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The Immodest Eye Liminality and the Gaze in Joseph

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The Immodest Eye Liminality and the Gaze in Joseph THE IMMODEST EYE LIMINALITY AND THE GAZE IN JOSEPH STRICK’S THE BALCONY by JOHN BURNS B.A., The University of Toronto, 1989 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Theatre and Film) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1994 © John Burns, 1994 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without written permission. my Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date—) j Abstract In this thesis, discuss Joseph Strick’s adaptation Le I 1 963 film of Jean Genet’s balcon. Like the play, The Balcony emphasizes illusion, masquerade, pretence, mirrors; my thesis echoes Genet’s language as it constructs a framework out of the extended metaphor of the mirror. Chapter one charts the film’s critical reception, dividing reviewers into those who judge the film’s artistic quality and those who move beyond such specifics towards the larger question of cinematic adaptation. These writers position themselves (a two- way mirror?) between film and audience. Chapter two follows up with a discussion of adaptation theory, as it relates to the film, especially to the opening scenes’ divergence from the theatrical ‘original.’ Here, the film itself functions as a mirror, distorting Genet. Chapter three settles more squarely on the film itself, using theories of the gaze to identify the true positions of power which operate behind the Balcony’s reflective facade. III TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Table of Contents Acknowledgements i v Introduction 1 Chapter One Critical Reception 7 I Overview 7 II The Film in Closeup 9 III The Film in Mid-Shot 1 7 IV The Film in Long Shot 22 Chapter Two The Theories 24 I Background 24 II The Space of the Screen 29 III The Locus Dramaticus 31 IV Moving Inward: The Opening Shots 39 V The Centre 43 Chapter Three The Centrifugal Screen 50 I The Blending of Judges and Thieves 50 II Real Tears of Repentance 58 Ill A Gaze of their Own 63 Bibliography 71 I Reviews of The Balcony 71 II Film and Film Theories 72 Ill Strick, Genet and Peripheral Materials 74 Appendix 78 78 I Joseph Strick II Ben Maddow 79 iv Acknowledgements This thesis has taken much time and many guises. Over the last year and a half, Denis Johnston and John Newton have offered great help and insight. My supervisor, Peter Loeffler, has contributed in equal measure painstaking rigour and a passion for theatre and film. Thank you all for giving the university a human face. Richard Sutherland, Beth Janzen, Kathy Chung and Peter Weiss deserve many thanks; you all graduated before me, proving that closure is still possible in a post modern world. My family has expanded in many directions over the course of this thesis and has given me much support and perspective. This project is a testament to your support. Catherine, you are my co-conspirator, though “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth” as much or as often as I’d like. Thank you. dedicate this thesis to the memory of my father, John Davis Burns. I Introduction — What about the lice? — They’re there. 1 Like all adaptations, Joseph Strick’s film The Balcony includes elements of its source, but ultimately differs in significant ways from the original it adapts: it features scenes that Genet never wrote, and elides others that he did. One scene from Genet’s play which Strick omits offers an interesting companion to my interpretation of the film, and so I offer a brief discussion of scene four of Genet’s Le balcon as an introduction to the style and methods of my thesis. Scene four has only two lines (quoted at the beginning of this chapter) and two characters, yet it is one of the most visually powerful scenes of the play. The setting is one of the fantasy rooms in Madame Irma’s whorehouse where we watch the two characters — client and whore — construct new personae. Le balcon, like much of Genet’s work, deals extensively with masquerade, pretence, the assuming and exchanging of roles and power. The man, though dressed as a tramp, is obviously not one and the stage directions emphasize that he is “dressed as a tramp though neatly combed” (Genet 24); he wipes his face with a handkerchief, puts his glasses in a case in his pocket, and offers the woman artificial flowers in such a way that we understand that the tramp is a role 1 Genet 25. All passages cited from The Balcony refer to Joseph Strick’s 1 963 film, unless page numbers follow. These latter textual citations refer to Frechtman’s English translation of Genet’s between film (The Balcony) Lebalcon. I will distinguish and play (Le balcon) using the title. have made no attempt to by English or French I provide lines’ position in the film, since there are no clear scene or act divisions, and counters vary from machine to machine. 2 which he plays, a role within a role, since the actor must play a man playing a tramp. The same is true of the woman, who moves from “looking very indifferent” to “an exaggeratedly lofty and cruel air” (Genet 24). These two actors are not alone on stage, however. Stage directions indicate the presence of four other actors: “all the gestures of the little old man are reflected in the three mirrors. (Three actors are needed to play the roles of the reflections)” and “through the opening [of the door] appear Irma’s hand and arm holding a whip and a very dirty and shaggy wig” (Genet 24). The three actors playing the man’s reflections occupy a curious space on the stage. Their presence is invisible as long as the spectators and performers accept them as reflections, yet they take up physical space on the stage and do not, in fact, perfectly reflect the tramp. They too are acting, and what they reflect distorts and twists his actions. They are not the inanimate surface of a mirror, but flesh-and-blood actors mimicking the gestures they see. They are implicated in the action emotionally (they share a connection with the character of the tramp whom they scrutinize) and physically (they share the performance space and gestures of the actor playing the tramp). They watch passively and react actively at the same time. The woman has no reflection in 2 occupies a different the mirrors; she space than the man; she is watched, but never mirrored. That the man is reflected in the mirrors and the woman remains invisible defies the logic of everyday things, and yet is a perfect 2 The character with no reflection is a powerful cultural trope and invariably denotes evil and a position outside dominant society. Fairy tales assert that witches and vampires exist without reflection: “[Count Dracula] was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in my mirror!” (Stoker 26) 3 metaphor for both play and film: the connection among the characters in scene four is visual, and the gaze which they exchange defines the physical space which they occupy; it has real presence on the stage — a presence embodied by the three actors mimicking the man while ignoring the woman. In other words, as spectators we see two interrelated performance spaces: the one on stage in front of us, and the one whose boundaries are defined by the reflections of the mirrors. The first space features two characters linked by the gaze of desire (for the man) and response (for the woman); the second features only one, repeated by the watching (male) mirrors who look through the whore instead of at her. The final character, Irma, does not even have eyes, but rather appears metonymically as an arm holding a whip and a wig, symbols of the power and pretence fundamental to the exchanges between whores and their clients in film and play. My thesis is much like the room in which the man and woman appear. Like the scene, it emphasizes the number three (three mirrors, three reflecting actors, three knocks at the door) since there are three chapters. Each chapter functions like a mirror, reflecting back an element of the film. Yet, like the three mirrors in scene four, these reflections are not mere passive echoes of the originals they reproduce, but rather active re-interpretations. Just as the living mirrors in scene four function more as voyeurs than furniture, my thesis emphasizes the voyeurist positions which scholars, film audiences and characters occupy within The Balcony. In chapter introduce The since 1 While many one, I Balcony’ s reception 963. critics, especially newspaper and magazine reviewers, write specifically on the merits and flaws of the film, many of their comments focus instead on the film’s role both 4 within their society and within the context of film criticism, film history and Western Art. Many of these commentators censure the film because its style is non-naturalistic. Their disappointment stems from the discrepancy between the society which the film reflects and society they expect to see, between the original play which the film re presents and the play they have seen or only heard about.
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