The Cinematic Mode in Twentieth-Century Fiction A
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository THE CINEMATIC MODE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION A COMPARATIVE APPROACH by MARCO BELLARDI A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Modern Languages, Italian Studies School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham August 2017 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This study deals with the influence of film form in fiction in terms of narrative discourse, focusing on issues of genre, narration, temporality, and the imitation of cinematic techniques. It provides a theoretical analysis of different methodologies (intermediality theory, semiotics, narratology, genre theory) which are useful to assess how a cinematic dimension has found a place in literary writing. This research, in particular, puts forth the idea of a ‘para-cinematic narrator’, a ‘flattening of the narrative relief’, and a ‘para-cinematic narrative contract’ as constitutive items of strongly cinematised fiction. These three theoretical items are subsumed in the concept of ‘cinematic mode in fiction’, which describes a distillation of characteristics of the film form on the written page. This research therefore represents a theoretical attempt to demonstrate how the cinematic component integrates the stylistic and generic traits of novels and short stories relating to different periods, styles and genres of the twentieth century. The proposed theoretical model is tested on a corpus of American, French, and, especially, Italian case studies. The remediation of film that emerges from these texts points to a complex interconnection between cinema and literature which still requires full acknowledgment in literary history. To my family and Anita ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout the four years I have worked on this study I have enjoyed the invaluable support of many people. I would like to express my deepest and sincerest gratitude to my supervisors Dr Clodagh Brook and Dr Emanuela Patti for their intellectual guidance in the development and completion of this study. I have sincerely appreciated their astute observations and continuous encouragement, which have always pushed me to improve. I would also like to thank all my colleagues of the Department of Italian at the University of Birmingham for their continued support and contribution to my development as a person and as a scholar. My deepest thank to the College of Arts and Law for the financial support that has allowed me to settle in England and fully focus on my project. Writing in English as a non-native speaker has been a challenge, and I would not have achieved the final version of my text without linguistic support. Thanks to Clelia Boscolo for her help with the first drafts of some chapters during my first and second year; Dr Jessica Wood and Vikki Smith for their initial proofreading of some parts; and Scott Alan Stuart, who has made an excellent final proofreading of the thesis. A special gratitude goes to my family, and my parents in particular, for their moral and financial support. My final and warmest thank to Anita for her love, care and sharing of my troubles during the difficult moments of thesis writing. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 PART I THEORIES AND METHODS FOR A DEFINITION OF THE IMPACT OF CINEMA ON FICTION Chapter 1 When Literature Meets Cinema 1.1 Media and mediality 35 1.2 Remediation of the film form in fiction 43 1.3 Intermedial references 48 Chapter 2 Cinematisation 2.1 The narrator in film and cinematic fiction 55 2.2 Temporality in film 67 2.3 The narrative ‘putting-into-relief’ in film and fiction 75 Chapter 3 The Cinematic Mode 3.1 Family resemblances 86 3.2 Cinematic fiction and the narrative contract 92 3.3 A contribution from hermeneutics 101 3.4 Genres and modes 107 CONCLUSION TO PART I 114 PART II INTERMEDIAL REFERENCES Chapter 4 Kinds of Cinematic Fictions 4.1 Proto-cinematic fiction: Federico De Roberto, Processi verbali 121 4.2 Pseudo-cinematic fiction: Edmondo De Amicis, Cinematografo cerebrale 127 4.3 Cinematic fiction: initial traces in Luigi Pirandello, Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore 134 Chapter 5 Literary Remediation of Cinematic Constraints 5.1 Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon 160 5.2 Irène Némirovsky, Film parlé 171 5.3 Elio Vittorini, Uomini e no 180 5.4 Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie 195 5.5 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Teorema 207 5.6 Antonio Tabucchi, Piazza d’Italia 229 5.7 Elsa Morante, Aracoeli 247 CONCLUSION TO PART II 262 PART III AN INTERMEDIAL PERSPECTIVE ON ITALO CALVINO