The Circles of Desire: Narration and Representation in "La Ronde"
1973; University of California Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1211451
ISSN1533-8630
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Criticism
ResumoFilm analysis as a whole, and particularly work on narrativity in film, is still in an early stage of development, and no sort of relatively fixed methodology can be set up at this point. One promising point of departure, however, is the establishment, for particular films, of divisions into autonomous of narrative by various principles of pertinence, and the study of the relations set up by these segments. One can be more or less detailed in this sort of analysis; the important consideration is always some sort of consistency in the process of division. Roland Barthes, for example, in studying a 32-page short story by Balzac, Sarrazine (in S/Z, Paris: Le Seuil, 1970) divides the narrative into 561 units of reading and studies the distribution of various codes which he identifies as operating in the text. In studying feature films the process of segmentation and narrative analysis entails different criteria for different films. Max Ophuls's Ronde, which will be studied here, invites such an approach by its clear separation into its various stories. Ophuls's film begins entirely outside conventional narrative space and time, in one very long tracking shot following Anton Wolbrook from a misty background, to a stage, past movie equipment, into a set of Vienna in 1900. He dons the evening clothes which he will wear as meneur du jeu and announces his role as master of the of love. The carousel turns and the prostitute (Simone Signoret) appears on it; he helps her off and tells her of her part in the first episode of the film, the title of which he recites at the very end of this first segment (and shot, we might add) of Ronde: La Femme et le Soldat. This brilliant beginning sets up the principles which will govern the whole work, which is divided by the successive appearances of the various characters, beginning with the prostitute and ending with her reappearance, and by the different manifestations of Wolbrook as leader.
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