Falling Women and Fallible Narrators
2002; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Law in Society and Culture
ResumoSeveral of Ophuls' late films make elaborate use of narrators who are, in varying ways, both storytellers and characters within the fictional worlds: Lisa (Joan Fontaine) in Letter From an Unknown Woman, the meneur de jeu (Anton Walbrook) in La Ronde, 'Maupassant' (Jean Servais) in Le Plaisir and the Ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) in Lola Montes. In each film, though with significantly differing effects, crucial questions are raised about the relationship between what the narrator tells us and what we see and (in addition to the narrator's voice) what we hear. One effect is that the films create differential perspectives on events which encourage us to adopt a critical, or at least questioning, stance to the claims made by the narrator, so that her/his attitudes, interpretations, authority over the story's shape and meaning, themselves become part of the films' subject matter. How we should understand these 'doubled narratives' (1) has become a significant question in Ophuls' criticism. (2) At the heart of such an enquiry are what George M. Wilson refers to as 'epistemic' dimensions of the films: the ways in which knowledge about the narrative world is controlled and communicated. If we find in Ophuls' late films strategies that point to the fallibility of the dramatised narrators, what is the status of the films' wider frameworks, notably their images and the selection of narrative material that they present? Certainly none of these films allows us to doubt the veracity of what we are shown and our access to events seems to imply a narrative authority that is not subject to obvious restriction. In discussions of the novel, such narration often used to be called 'omniscient', implying that at any moment of the narrative we could be shown any aspect of the fictional world, informed about any thought or feeling, transported freely through space and time, at the whim of the author. But apparent narrative freedom is not necessarily unrestricted, let alone 'omniscient'. The significance of specific a nd systematic epistemic restrictions in the organisation of film narrative is the major subject of George M. Wilson's book. In an illuminating chapter on Letter From an Unknown Woman he points to ways in which, in a film that develops delicate and complex perspectives on the limitations of its central characters through a highly self-conscious visual narration, Ophuls nevertheless withholds judgement and ultimate explanation. 'In these lovers' lives, there are truths that they cannot at all discern, which the film reveals to the properly responsive viewer. Nevertheless, there are also mysteries about their lives which this and, probably, any narration will not dispel. It is a part of the affirmation of the possibility of seeing things more openly, broadly, and clearly to acknowledge as well the limits to what we can expect to see in such a case. (3) This article pursues the question of such limits by focusing on parallel moments in two of Ophuls' late films: Le Plaisir (1951) and Lola Montes (1955). At a climactic moment in The Model, the final story in the triptych of adaptations from Guy de Maupassant that make up Le Plaisir, Josephine/Simone Simon, rejected by her lover, Jean/Daniel Gelin, runs up a staircase towards a window and throws herself out. As she runs to the stairs, the camera moves with her in an extended, mobile shot. Without cutting from the previous framing of the couple the camera swings away from Josephine but moves with her, looking down at the stairs as she climbs and accompanying her movement to and out of the window until she crashes through a glass ceiling far below. In Lola Montes, as the elaborate circus representation of Lola's life approaches her affair with King Ludwig of Bavaria, Lola/Martine Carol is at the highest point of the circus tent, ready for the spectacular climax of her 'act', her jump without a safety net from t he high trapeze to a trampoline on the circus floor. As she jumps, the camera seems to take her optical point of view and we fall vertiginously with her. …
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