Classical Cinema: Transmediating La Princesse de Clèves
2017; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02639904.2017.1413846
ISSN1745-8153
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoSince its first publication in 1678, La Princesse de Clèves has inspired an exceptionally rich corpus of criticism, numerous literary variations and, over the last decades, several cinematographic adaptations: Jean Delannoy’s historicizing, fairytale-izing La Princesse de Clèves (1961); Manoel de Oliveira’s A Carta/La Lettre (1999), an eminently textualized film, accentuating the plot’s religious dimension; Andrzej Żuławski’s La Fidélité (2000), problematizing also adaptational ‘fidelity’ between esprit and lettre; Christophe Honoré’s La Belle Personne (2008), a ‘proposition de lecture’ of Lafayette’s novel in the context of the notorious Sarkozy affair; finally, Régis Sauder’s documentary Nous, princesses de Clèves (2011), restaging Lafayette’s royal court in northern Marseille’s ZEP-Lycée Diderot and, thus, raising controversial topics concerning the transmission of a common cultural heritage, the ambivalences of ‘high culture’ between symbolic violence and emancipatory potential. This article proposes a comparative analysis of these five filmic Princesses, with a particular focus on metamedial self-reflexivity, gender/queer as well as postcolonial and intercultural perspectives.
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