SCREENING THE IMPOSSIBLE: THE POLITICS OF FORM AND FEELING IN SECOND WAVE REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA By Sarah Hamblin A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY English 2012 ABSTRACT SCREENING THE IMPOSSIBLE: THE POLITICS OF FORM AND FEELING IN SECOND WAVE REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA By Sarah Hamblin Screening the Impossible explores how the new revolutionary ideologies that emerged in the various global articulations of the “long 1968” produced new forms of revolutionary cinematic practice – what I collectively refer to as a second wave of revolutionary filmmaking. The project focuses on films largely from the 1960s and 1970s that engage the revolutionary energies of the period to examine the relationship between emotion, aesthetics, and political theory in an international cinematic context. Drawing on the claim that the global rebellions of the 1960s mark the denunciation of early 20th century revolutionary narratives, it traces the connections between filmmakers who are similarly preoccupied with the limits, failures, and counter-revolutionary appropriations of orthodox revolutionary thought and yet remain committed to the necessity of revolutionary transformation. Through a comparative analysis of films from various national traditions, the project examines how the political cinema of this period develops a new understanding of revolutionary process and the role that cinema can play in it. At its core, the project lays out the aesthetic and affective contours of this emergent genre, arguing that second wave revolutionary cinema is characterized by its rejection of the teleological narratives and didactic political messages embedded in earlier first wave revolutionary cinematic production. In order to overcome the limits of Marxist orthodoxy where revolution is understood as an end goal, second wave films radicalize the concept. Returning to the root of the word “revolution,” they reimagine it as a non-teleological, repetitious, and “uncompletable” practice that emphasizes process, circularity, and perpetuity. Screening the Impossible begins by examining this alternate form of revolutionary process through the motifs of repetition and everydayness in Guy Debord’s Critique de la séparation and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni and in Ousmane Sembène’s Borom Sarret. From here, the project takes up the impact of this alternate conception of revolution on the aesthetics of revolutionary cinema in Jean-Luc Godard’s Tout va Bien and Glauber Rocha’s Terra em Transe, arguing that the second wave rejection of a didactic politics results in a cinema that refuses to affirm what revolution is or how it should be enacted. Rather, these films develop a cinematic aesthetic that troubles linearity and refuses clear and direct articulation, instead privileging ambiguous, connotative, polyvalent, contradictory, and open-ended forms. Furthermore, it argues that this new revolutionary ideology leads to a concomitant shift away from optimism and the Grand Passions towards negative and unpleasant feelings. Focusing on the films of Dušan Makavejev, it argues that this negative emotional register diagnoses the affective experience of a revolutionary ideology that no longer has faith in the optimism inspired by the teleological certainty of revolutionary transformation. At the same time, these negative feelings at once mark the possibilities of a revolutionary cinema and this cinema’s recognition of its own political limits. The project concludes with an examination of Godard’s Ici et ailleurs and John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan as two films that critique the ‘68 moment by looking back upon its failures. These films lay out a spectral relation to the past that puts the failures of revolution to work against an ideology that would bury them, thus prompting a retheorization of revolution as a history of suffering. This alternate historical orientation expands representations of revolution to include images of violence, trauma, and loss, thus reinstating suffering and melancholia as fundamental parts of any attempt to think a revolutionary politics and cinema. Copyright by SARAH HAMBLIN 2012 To Hugh v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I wish to thank my Guidance Committee, especially my Chairs, Jennifer Fay and Justus Nieland, whose continued advice and support has made me an infinitely better scholar. Their careful and invested reading at every stage of the project has deepened my understanding of film and theory and has helped me mature into a more sophisticated thinker and writer. My thanks also to Karl Schoonover, Ken Harrow, and Scott Michaelsen who introduced me to some of the most meaningful theoretical ideas and radical political cinema I could encounter. I am grateful to them