Chapter 6 Cinematic Structures in Italo Calvino’s Fictions 266 6.1 Scenic effects and para-cinematic iteration 270 6.2 Point of view shots 278 6.3 Establishing shots 284 6.4 Cinematic characterisation 287 6.5 Fully-cinematic pages 289 6.6 Calvino and the rhetoric of cinema 291 CONCLUSION 294 Appendix 300 Bibliography 304 Filmography 328 INTRODUCTION Since the advent of the seventh art, literature and cinema have been profoundly and productively interwoven. Cinema has drawn on stories and narrative devices that had previously been codified in literature, while also having an immediate impact on the structures of modern and contemporary novels and short stories. The presence of literature in cinema and that of cinema in literature is observable in a variety of phenomena, including quotation, evocation, imitation, iconic reproduction, characterisation, dialogues and the re-use or adaptation of topics. The industries of cinema and publishing have certainly had a major role in steering such dynamics of exchange for economic reasons. However, writers, filmmakers, screenwriters, critics and journalists have discussed, promoted or rebutted aesthetic ideas, and fostered the spread of shared knowledge and new expertise. The interaction or mutual influence between cinema and literature has recently been discussed in terms of the ‘return effect’ or ‘rebound effect’ that each art and industry has on another (Dagrada, 2012), extending a term that was first used by Gérard Genette in another context in the 1980s. The expanded notion of the rebound effect might be seen as the cultural logic of increasingly interconnected times, and obviously be extended to other arts and media. However, Genette’s more limited observation (1988: 73) concerning the ‘rebound’ or ‘return’ effect referred to the fact that contemporary writers could imitate camerawork: “Unlike the director of a movie, the novelist is not compelled to put his camera somewhere; he has no camera. [...] It is true that today he may pretend to have one (the return effect of one medium 1 on another)”. 1 These phenomena of imitation have also been discussed in terms of ‘remediation’ (Bolter and Grusin, 1999), describing the re-use and reshaping of medial characteristics across media. This study is strictly linked with Genette’s observation and investigates how film culture and, particularly, film as a medium, has impacted writers’ approaches to their own stories. It sheds light on key issues related to the remediation of the ‘filmic’ in literary fiction: how is film influence to be defined? Are there more precise categories to clarify such an influence? Can we talk of cinematic fiction? What exactly has passed from film to fiction? Has the film form generated a new style of writing? What changes in the act of reading? These and other questions will find some answers by the end of this research. In general, I will not argue against the notion of influence. However, my aim is to demonstrate that the dynamics of influence can be better described with critical terms that point to a more precise and nuanced variety of formal and generic characteristics in fiction. This study, therefore, concerns the effects of cinema on literature and involves the analysis of both literary and cinematic works. On the literary side, the scope of this study is limited to fictional novels and short stories (hereafter simply ‘fiction’). My corpus of books is composed mainly of Italian fiction (Federico De Roberto, Processi verbali, 1889; Edmondo De Amicis, Cinematografo cerebrale, 1907; Luigi Pirandello’s Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, 1925; Elio Vittorini, Uomini e no, 1945; Pier Paolo Pasolini, Teorema, 1968; Antonio Tabucchi, Piazza d’Italia, 1975; Elsa Morante, Aracoeli, 1982; as well as several works by Italo Calvino), but also includes other selected case studies from American (Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, 1930) and French literature (Irène 1 “A la différance du cinéaste, le romancier n’est pas obligé de mettre sa caméra quelque part: il n’a pas de caméra. [...] Il est vrai qu’il peut aujourd’hui, effect en retour d’un medium sur l’autre, feindre d’en avoir une” (1983: 49). Because of the importance of Genette’s terminology, quotations from his books will occasionally be given both in French and English. In Italy, in particular, ‘rebound effect’ (effetto rebound) has become more popular than ‘return effect’. 2 Némirovsky, Film parlé, 1934; Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie, 1957). Given that I discuss grammatical tenses as part of my analysis (see, in particular, sections 2.2 and 2.3), my corpus includes only texts from the three languages in which I am sufficiently fluent.