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Title Corporeal prisons: dynamics of body and mise-en-scène in three films by Paul Schrader Author(s) Murphy, Ian Publication date 2015 Original citation Murphy, I. 2015. Corporeal prisons: dynamics of body and mise-en- scène in three films by Paul Schrader. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2015, Ian Murphy. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Embargo information No embargo required Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/2086 from Downloaded on 2017-02-12T05:50:30Z ! Corporeal Prisons: Dynamics of Body and Mise-en-Scène in Three Films by Paul Schrader ! ! ! ! Dissertation submitted in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the School of English, College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, National University of Ireland, Cork By Ian Murphy Under the Supervision of Doctor Gwenda Young Head of School: Professor Claire Connolly January 2015 Table of Contents Declaration 3 Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 5 INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER ONE Man in a Room: Male Anxiety and Mise-en-Scène in American Gigolo (1980) 26 CHAPTER TWO Beauty in the Beast: The Monstrous-Feminine and Masculine Projection in Cat People (1982) 88 CHAPTER THREE The Closed Crystal: Autoerotic Desire and the Prison of Narcissism in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) 145 CONCLUSION 209 WORKS CITED 217 ! 2! Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and it has not been submitted for another degree, either at University College Cork or elsewhere. ___________________________________________ Ian Murphy ! 3! Abstract This thesis focuses on the complex relationship between representations of the human body and the formal processes of mise-en-scène in three consecutive films by the writer-director Paul Schrader: American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982) and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). While Schrader’s work has typically been critiqued under the broad category of masculinity in crisis (and often as a subset of the films of his more famous long-time collaborator, Martin Scorsese), I focus on a five-year early period of his filmography when he sought to explore his key themes of bodily crisis, fragmentation and alienation through an unusually intense focus upon the expressive potential of film form, specifically via the combined elements of colour, lighting, camerawork and production design. By approaching these three films as corporeal character studies of troubled figures whose emotional and psychosexual neurosis is experienced in and through the body, I will locate Schrader’s filmmaking process and style within the thematic and aesthetic contexts of both his own early film criticism and the European and Japanese art cinemas that he claims as his primary influence. In doing so, I will establish Schrader’s position as a director whose literary and theological background differentiated him from his peers of the postclassical Hollywood generation, and who thus continually sought to develop his own visual literacy through his relationship with the camera and his collaborations with more overtly style-oriented film artists. But instead of merely focusing on mise-en-scène to gain a formalist appreciation of these films, I mobilise stylistic analysis as a new critical approach towards the problematic discourses of identity and embodiment that have haunted Schrader’s career from the beginning. In particular, I argue that paying closer attention to Schrader’s formal choices sheds new light on how these films – which he approached as exercises in style – repeatedly deal with the volatile and unavoidably body-oriented categories of race, gender and sexuality. In the process, I argue that a formalist attentiveness to mise-en-scène can also provide valuable cultural insights into Schrader’s oeuvre. ! 4! Acknowledgements I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the generous support I received from a number of colleagues, friends and relatives during the course of my studies. First and foremost, I want to thank my expert supervisor Gwenda Young for the time, thought and care she has given to this project. She has always supported my research interests through her rigorous engagement with my work, teaching me to develop ideas to their fullest capacity and communicate them in the most effective manner. It has been a privilege to work with her these past few years. Laura Rascaroli has also been a vital source of mentorship during my time with UCC Film Studies and particularly Alphaville, providing a learning experience that enriched my PhD and an opportunity for which I am very grateful. Also at UCC, Claire Connolly, Barry Monahan, Jill Murphy, Nicola Fanning, Karen Moloney and Graham Parkes were especially welcome sources of encouragement and belief in my abilities. Beyond my immediate work environment, I benefitted from contact with distinguished scholars such as Julia Lesage, Chuck Kleinhans, Douglas Morrey, Laura McMahon, Jackie Stacey and Nick Davis; whether at conferences or in an editorial capacity, their astute questions, engaged feedback and words of reassurance