In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema

Description

In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema delineates a new performative genre based on replay and self-awareness. The book argues that in-person reenactment, an actual person reenacting her past on camera, departs radically from other modes of mimetic reconstruction. In Person theorizes this figure's protean temporality and revisionist capabilities and it considers its import in terms of social representativity and exemplarity. Close readings of select, historicized examples define an alternate, confessional-performative vein to understand the self-reflexive nature of postwar and post-holocaust testimonial cinemas. The book contextualizes Zavattini's proposal that in neorealism everyone should act his own story in a sort of anti-individualist, public display (Love in the City and We the Women). It checks the convergence between verité experiments, a heightened self-critique in France and the reception of psychodrama in France (Chronicle of a summer and The Human Pyramid) in the late fifties. And, through Bazin, it reflects on the quandaries of celebrity biopics: how the circularity of the star's iconography is checked by her corporeal limits (Sophia her Own Story and the docudrama Torero!). In Person traces a shift from the exemplary and transformative ethos of fifties reenactment towards the un-redemptive stance of contemporary reenactment films such as Lanzmann's Shoah, Zhang Yuan's Sons, Andrea Tonacci's Hills of Chaos. It defines continuities between verite testimony (Chronicle, and Moi un Noir) and later para-juridical films such as the Karski Report and Rithy Panh's S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine suggesting the power of co-presence and in person actualization for an ethics of viewership. Cover In Person Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction—​ Estrangement and Exemplarity: In-​Person Reenactment Exemplarity Stages of Actualization In Person Reenactment: The Book 1. Casting Relatives: The Spectrum of Substitution Orson Welles’s Four Men in a Raft (It’s All True) Endurance: Kinship and the Exceptional Body Reenacting Heredity: Sons 2. Neorealist Reenactment as Postwar Pedagogy Zavattini’s “Last Judgment” Cinema The Story of Caterina Footprints: Streetwalkers and Maggiorani’s Back Attempted Suicides: Antonioni’s Singularities Anonymous Stars: Donatella Marrosu and Anna Magnani 3. Celebrity Reenactment, Biopic, and the Mortal Body Sophia: Her Own Story Bazin’s Cine-​mythographies Cinema’s Existential Arena Torero! Replicants Mexican Ciné-​verdad, Carlos Velo, Hugo Butler, and Zavattini 4. A Sort of Psychodrama: Verité Moments 58–​61 Role-​play: The Real in Balance Provisional Closure: Reflexivity and Death in The Human Pyramid Chronicle of a Summer (1960–​1961) as Autocritique (1958) A “Nascent” Register: Group Dynamics and the Worker 5. Ascetic Stages: Reenactment in Post-​Holocaust Cinema Pedovision: Ritual, Wandering Words Marceline Loridan, Testimony With (out) an “I” Splitting: Oumarou Ganda’s Solo The Karski Report—​Of a Report Filming and Refilming: Phatic Reenactment Ascetic Stages, Next 6. Trial Stages: Rithy Panh’s Parajuridical Cinema Solo Routines: The Critical Valence of Alienation Paintings, Desks, Files, and Faces: Reflexive Platforms S21’s Judicial Context Parajuridical Scenarios and the Confessional Imperative An Internal Chorus: Files and Faces 7. Reenactment and A-​filiation in Serras da Desordem “When Is Carapiru?” Twenty Years Later: Brazilian Films on “First” and Recurrent Contact Leading to Serras The Actor as Agent: Carapiru, Pereio, and Tonacci A-​filiation Disrupted Transmission Conclusion: Senseless Mimesis Select Bibliography Notes Index