Towards a Comparative Montage of the Female Portrait
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Gonzalo de Lucas Translated by Alejandra Rosenberg TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE MONTAGE OF THE FEMALE PORTRAIT. THE THEATRE OF THE BODY: FICTIONAL TEARS AND REAL TEARS One of the many ways of approach- a more realistic image, thereby eroding ing film history—and probably one the distant, ideal image constructed in of the most neglected— is to examine the studio: a transition from an iconic how filmmakers portray actresses: the image to an indexical image, in which distances, relationships, and stories the effects of reality and the passing of which, behind the main plot, are cap- time on the body are made visible. In tured between the one filming and the the 1960s, filmmakers such as Bergman one being filmed. In cinema, unlike lit- or Cassavetes would take these signs to erature or painting, a character is not the absolute extreme, stripping the ac- only an imaginary being, but also a real tress of all but her condition as a per- person who inscribes his or her voice, son or a mask. gestures and gazes into the experience An actress usually portrays cry- of the film; this occurs “in the world ing as a fictitious and depersonalised and with the world, with real creatures dramatic moment of her private life. as raw material, before the intervention However, when modern filmmakers of language” (BERGALA, 2006: 8). transformed the cinematic forms of In this article, I will explore this the female portrait, in an effort to ex- work with corporeal matter, the signs pand the limits of everyday realism, inscribed as real presences, through they sought to make tears evoke or the tears of actresses in performances reveal something that belonged to the filmed by D. W. Griffith, Josef von performer’s private world and made Sternberg, Nicholas Ray, John Cas- visible a personal or autobiographical savetes and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. emotion. In this respect, it is important As is well known, in modern cinema to differentiate real tears from fictional actresses have abandoned or at least tears: between the two manifestations moved away from the figure of the a tension will often occur in what is movie star in the interests of presenting visible, between the artifice (feigned JANUARY-JUNE 2015 L’ ATALANTE 19 27 NOTEBOOK · FACES, VOICES, BODIES, GESTURES A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne, Stromboli (Stromboli, terra di Dio, Her life to live (Vivre sa vie, Jean-Luc Godard, 1962) Jean Renoir, 1936) Roberto Rossellini, 1949) / Courtesy of Regia Films tears) and a presumed transparency most meaningful moments in modern the construction of her image as an (uncontrollable tears that fall beyond cinema are those showing an actress’s icon or as a real body. our will). Since we learn to use tears tears: Sylvia Bataille, after the roman- and understand what they represent, tic encounter in A Day in the Country Fictional tears many dramatic scenes suggest a char- (Partie de Campagne, Jean Renoir, The portrayal of suffering in the female acter’s doubt about the truth or the 1936), Ingrid Bergman on the volcano face emerged very early in film history, motivations of another character who island in Stromboli, (Stromboli, terra thanks to the possibilities of the close- cries. Film, in general, follows the clas- de Dio, Roberto Rossellini, 1949), or up and its way of enlarging the small- sical perspective in which tears belong when she sees the burnt bodies of two est and almost imperceptible details of to the realm of emotion and not of feel- lovers in Journey to Italy (Viaggio in the face, thus exploring exhaustively ing, as the neurologist Antonio Dama- Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1953), or as all of the actress’s expressive and fa- sio observed: “emotions play out in the Anna Karina in My Life to Live (Vivre cial dynamics at close range, turning theatre of the body, while feelings play sa vie, Jean-Luc Godard, 1962), or while her face into a theatrical stage. The out in the theatre of the mind” (DAMA- watching the theatrical tears of Fal- film actress’s portrayal of emotions has SIO, 2005: 32). In this sense, in scenes conetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc (La surely never been as central as it was in in which tears are portrayed, the body passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Carl T. Dreyer, Griffith’s films: every emotion seemed acts as a theatre or a depiction in which 1928). In this essay, I will compare dif- to correspond to a gesture, and Lillian there is a friction between the iconic ferent film scenes from the perspective Gish’s mastery consisted of her ability and the indexical image. It is thus of the formal ideas exchanged between to play these performative notes