Reality 33
Beyond Cinematic Positivism: The Antirescue Cinema of Andy
Warhol 36
2 TOWARD A CORPOREAL CINEMA Theatricality in the '70s 42
The United States in Real Time: Minimal, Hyperreal, and
Structural 48
Quotation Reconsidered: European "Theatrical" Cinema 54
3 THE EQUIVALENCE OF EVENTS Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du
Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 65
Excess Description: Robbe-Grillet and Cinematic Hyperrealism 69
Bracketing Drama: The Other Scene 73
vi Contents
The Murder, and, and, and ... : An Aesthetics of Homogeneity 80
The Automaton: Agency and Causality in Jeanne Die/man 88
4 EXPANDING THE "I" Character in Experimental Feminist
Narrative 100
The Lure of Center in Rainer's Work: A Cautionary Tale 104
The Eroded Index: Liminality in Je tu il elle 109
An Alogical, Fitful, Evidence 112
"Here Is": Redundant Description 118
A Mock Centrality: An A-individual Singularity 121
5 "HER" AND JEANNE DIELMAN Type as Commerce 128
For Example, "Her": Godard and the "Natural" Sign 131
Jeanne Die/man: An Exceptional Typicality 140
6 FORMS OF ADDRESS Epistolary Performance, Monologue, and Bla
BlaBla 149
Epistolary Performance: News from Home 150
Talk-Blocks: Meetings with Anna 154
Postscript: The Man with the Suitcase and A Filmmaker's Letter 161
What is Wrong with Signing? A Filmmaker's Letter 166
7 THE RHYTHM OF CLICHE Akerman into the '90s 171
Eight Times "Oui": Singularity in Toute une nuit 173
Night and Day and Night: The Cycle Revisited 182
So Let's Sing: The Eighties and Window Shopping 185
Echoes from the East: Histoires D'Amerique and D'Est 192
To Conclude: It Is Time 204
Filmography 213
Notes 215
Bibliography 247
Index 263
Para meus pais.
Samuel Margulies e
Sonia Dain Margulies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project began when I first saw Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23
Quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxeJles and was mesmerized by the hyper
reality of everyday gestures. My interest in minimalism and in the notion
of nothing happening in modern realist cinema was sharpened during Bill
Simon's dissertation seminar and later in a talk with Ismail Xavier (Uni
versity of Sao Paulo) who suggested I restrict my inquiry to this seminal
filmmaker ofthe early seventies.
In writing this book I again confirmed my closest friends' generosity. I
would like to thank Catherine Russell for reading this work in its many
shapes and for her perceptive and generous criticism. From Mark Cohen,
one of the world's greatest readers, I profit everyday. His demand that I do
my best always slightly surpassed in pressure his loving sympathy for my
desire to finish, and him I thank for the final form this book takes.
Several people deserve thanks for the roles they played in this book's
early stage as a Ph.D. dissertation in the Cinema Studies Department at
New York University. They are Stephen Donadio from Middlebury College
and Annette Michelson who facilitated my contact with Akerman and her
work by providing the opportunity for a first viewing of several of her
films in a seminar on Akerman in Middlebury in the Spring of 1987; my
thesis advisor, Bill Simon, for furthering my interest in cinema studies;
Robert Starn for his inspired and knowledgeable allusions, editorial com
ment, and continuing friendship during all my New York years; Peggy