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| Screen grab from Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell, 1988). Read Christophe Van Eecke's study of this film as "Baroque Performance". And also read Film Studies For Free's memorial listing of links to other studies of Russell's work |
A more systematic way of understanding Russell’s work as baroque could be to simply read it as a contemporary reprise of a form of theatrical performativity associated specifically with seventeenth century baroque theatre. For literary critics one of the key innovations of the baroque stage was its self-reflexivity, its uncanny ability to point at itself in performance and say: look at me, I’m a play! Two important ways of generating this effect were the play-within-the- play and the so-called mise-en-abîme. These two procedures are related yet distinct. The play- within-the-play is a structural feature of baroque theatre, a conceit whereby several characters in a play become spectators of a play performed within the framing narrative, echoing the relationship between the original, framing play and the actual spectators in the theatre. The mise-en-abîme is a thematic trope and is quite literally a mirroring effect (Forestier 13). It refers to the potentially infinite self-reflection that emerges when a play starts mirroring its own action or begins to comment on it. The self-reflexive effect of baroque theatre is most overwhelming when the structural and the thematic self-reflexivity coincide. This happens when a play-within-the- play is used to reveal something about the characters or plot in the original framing story. This is the way the performance of the Mousetrap is used Hamlet. Russell has used the play-within-the- play as a revelatory mise-en-abîme in his film Salome’s Last Dance (1988), which is a play-within-the-film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1893). In this film Russell uses these tropes to reflect, through the play-within-the-film, on his own position as an artist. Therefore it would seem to be a very good place to start an investigation of whether and how Russell is ‘baroque’. The film is also one of the director’s most neglected efforts, which makes a critical discussion all the more timely. [Christophe Van Eecke, 'Moonstruck Follies. Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance (1988) as Baroque Performance', Image and Narrative, 13.2, 2012: pp. 6-7]
Film Studies For Free presents a little catch up entry today: links to all the contents of the latest four issues of the very good, Belgium-based, online journal Image [&] Narrative which treats "visual narratology and word and image studies in the broadest sense".
There are some excellent film studies articles, especially in the latest issue, on the "Neo-Baroque", which begins the below list. FSFF particularly liked the article on Russell's 1988 film, and also Peter Verstraten's article on Antonioni and Malick's "Cinema of Modernist Poetic Prose".
Image [&] Narrative, Vol 13, No 2 (2012): Neo-baroque Today 1
Thematic Cluster
- 'Introduction' by Ralph Dekoninck, Karel Vanhaesebrouck, et al Abstract PDF
- 'Moonstruck Follies. Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance (1988) as Baroque Performance' by Christophe Van Eecke Abstract PDF
- 'The Ambiguity of Weeping. Baroque and Mannerist Discourses in Haynes’ Far from Heaven and Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows' by Jack Post Abstract PDF
- 'Cinematic Neo-Mannerism or Neo-Baroque? Deleuze and Daney' by Sjoerd van Tuinen Abstract PDF
- 'Re-visioning the Spanish Baroque: The Ekphrastic Dimension of Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins by Carlos Fuentes' by Reindert Dhondt Abstract PDF
- 'A Neo-Baroque Tale of Jesuits in Space: Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (1996)' by Daniel J. Worden Abstract PDF
- 'A Cinema of Modernist Poetic Prose: On Antonioni and Malick' by Peter Verstraten Abstract PDF
- 'Metaphors in Buster Keaton’s Short Films' by Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja Abstract PDF
Image [&] Narrative, Vol 13, No 1 (2012): Hauntings II: Uncanny, Figures and Twilight Zones
Thematic Cluster
- 'Introduction' by Fabio Camilletti Abstract PDF
- 'Staging the Uncanny: Phantasmagoria in Post-Unification Italy' by Morena Corradi Abstract PDF
- 'Freud and Hoffmann, once again' by Tan Wälchli Abstract PDF
- 'Phantasmagoria: A Profane Phenomenon as a Critical Alternative to the Fetish' by Christine Blaettler Abstract PDF
- 'Engführung as a Case Study of Paul Celan’s Poetics of the Uncanny' by Vita Zilburg Abstract PDF
- 'Impassively true to life' by Claudia Peppel Abstract PDF
- 'Medial Techniques of the Uncanny and Anxiety' by Michaela Wünsch Abstract PDF
- 'From Thought to Modality: A Theoretical Framework for Analysing Structural-Conceptual Metaphors and Image Metaphors in Film' by Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja Abstract PDF
- 'Inception and Philosophy: Ideas To Die For' by Martin Rosenstock Abstract PDF
- 'Curious Visions of Modernity. Enchantment, Magic, and the Sacred' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF
Image [&] Narrative, Vol 12, No 4 (2011): Introduction to The Story of Things: reading narrative in the visual (part 2)
Thematic Cluster
- 'Introduction' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF
- 'Rephrased, Relocated, Repainted: visual anachronism as a narrative device' by Gyöngyvér Horváth Abstract PDF
- 'Lost Children, the Moors & Evil Monsters: the photographic story of the Moors murders' by Helen Pleasance Abstract PDF
- 'Read You Like A Book: Time and Relative Dimensions in Storytelling' by Mike Nicholson Abstract PDF
- 'The Pre-Narrative Monstrosity of Images: how images demand narrative' by William Brown Abstract PDF
- 'Towards Ephemeral Narrative' by Gavin Parry, Jacqueline Butler Abstract PDF
- 'Portrait of the Opportunist as Circus Acrobat: Félicien Champsaur's Entrée de clowns' by Jennifer Forrest Abstract PDF
- 'Depardon, le DATAR et le paysage' by Raphaële Bertho Abstract PDF
- 'Historicising achronism. Some notes on the idea of art without history in David Carrier's The Aesthetics of Comics' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF
Review Articles
- 'Compte rendu de Myriam Watthee-Delmotte, Littérature et ritualité. Enjeux du rite dans la littérature française contemporaine' by Laurence van Nuijs Abstract PDF
Thematic Cluster
- 'Introduction' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF
- 'Relating the Story of Things' by Patricia Allmer Abstract PDF
- 'Scrapbook (a visual essay)' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF
- 'Seeing the Past/Reading the Past' by Karen Bassi Abstract PDF
- 'Ephemeral Art: Telling Stories to the Dead' by Mary O’Neill Abstract PDF
- 'European Locations Dreamed with a Limited Imagination' by Samantha Donnelly Abstract PDF
- 'Belgian Photography: Towards a Minor Photography' by Jan Baetens, Hilde Van Gelder, Mieke Bleyen Abstract PDF
- 'The surrealist book as a cross-border space: The experimentations of Lise Deharme and Gisèle Prassinos' by Andrea Oberhuber Abstract PDF
- 'The Power of Tableaux Vivants in Zola: The Underside of the Image' by Arnaud Rykner Abstract PDF
- 'Spitting Image and Pre-Televisual Political Satire: Graphics and Puppets to Screens' by Kiene Brillenburg Abstract PDF
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