Fiancées and widows: women’s encounters with death in the silent films of Fritz Lang

Kłys Tomasz, Fiancées and widows: women’s encounters with death in the silent films of Fritz Lang. “Images” vol. XXV, no. 34. Poznań 2019. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 155–162. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2019.34.10. In the silent Weimar films of Fritz Lang, the heroines have sudden encounters with Death, conceived both as an allegorical figure and as an unexpected violent end of the life of their fiancé, husband or loved one. The nameless Maiden, the main heroine of Der müde Tod (The Weary Death, known in English-language countries as Destiny, 1921), while looking for her fiancé, who was kidnapped by Death, tries three times to regain his life and finally, overcome by Death, commits suicide. Two queens of Burgundy in Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), Kriemhild and Brunhild, motivated by resentment and vengeance, as well as by unfulfilled love, finally appear to be zombie-like self-destructive monsters, destroying the social and political order, and the lives of many human beings. The paper, with the use of the psychoanalytic concepts of melancholy and the mourning “not-worked-out” by the persons who have lost their loved ones, analyses the ambiguous attitudes and self-destructive acts of these “women in black”..Kłys Tomasz, Fiancées and widows: women’s encounters with death in the silent films of Fritz Lang. “Images” vol. XXV, no. 34. Poznań 2019. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 155–162. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2019.34.10. In the silent Weimar films of Fritz Lang, the heroines have sudden encounters with Death, conceived both as an allegorical figure and as an unexpected violent end of the life of their fiancé, husband or loved one. The nameless Maiden, the main heroine of Der müde Tod (The Weary Death, known in English-language countries as Destiny, 1921), while looking for her fiancé, who was kidnapped by Death, tries three times to regain his life and finally, overcome by Death, commits suicide. Two queens of Burgundy in Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), Kriemhild and Brunhild, motivated by resentment and vengeance, as well as by unfulfilled love, finally appear to be zombie-like self-destructive monsters, destroying the social and political order, and the lives of many human beings. The paper, with the use of the psychoanalytic concepts of melancholy and the mourning “not-worked-out” by the persons who have lost their loved ones, analyses the ambiguous attitudes and self-destructive acts of these “women in black”.

The Third Reich’s Pean of Praise for the November Uprising’s Glory: Karl Hartl’s Ritt in Die Freiheit (1936)

This book was financially supported by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities: project “Cinema: Intercultural Perspective. Western-European Cinema in Poland, Polish Cinema in Western Europe. Mutual Perception of Film Cultures (1918–1939)”

Dominanty diegetyczne w filmie fikcji

Kategoria "diegesis” została wprowadzona w obręb filmoznawstwa przez Etienne'a Souriau. Zainspirowany rozwiązaniami amerykańskiego neoformalizmu i podejściem fenomenologicznym, autor przedstawia własną definicję "diegesis" jako przedmiotu intencjonalnego, obejmującego dwa poziomy: znaczeń "dosłownych”, ustanawiających fabułę i jej świat, oraz znaczeń abstrakcyjnych. Twór ten, konstytuowany dzięki "tekstualnym wskazówkom”, jest w pewnej mierze niedookreślony i zyskuje dopełnienie w aktach odbioru. Typ i sposób użycia owych "tekstualnych wskazówek” czyli środków wyrazu, umożliwia, z racji immanentnej im intencjalności, określenie intencjonalnej dominanty diegetycznej, a tym samym określenie podstawowych odmian filmu fikcji, nietożsamych jednak z gatunkami czy poetykami historycznymi. Wyróżnione przez autora (m.in. w oparciu o typologię tekstów autorstwa Seymoura 'Chatmana) i kolejno omawiane dominanty diegetyczne to: |) fabuła, 2) efekt diegetyczny, 3) argument, 4) spektakl i 5) intencja zwrotna

Abel Gance po trzykroć oskarża: metafizyka i apokaliptyczna wyobraźnia w służbie pacyfizmu

This text is inspired by monumental and editorially perfect BluRay/DVD box set J’accuse (Gaumont, Paris 2017). It includes BluRay and DVD editions of all three J’accuse films (1919, 1937, 1956), two other Gance’s films, specifying the context of „trilogy” (Les Gaz mortels, 1916 and La Fin du monde, 1931) and the large director’s monography by Laurent Véray. From this revelatory archive emerges the image of Abel Gance as an artist who for 40 years of his filmmaker’s career was incessantly reworking deep trauma caused by World War One. It resulted in three J’accuse films, two other finished films and some other never realized screenplays and projects which made up particular work-in-progress whose mission is a message of peace. The text analyzes all three versions of J’accuse, concentrating on their allegorical style, metaphysical concept of ressurrection of fallen soldiers and apocalyptic vision of resurrected dead men’s processions which by its horror should persuade the mankind to stop all wars. In the last J’accuse (1956) – in fact, strongly shortened and reedited film from 1937 – Gance used the technique of triptych in which the picture was projected by three parallelly set projectors on the large screen with proportions 4:1. This version, immersing perceptually and sensorically spectator in the wide-format picture full of war horrors, today seems to be much more effective medium for message of peace than undecided between pacifism and patriotism, impressionistic in its style film from 1919, or laden with full of pathos verbal rhetorics J’accuse 1937.This text is inspired by monumental and editorially perfect BluRay/DVD box set J’accuse (Gaumont, Paris 2017). It includes BluRay and DVD editions of all three J’accuse films (1919, 1937, 1956), two other Gance’s films, specifying the context of „trilogy” (Les Gaz mortels, 1916 and La Fin du monde, 1931) and the large director’s monography by Laurent Véray. From this revelatory archive emerges the image of Abel Gance as an artist who for 40 years of his filmmaker’s career was incessantly reworking deep trauma caused by World War One. It resulted in three J’accuse films, two other finished films and some other never realized screenplays and projects which made up particular work-in-progress whose mission is a message of peace. The text analyzes all three versions of J’accuse, concentrating on their allegorical style, metaphysical concept of ressurrection of fallen soldiers and apocalyptic vision of resurrected dead men’s processions which by its horror should persuade the mankind to stop all wars. In the last J’accuse (1956) – in fact, strongly shortened and reedited film from 1937 – Gance used the technique of triptych in which the picture was projected by three parallelly set projectors on the large screen with proportions 4:1. This version, immersing perceptually and sensorically spectator in the wide-format picture full of war horrors, today seems to be much more effective medium for message of peace than undecided between pacifism and patriotism, impressionistic in its style film from 1919, or laden with full of pathos verbal rhetorics J’accuse 1937

Psychoanalysis in Weimar Cinema

Film and psychoanalysis were born almost simultaneously in the last decade of the nineteenth century. However, the first significant entrance of psychoanalysis into the cinema took place in the Weimar Republic. The climax of this German cinema’s interest in psychoanalysis was the Ufa project to make Kulturfilm (i.e. — an educational film) Geheimnisse einer Seele (1926). Its task — fulfilled in an artistically excellent way — was to popularize to the mass audience the basic principles of psychoanalysis and methods of its therapy. Despite Freud’s refusal to participate in the project, two of his very close disciples, Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, were scientific consultants of filmmakers throughout the making of the film

Wprowadzenie

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00