THE DIRECTOR'S PALETTE: FORM AND CONTENT IN PETER GREENÀWÀY'S THE COOR, THE THTEF, HIS I'IIFE AND HER LOVER BY ELIZÀBETH JANZEN À Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate studies ín Part iaf FuLfilfment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTBR OF ÀRTS Department of Engrl i s h University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba (c) copyriqht by El-izabeth Janzen September, 1993 Bibliothèque nat¡onale Ë*ã |,*îå!To.o du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquis¡tions et Bibliographic Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellingron Street 395. rue Wellinolon Onawa. Ontario OÌlâwa (Onlariõ) KIA ON4 K1A ON4 yout hte Vare ètétence Oùthte Nolte étëtence The author has granted an L'auteur a accordé une licence Írrevocable non-exclusive licence irrévocable et non exclusive allowing the National Library of permettant à la Bibliothèque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationale du Canada de distribute or sell copíes of reproduire, prêter, dístribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa thèse in any form or format, making de quelque manière et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. mettre des exemplaíres de cette thèse à la disposition des personnes intéressées. The author retains ownership of L'auteur conserve la propriété du the copyright in his/her thesis. droit d'auteur qui protège sa Neither the thesis nor substantial thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed or substantíels de celle-ci ne otherwíse reproduced without doivent être imprimés ou his/her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. ISBN 0-315-85905-9 Canadä THE DIRECTORTS PALETTE¡ FORIÍ AND CONTENT IN PETER GREENAÌ,IAY ' S THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER TOVER BY ELIZABETH JANZEN A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requkements of the degree of }ÍASTER OF ARTS o 1993 Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF THE UNMRSITY OF MANTTOBA to lend or sell copies of this thesis, to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to mic¡ofilm this thesis and to lend or sell copies of the film, and LIBRARY MICROFILMS to publish an abstsact of this thesis. The author ¡eserves othe¡ publication rights, and neithe¡ the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or other-wise ¡eptoduced without the autho/s wlitten permission. I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorrze the Universj.ty of Manitoba to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuaLs for the purpose of scholarly research, Elizabeth Janzen I NTRODUCT ION À STRUCTURALIST I S OBSESSIONS 'rFor me cinema is an artificial medium and is at its best when it is being at its most artificial." ' "It's of no use to make films unless fhe structure rel-ates to the content,tr ¿ Àn ancient Chinese encyclopedía, according to Borges, divides animals into "(a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmêd ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) thogê that tremble as if they are mad, (j) innumerable on€s, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a dístance . 'r one is tempted to add, ( o ) those featured in Peter Greênaway films (Frampton 343- Á.^\ saul Frampton's reduction of Greenaway's work to an item on a list would hardLy offend the director. In fact, given the overt display of his own enthusiasm for 1ísts of all kinds in his films, he would probably enjoy the irony of it 1 P"t"r Greenaway interviewed by Mccamley et al (10) 2 P"t"t creenaway in Perlmutter ( 63 ) . (especially in the company of such exotic companions ) . Classification systems, taxonomies, statistícs, numerology, word games, play with names and permutations of all kinds are the devices which ultimately give Greenaway films much of their substance, Ruth Perlmutter has cal1ed him the Linnaeus of cinema (56). He is a seÌf-professed structuralist: In alI my films there is a contradíction between the romântic and the classical; vioLent, absurd, bízarre subject matter treated with a sev€re sens€ of control. Baroque surface and rich romantic detail regimented into numeríca1 gridã and structures --which I would like to think shows a wish--against the odds--to creatê a rationaL víew of the world out of aII its chaotic partg. However the structures and controls are always mocked as being inadequate or ineffêctual or destructive (Greenaway in Hacker and Price 190). on a more se I f -deprecat ing note he has saíd, rrI'm a clerk. I like organizing materia]" ( 190 ). Greenaway was profoundly influenced by the Structuralist movêment in the arts during the 1960s. Às Hacker and Price explain