helped shape my project in different, important ways. I also received all kinds of emotional, intellectual and technical support from my entire family and friends near and far. In particular, I thank those people who read or listened to parts of this project, offered valuable insights and reading suggestions, or helped me explore critical ideas at various stages of their development: Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz, Mary Murphy, Antonio Jocson, Roy Daly, Patrice Reidy, Robert Wright, Nicola-Marie O’Riordan, Cian O’Callaghan, my niece Anna, my brother Brian. In addition to her considerable help in these areas, my sister Tina provided exceptional proofreading skills on multiple drafts. Very special thanks to Christopher Ishii, who has helped me by kindly sharing his deep understanding of Japanese cinema, literature, culture, and much more besides. I dedicate this thesis to my parents. ! 5! Introduction In a 1999 interview, the writer-director Paul Schrader reflected on the kinds of characters who had increasingly come to dominate his two-decade film career: “I’ve always been interested in people, perfectly intelligent people, who seem to have some sort of grasp on life but go around acting in a self-defeating way because they are expressing some neurosis – sexual or spiritual” (Kaplan 35). The terms of this neurosis are usually so uncompromising that they have relegated both Schrader’s characters and his films to the fringes of mainstream American cinema. A quick scan of his filmography reveals a litany of protagonists, usually but not always male, who are marked by a peculiar combination of moral ambiguity, emotional dysfunction and unconscious self- sabotage. For instance, Hardcore (1979) focuses on a straitlaced rural minister (George C. Scott) who descends into a seedy urban night-world of prostitution and pornography in a misguided effort to find his missing teenage daughter. Affliction (1997) involves a harried small-town policeman (Nick Nolte) who conjures a paranoid murder conspiracy theory in an attempt to prove his heroism to his family and community – a course of action that triggers a devastating midlife breakdown. Auto Focus (2002) concerns the troubled private life of Hogan’s Heroes television star Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), whose wholesome all-American family man image masked his self-loathing sex addiction. To varying degrees, each protagonist illuminates Schrader’s fundamental belief that contradiction is the essence of human nature: Whenever you’re trying to make a character interesting, you’re always looking at reverse behavior: the man that is so lonely that he does things that make him lonelier still; the person who is so desperate for love and community that he does the things that cut him off from those things. (Kouvaros 137) We can locate the prototype for the contradictory Schrader protagonist in his screenplay for a film that he did not direct himself, but which has nevertheless become the defining film of his career: Martin Scorsese’s highly controversial and celebrated Taxi Driver (1976). It is impossible to consider the disturbed ! 6! Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) without instantly recalling the kinds of “reverse behaviour” that mark him as a perennial outsider: the addiction to pornography that belies his puritanical attitudes towards sex; the unhealthy diet of junk food, alcohol and prescription pills that is suddenly replaced by a ritualistic military training regime; and the pathological drive to heroism that thoroughly structures his violent psychosis, crystallised in an overhead shot of him lying fetus-like in his cot accompanied by deluded voiceover narration ironically hailing himself as “somebody who stood up and did what’s right”. The schizophrenic dualism of Travis’ personality is foreshadowed during his early coffee date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who compares him to the lyrics of a Kris Kristofferson song: “He’s a prophet and a pusher / Partly truth, partly fiction / A walking contradiction.” This lyric carries additional resonance when we consider Schrader’s own set of deeply personal investments in this screenplay. With the unflinching candour that has proven his trademark in interviews, he explains that rather than being motivated by professional or commercial goals, the act of writing Taxi Driver was primarily a cathartic exorcism of private demons, and the alter ego of Travis was troublingly close to his own experience: At the time I wrote it I was very enamored of guns, I was very suicidal, I was drinking heavily, I was obsessed with pornography in the way a lonely person is, and all those elements are upfront in the script. Obviously some aspects are heightened – the racism of the character, the sexism. Like every kind of underdog, Travis takes out his anger on the guy below him rather than the guy above. (Jackson 117) While these confessional statements confirm Taxi Driver’s status as the Scorsese film to which Schrader feels closest, there is a distinct sense in which the long- running collaboration between the two filmmakers has somewhat overshadowed Schrader’s own directorial achievements for critics and audiences alike.