Similarities & differences between Magritte's Les amants (1928 ...

1 downloads 0 Views 1MB Size Report
Comparative study of René Magritte's Les amants (1928). & Jaco Van Dormael's Toto le héros (1991) from the perspective of screenwriting.
SILVIA VAN AKEN – SESSION 1.2: FRANCOPHONE PERSPECTIVES

Similarities & differences between Magritte’s Les amants (1928) & Van Dormael’s Toto le héros (1991).

8th SRN CONFERENCE, LONDON, 10/09/2015

SESSION 1.2 – FRANCOPHONE PERSPECTIVES • PhD student Film Studies & Narratology • Topic: The Labyrinth of the Mind: A stylistic & narrative analysis of Jaco Van Dormael's mindfilms: Toto le héros (1991), Le huitième jour (1996), Mr. Nobody (2009).

• Lecturer Interaction design • Researcher Digital storytelling

Comparative study of René Magritte’s Les amants (1928) & Jaco Van Dormael’s Toto le héros (1991) from the perspective of screenwriting.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS • What kind of intertextual references to Magritte’s work can be found in Toto le héros?

• What is the value of these references to the viewer?

INTERTEXTUALITY Combination of 3 kinds of intertextual references 1. Iconographic 2. Thematic 3. Narrative

ICONOGRAPHIC Iconographic intertextual references • Art historical concept that deals with the subject in art & their deeper meaning (van Straten, 2000, p. 7).

• Visual & auditory characteristics for which a film or genre can be recognized (Benshoff & Griffin, 2009, p. 28). • Difference with iconology.

ICONOGRAPHIC Toto le héros, 2nd sequence: series of images • Strange objects & transitions • No unity of space & time • Discontinuity editing • Filmic inner monologue: story format • Old Thomas: “Once upon a time” • Young Thomas: “The end”

• Looking through the window = intradiegetic > metadiegetic level: memories or imaginations of old Thomas

ICONOGRAPHIC Magritte’s Le retour (1940), Le château des Pyrénées (1959) and La chanson d’amour (1948)

• Same everyday objects: starry night, flying rock, misty ship • Object: out of its natural context (Thomas’ bad) • Pleasure of recognition: solving the puzzle

THEMATIC Thematic intertextual references • Former research: – Stoltzfus (2005): Comparative study of Magritte’s work & Robbe-Grillet’s novel La belle captive (1977)

THEMATIC Toto le héros, 1st sequence: an anonymous dead man • Iconographic ref. to Les amants: white curtain | shroud • Thematic • An act of passion of two lovers is transformed in a deed of separation. • Thomas’ love for Alice (his sister) is blind: it exceeds the prescribed social norms. • Both lovers end up dying in the film: so the shroud determines the plot construction.

• Painting: inspiration for plot development • Characters, themes, actions

NARRATIVE Narrative intertextual references • Activating the double temporal sequences (story time & plot time) is dependent on the question of whether a viewer can activate an intertextual reference while he is interpreting a text (Baroni, 2011, p. 286). • Viewer can identify an image as related to a familiar type of story telling. – Example: metalepsis. • Without being familiar with the definition of metalepsis, a viewer can recognize the metalepsis in Toto le héros. He can be familiar with metalepsis in paintings or other media.

NARRATIVE Magritte’s Le maître du plaisir II (1926) • Mise en abyme: a painting in a painting. • Metalepsis: an intradiegetic character interferes on the metadiegetic level.

NARRATIVE Toto le héros, the use of metalepsis in a dream • Mise en abyme: a detective story in a story. • Metalepsis: a metadiegetic character (Toto, a character imaginated by Thomas) interferes on another metadiegetic level (a memory of Thomas about Alfred).

NARRATIVE Metalepsis (Genette, 1980, p. 236) • Interfering of an external narrator or narratee (addressee) on the intradiegetic level (or vice versa) • Interfering of an intradiegetic character on the metadiegetic level (or vice versa).

Metalepsis

NARRATIVE Narrative intertextual references • Narrative intertextual references to other texts can be used to give the viewer clues about the different interpretations of the text.

PUBLICATIONS ABOUT METALEPSIS & MINDFILM Van Aken, S. & Vandekerkhof, R. (2015). Metaleptic and Pseudodiegetic Narration in Dennis Potter's Karaoke/Cold Lazarus (1996). In: Image & Narrative, Vol. 16 (1). Van Aken, S. (2015). Conceptualization of mindfilm. Palmer’s private and social minds applied to feature films. In: European Narratology Network Conference, University Ghent, April 2015. Conference.

Download: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Silvia_Van_Aken

CONTACT Contact Research unit

[email protected] Re-Visionary (Inter-Actions) http://93.94.105.167/re-visionary

University Education

LUCA School of Arts, Campus C-Mine (KU Leuven) Interaction & Game design, Film, TV, Animation, …