Peter Greenaway's Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema

FILM • PERFORMING ARTS Willoquet-Maricondi Since the 1960s, British multi-media artist Peter Greenaway has shocked and intrigued audiences with Alemany-Galway PETER GREENAWAY’S his avant-garde approach to fi lmmaking and other artistic ventures. From early experimental fi lms to provocative features, Greenaway has deployed strategies associated with structuralist cinema only to challenge or critique the very limits of that cinema, and of fi lm in general. In this collection of essays, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore various postmodern and post- POST PETER GREENAWAY’S POSTMODERN/ structuralist aspects of Greenaway’s fi lms, starting with his early shorts and delving into his feature- length works, including The Draughtman’s Contract, The Belly of an Architect, A Zed and Two Noughts, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Baby of Mâcon, and The Pillow Book. Other artistic productions, including his paintings and installations, are also discussed. These essays examine the MODERN POSTSTRUCTURALIST fi lmmaker’s position within British and avant-garde cinema and his interest in constructing and decon- structing representational systems. Since the fi rst edition of this book, Greenaway has enjoyed continued success in creating hybridized media projects for the stage and screen, as evidenced by additional essays in this revised volume. A / CINEMA new chapter examines Greenaway’s most ambitious endeavor to date, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which POST exists as four feature fi lms, multiple websites, an online game, several books and installations, and a number of theatrical events. Also new to this collection is an essay that addresses how Dutch political revised edition events and Dutch art have been crucial in shaping Greenaway’s aesthetic, focusing on The Draughts- man’s Contract, the 1991 opera Writing to Vermeer, and Nightwatching, the audiovisual installation and STRUCTURALIST fi lm, both inspired by Rembrandt’s Night Watch. Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern/Poststructuralist Cinema, Revised Edition explores the cultural, historical, and philosophical implications of this hybrid artist whose paintings, drawings, exhibitions, installations, and operatic productions are an intrinsic part of his work in fi lm. This collection of diverse essays, which includes two texts by Greenaway, two interviews with the director, and a revised fi lmog- raphy, will interest students, teachers, critics, and lovers of both postmodern art and cinema. Contributors Mary Alemany-Galway, John Di Stefano, Bridget Elliott, Peter Greenaway, Lia M. Hotchkiss, Michael Ostwald, David Pascoe, Heidi Peeters, Jean Petrolle, Anthony Purdy, Cristina Degli-Esposti Reinert, Dayana Stetco, Bart Testa, Paula Willoquet-Maricondi CINEMA Paula Willoquet-Maricondi is associate professor of fi lm studies and chair of the media arts department at Marist College. Mary Alemany-Galway is retired from her position as lecturer in media studies at Massey University. Edited by For orders and information please contact the publisher Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6201-2 ISBN-10: 0-8108-6201-8 A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefi eld Publishing Group, Inc. Paula Willoquet-Maricondi 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 • fax 717-794-3803 Cover image from The Pillow Book, courtesy of Marc Guillamot Mary Alemany-Galway www.scarecrowpress.com Cover design by Neil D. Cotterill PeterGreenMECH.indd 1 6/10/08 10:58:11 AM PETER GREENAWAY’S POSTMODERN/ POSTSTRUCTURALIST CINEMA Revised Edition Edited by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi Mary Alemany-Galway The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2008 SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi and Mary Alemany-Galway All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peter Greenaway’s postmodern/poststructuralist cinema / edited by Paula Willoquet- Maricondi, Mary Alemany-Galway. — Rev. ed.. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6201-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8108-6201-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6227-2 (electronic) ISBN-10: 0-8108-6227-1 (electronic) 1. Greenaway, Peter—Criticism and interpretation. I. Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula, 1960– II. Alemany-Galway, Mary 1944– PN1998.3.G73P48 2008 791.4302'33092—dc22 2008017134 ϱ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America. CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Preface vii Preface to the Revised Edition xi Introduction:A Postmodern/Poststructuralist Cinema xiii Part I: Postmodern Mega-Cinema 1 From British Cinema to Mega-Cinema 3 Paula Willoquet-Maricondi 2 Peter Greenaway and the Failure of Cinema 37 John Di Stefano 3 Neo-Baroque Imaging in Peter Greenaway’s Cinema 51 Cristina Degli-Esposti Reinert 4 Tabula for a Catastrophe: Peter Greenaway’s The Falls and Foucault’s Heterotopia 79 Bart Testa Part II: Postmodern Features 5 Postmodernism and the French New Novel: The Influence of Last Year at Marienbad on The Draughtsman’s Contract 115 Mary Alemany-Galway 6 Rising from the Ruins: Interpreting the Missing Formal Device within The Belly of an Architect 137 Michael Ostwald iii iv Contents 7 Z is for Zebra, Zoo, Zed, and Zygote, or Is It Possible to Live with Ambivalence? 159 Jean Petrolle 8 Prospero’s Books, Postmodernism, and the Reenchantment of the World 177 Paula Willoquet-Maricondi 9 The Crisis of Commentary: Tilting at Windmills in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 203 Dayana Stetco 10 Theater, Ritual, and Materiality in Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon 223 Lia M. Hotchkiss 11 Skin Deep: Fins-de-Siècle and New Beginnings in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book 255 Bridget Elliott and Anthony Purdy Part III:“Too Many Proofs Spoil the Truth” 12 Body and Text & Eight and a Half Women: A Laconic Black Comedy 285 Peter Greenaway 13 Two Interviews with Peter Greenaway 301 Paula Willoquet-Maricondi Part IV:“There Are Only Historians” 14 The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Peter Greenaway’s Left Luggage 323 Heidi Peeters 15 Greenaway, the Netherlands, and the Conspiracies of History 339 David Pascoe Works by Peter Greenaway 359 Bibliography 373 Index 399 About the Contributors 407 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS book is, by its very nature, a cooperative venture. A collection of essays Aby a cast of international contributors from various disciplines, such as the present volume, is a particularly cooperative enterprise. We would like to acknowledge all of our contributors and thank them for their dedication and patience in bringing this project to fruition. The idea for a collection of essays by multiple authors on the British filmmaker and artist Peter Greenaway arose in 1995, in the aftermath of a special session, entitled “From Images of the Past to Visions for the Fu- ture: The Cinema of Peter Greenaway,” which I organized for the Soci- ety for Cinema Studies Conference (SCS) in New York City. In 1999, I organized a second special session for the SCS in West Palm Beach, Florida, devoted to Greenaway’s work, “Peter Greenaway’s Post- Cinematic Art-World.” Several of the essays in this collection are elabo- rations on the work presented at these two conferences. We would like to thank the Society for Cinema Studies for providing us with the opportu- nity to bring together a number of scholars dedicated to the work of Peter Greenaway and for being the catalyst for a project that culminates in this book. The suggestion that we undertake such a project came from Mary Alemany-Galway, one of the speakers at the 1995 conference and the co-editor of, as well as contributor to, the present volume. Taking as our point of departure the papers presented at these conferences, we conceived of this collection as filling an important gap in cinema scholarship: at the time of the 1995 conference, no scholarly book-length study of Peter Greenaway’s cinema and other artistic productions had been published in English. Since that time, four such studies have appeared. Our study,rather than becoming redundant, has acquired, we believe, even greater significance and relevance. This collection of essays, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on Greenaway’s cinematic output, departs from, while also nicely complementing, the studies that precede it. While bringing together v vi Acknowledgments many voices, each offering a unique reading of Greenaway’s artistry, this book also unifies these voices under the theoretical umbrella of postmodernism. We address this book, therefore, not only to students and scholars of Peter Greenaway, but also to students of cinema, literature, architecture, the visual arts, and contemporary theory.It is our intention that the essays in this collection be a fruitful contribution to the ongoing application of theoretical discourse to the study of complex artistic expression, and to cultural and historical understanding. More particularly, our selection process was guided by the desire to reach a diverse audience and to produce a work that would be potentially useful in a number of academic contexts, including advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars. We are indebted to a number of individuals and institutions for their intellectual and financial support. Foremost, we would like to thank Peter Greenaway himself, Eliza Poklewski Koziell, and Annabel Radermacher for their assistance and full cooperation.

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