in their essay on his work: Structuralists belÍeve that thê only truth that art can convey is the fictional nature of the fiction one is creatíng. Although creenaway has moved away from thê harshness and aridity of thêse early ideas, philosophically he has maintained his belief that human activity is ultimately unclassifiable, or un-mappable, although he feels a persistent conflict on this issue. For Greenaway the lists or classification systems are excellent demonstrations of the vain, absurd attempts to create an Isic] objectivity and meaning ín the world. He acknowledges that they are necessary for any culture and any society, but beliêves that we should be aware of just how shallow they are, and that art itself is another example of how we build up and enforce such systems (190). These "grids and structures" arê always related to the films' content, usually thematically or in connêction with some element of the nise-en-scène. sometimês these organizing features are highly visible. The Falls (1980), for examplê, relies for its structure on the alphabetization of ninêty-two ,ru*"",3 À parody of the documentary and Greenaway's first feâture-Iength film, it consists of thE "biographies" of nínety-two victims of "VUEi'--a Violent Unexplained Event--and purports to represent a section of an inaginary world-wide directory of nineteen miLlj.on victims of VUE. Thê vUE is an arbitrary and incomprehens ible event (much like bêing struck by J.Íghtning) which somehow has to do with birds and which 3 sin." I have been unable to obtain a copy of lhe FaJJs I reLy on P. Àdams Sitney and Hacker and Price for thê following description of it. suffers j.ts victims, among other bizarre experiences, to spontaneously learn bird languages.{ Each nam€ in the section of the dírectory in question begins with the letters "FÀLL": Canopy Fallbenning (no . 34ìr , Obsian Fallicut (no. 68 ) , Affracious Fallows (no, 75), Crasstranger Fallqu€ue (no.78), Castral Fallvernon (no. 90), etc. One of the themes of the film ís nj.nety-two ways to end the world. The number 92 was inspired by what creenaway thought were ninety-two short "narratives" on a recording by American composer John Cage. He later learned from Cage that the correct number of cuts on the recording was ín fact ninety, "Hê was amused that I had built two years of film-making on an error of arithmêtic, " creenaway said of Cage (Hacker and Price 191).5 Greenaway's second most overt use of sequential structuring occurs Ln Drowning by Nunbers (1988). Based this time on a numerical rather than alphabetical count, it features the numbers from one to one hundred appêaring on various Ij.vinq and inanimate objects throughout the film, { creenaway l-ikens The FalLs to Tristan shandy, which he caIls 'rthe greatest work of English Literature that has ever been": "rn a way, The Fal7s is a filmic version of Tristan Shandy, full of deliberate red herrings, cul-dg-Eacs, gamê pLaying, very trivial pieces, and pieces that attempt grêat profundity, developed and underdeveLopod bits of narratíve, with a stop/start motion to the whoJ.e thing" (Greenavray/ Mccamley 10). P. Àdams sitney considers Thê FaLLs to be an instance of "the genius of British literary menippea--the tradition of FieIding, Sterne, Swift, and SmoIlett" in its 'rpurest and most extravagant form" (45), 5 A" anodyne to the error with the cage recording creenav¡ay was"n delighted when someone told him that thE atomic number of uranium is 92 (caux et al 101), along with the reciting of the names of one hundred stars, v¿hj.1e three women each named Cissie Colpitts (triggering a motif of threes in the film) dÍspatch their husbands by drowning and then drown the coroner who got them off the hook. Drowning by Nunbers was wrítten shortly after The fal.ls even thouqfh it was not produced until 1988. An example of slightly less obvious structuring which derj.ves from a mor€ thematic impulse occurs ín A Zed and Tero Noughts (1985). This is about a pair of animal behaviouristg (siamese twins separated at birth) who lose their wives simultaneously in an auto accident and subsequently try to come to grips with death at a zoo, It is divided into eight parts because it employs Därwin's eight stages of evolutionary development (Caux et aL 115). sirnilarly, The BeLLy of an Architect (1986), wherein an American architect goe8 to Rorne for nine months to create a tribute to an e ighteenth-cêntury French architect but subsequently loses his wífe to an Italian Iovêr, dêvelops stomach cancer and commits suicide as his wife gives Ì:irth to theír child, plays on the number seven after the seven agês of Roman archi.tecture (Hacker and Price 190- 91) .