Rebecca (1940)
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Begins with a
dream – Manderlay
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Raging sea 3:36 meets Maxim for the first time
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Meets Maxim at Monte Carlo – Male gaze 4:56
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1st mention of wife’s death 7:25
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Friend of bosom 8:42
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Perfect tree/good girl 9:31/9:58
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Heart-broken man
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Troubled dreams 12:30 – impositions 16:37
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Black satin/pearl 17:05
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Imagined proposal 21:05 = 23:10
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E. van Hopper (told of by) 24’
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Bride passes by/certificate out the window/perfectly
lovely 26:10 *end of 1
·
Manderlay 28:00
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Cold shoulder from Mrs. Denvers 29’
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1st Mrs. De Winter 31’ – 33:26
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Clumsy acts/dog leaves room 36:00-40:00
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Denvers/Rebecca homosexuality 41:00
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Dinner (Rebecca’s death) 42:40 – 44:20 – 47:22
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Under Rebecca’s shadow/man has to tell her 50:00 –
53:10
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Couple trouble – 56:00 = 59:30
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Seducer: Frank Crowley/gossip 1:02:00
·
In Rebecca’s room 1:04 = 1:10 (underwear, she is
mortified, bath)
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She sees herself as heroine 1:13
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Set up by Denvers 1:17 = 1:20:50
·
Max killed Rebecca 1:24:00 – 1:35:15
* end of 2
·
“In a few hours you’ve grown so older” 1:40
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Trial: 1:42 – 1:44 (she faints end trial)
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Max threatened by Frank 1:46 – 1:55
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Cancer 1:58 Man resolve narrative
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Manderlay on fire 2:03
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Ambitious shot 2:04 Denvers’ death * end of 3
COMMENTS
·
Fascination of films reinforced by pre-existing
patterns at work within the individual subject and the social formation that moulded
him.
·
Starting point: the way films reflect, reveal, play
socially interpretations of sexual differences (erotic ways of looking)
·
Psychoanalytic theory as a political weapon
(unconscious of patriarchal society structured in film form)
·
The importance of the female form in the symbolic
order: 1) castration threat 2) raises her child into the symbolic (signifier
for the male other)
·
Challenge mainstream film coded the erotic into
language of the dominant patriarchal order (erotic pleasure in film and the
central place of the image of the woman)
·
Scopophilia -> taking other people as
objects/subjecting them to controlling gaze; voyeurism/curiosity about
genitals. Defined as active, narcissistic form.
·
Enjoyability of cinema would be linked to Lancan’s
theories about mirror/I
·
1) separation of the erotic identity of the subject
from object on the screen.
·
2) identification with the object on the screen
through fascination and recognition of his like. Mechanisms, not meaning no
signification/polarisation.
·
Woman as image, man as bearer of the look.
·
The presence of the woman is an indispensable element
of the spectacle, yet her presence tends to work against the storyline, freezes
the action in moments of erotic contemplation (pin-ups, strip tease, etc.)
·
Woman -> erotic object for characters in the story
and for the spectator in the auditorium.
·
Man cannot bear the burden of objectification (man
reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionism like). Man project his look onto that of
his screen surrogate (omnipotence). Man male star not object of erotic gaze but
a powerful ideal ego, perfect, complete, framing objectifies women and frees
man to command the stage.
·
Penis is essential for entering the symbolic order. In
this sense the woman represents a “castration anxiety”, a mystery or return of
the original trauma. There are two ways to deal with this: 1)punish the
woman/saving the guilt object (film noir) 2)turning the woman into a fetish
object, which is reassuring rather than dangerous (cult of Madonna/female
star). 1) sadism – voyeur 2) fetishism – scopophilia