at an hardly coincidental that some of the filmmaker and actress, according to extremely quick tempo. It was a rhythm Way Down East (David Wark Griffith, 1920) 28 L’ ATALANTE 19 JANUARY-JUNE 2015 TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE MONTAGE OF THE FEMALE PORTRAIT that left the spectator amazed, as cin- original, unharmed state without any ema seemed able to capture whole marks or signs of a real experience. stages of an emotional life in just a few This conception of the face that seconds (from laughter to mourning, kept its beauty unchanged projected from pain to joy, from passion to fear): the iconic dimension and force of the “Granted that the person has a moving- star, like Dietrich or Garbo: a being im- camera face–that is, a person who pho- pervious to the effects of time, able to tographs well–the first thing needed go from one film to the next with her is ‘soul’ […] For principals I must have image intact, with no signs of the cor- people with souls, people who know rosion of time, a sort of mask or ideal and feel their parts and who express beauty, frozen and imperishable. every single feeling in the entire gamut For Josef von Sternberg, the face was of emotions with their muscles” (GRIF- a landscape: “The camera has been used FITH, 1971: 50-51). to explore the human figure and to con- In Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, centrate on its face […] Monstrously en- 1920), when the male seducer con- larged as it is on the screen, the human fesses his unfaithfulness to Lillian Gish, face should be treated like a landscape. she crosses the full emotional arc that It is to be viewed as if the eyes were from tears to laughter in just a few sec- lakes, the nose a hill, the cheeks broad onds: there is not a single frame with- meadows, the mouth a flower patch, out a complete expressive gesture; that the forehead sky, and the hair clouds. is, not a single expressive gesture is Values must be altered as in an actual prolonged, because what matters is its landscape by investing it with lights dynamic energy, the maximum force and shadows” (STERNBERG, 1973: 323). of expression and facial mimicry. On This was a task in which the film- the other hand, this iconic composi- maker needed to find beauty under the tion of the face in transformation illus- explicit or ordinary layers and masks to Josef von Sternberg, een retrospektieve trates a conception of time (the flash, reveal it in its ideal form: “The camera (Harry Kümel, 1969). the ephemeral vibration) that contrasts by itself is a destructive instrument and with the drawn out depiction of the ex- the men behind it need a lot of time pression to the point of emotional emp- and effort to tame it. It has its own con- to become a mere surface or a piece of tiness in Warhol’s or Garrel’s starkly cept of beauty and it dramatizes what it clay for the filmmaker to shape: “Tell real actresses. In Griffith, the gestures sees; it cuts, deforms and flattens mass. her not to think, to forget everything. accentuate the expression because of The term beauty describes the most There is nobody here, except me” or the extreme use of their performative nebulous concept of all” (STERNBERG, “When I finish with an actor he is ex- and dramatic potentiality, and are per- 1973). hausted. He doesn’t know what he fect analogies (representations of our There is a valuable document of wants: and that is what I want.” During idea of panic or excessive emotion) as Sternberg filming a close-up included shooting, Dorothée Blanck, the actress, icons of suffering or visible forms of in Josef von Sternberg, een retrospek- bursts into tears: “Why is she crying? the poetic idea of suffering. In Broken tieve [Josef von Sternberg, a retrospec- Is it my fault? Tell her that in this busi- Blossoms (D. W. Griffith, 1919), the fa- tive] (Harry Kümel, 1969). In this piece ness, we work with our heads, not with ther of Lillian Gish’s character asks for television, made at a time when the our hearts. An actor doesn’t cry. If he her to smile. The expression would be filmmaker had not shot a film in fif- cries, the audience won’t cry. Our job very different, as would also be seen teen years and shortly before his death, is to pretend, not to be real. My actors in Cassavetes’s films, where the face is Sternberg prepares the shot by moving never know what to do.” Sternberg, on pushed to its limits and shows signs of the lights with his own hands, man- this point, seems to share Diderot’s real suffering. But in the history of the aging areas of shadow and subjecting theory in The Paradox of Acting: taking landscape of the face, Lillian Gish was the actress to the directives of the only up Horace’s precept for drama and all virgin territory that the filmmaker had shot possible, with a single angle and literature in Ars Poetica, line 102, “si vis yet to conquer.