all for their unwavering patience and commitment. Thanks to the Department of English for an amazing graduate experience and to its phenomenal faculty who have pushed me to think more deeply and carefully than I thought possible. I am particularly grateful to the Directors of Graduate Studies, Scott Juengel and Steve Rachman, for their faith in me and for the fellowships that helped me to complete this project. I’d also like to thank the Graduate Employees Union for their tireless work securing a labor contract that provides the financial security I needed to complete my graduate career without incurring overwhelming debt and for ensuring that MSU remains a respectful and healthy work environment. Thank you again to my friends, whose impressive intellectual acumen, warmth, companionship, and generosity made graduate school a wonderful place to be. I thank my family for their emotional and financial support and for never making me feel guilty about moving so far away or still living like a teenager, and my cats for always making me feel better. Lastly, I offer my thanks to Hugh, whose awe-inspiring intelligence, drive, and focus were invaluable to me as sources of inspiration and motivation. Without him this dissertation would not exist and words cannot express how grateful and lucky I am to have him. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION …….…………..…………...………………………………………………... 1 REVOLUTION’S NEW WAVE CHAPTER ONE ……………………………………………………………………………….. 23 REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS: REPETITION AND EVERYDAYNESS In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni; Critique de la séparation; Borom Sarret CHAPTER TWO …………………………………...………………………………………….. 84 REVOLUTIONARY AESTHETICS: INFERENCE AND ABSENCE Tout va Bien; Terra em Transe CHAPTER THREE ………………………...………………………………………………… 149 REVOLUTIONARY AFFECT: DESIRE AND DISGUST Sweet Movie CHAPTER FOUR …………………………………………………………………………….. 208 REVOLUTIONARY REMAINDERS: MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA Ici et ailleurs; Amma Ariyan AFTERWORD …………...………………………..………………………………………….. 277 LEGACIES OF ‘68 FILMOGRAPHY …...………………………………………………………………………… 287 WORKS CITED …………………………………...…………………………………………. 290 vii INTRODUCTION Revolution’s New Wave Preludes Cinema legend claims that the May 1968 uprisings in France were precipitated by an argument about film. In February 1968, the affairs of the Cinémathèque Française, an internationally renowned cinema and archive, became of significant interest to the French government which, claiming the neglect of film stock, interceded by removing its much admired founder Henri Langlois from his position as director. It is certainly true that Langlois’s dismissal caused an outrage among the film community and within days of the incident, protesters numbering in the thousands took to the Parisian streets while a cadre of famous French directors, headed by Jean Renoir, organized a boycott of other theaters and established a Committee for the 1 Defense of the Cinémathèque. The matter soon became an international concern as filmmakers from the rest of Europe as well as the Americas joined the protest, sending telegrams and letters in support of Langlois’s reinstatement. Over the next three months, demonstrations increased in size and number while numerous playwrights, actors, and directors continued to petition the Gaullist government to reinstate Langlois. Finally, on April 21, the government announced its intentions to create a separate facility dedicated to film preservation, effectively divesting from the Cinémathèque so that it became a fully autonomous institution free to reinstate Langlois as head. The day after Langlois reopened the Cinémathèque, students occupied the Sorbonne, thus setting in motion the series of events that have come to be collectively known as May 1968. 1 Sylvia Harvey offers a detailed history of the Langlois Affair in May ‘68 and Film Culture (14- 16). 1 The claim that these protests were the catalyst for the May movements involves some conceptual and intellectual massaging, not least because it effectively ignores the March 22 Movement at the University of Nanterre, where the occupation of campus buildings was motivated by a series of political concerns that came to characterize the larger ‘68 movement. However, whether the legend is true or not is of less importance than the fact that it exists. While the story may be nothing more than cinematic romanticism, that it came to be at all implies the fundamental importance of cinema to the ‘68 movements, serving to cement the popular and academic association of the politics of ‘68 with developments in the visual and cinematic arts. This centrality was expressed in more than just the sympathies of the cinema community with the ideals of the protestors; the film medium itself was vital as a means of documenting