Il film come esposizione. La dimensione museale di I colori della passione e Shirley – Visions of Reality

Abstract

The essay analyses the films The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2011) and Shirley - Visions of Reality (Gustav Deutsch, 2013). Both are inspired by famous paintings: Bruegel the Elder’s Procession to Calvary the first, thirteen Edward Hopper’s works the second. The essay proposes to investigate the films beyond the simple relationship between cinema and painting, considering them as part of a web of intermedial relations, which includes also two related video installations: Bruegel Suite (2011) and Visions of Reality (2013). In particular, the article identifies the penetration of an “exhibition form” into the structure of the films themselves. They are characterized by a “museal dimension”, not only because they draw their own materials (the paintings) from the museum, but also because they consider the paintings as devices that involve a certain materiality, as well as a precise relationship with the spectator. This “museal dimension” is obtained through the use of the figure of the tableau vivant, a particular dialectic between on-screen and off-screen, and the stratification of the images on multiple levels.