This article analyzes the cinematographic means used by Roman Polanski in Death and the Maiden to portray the characters of the movie and the relationship between them. It discusses how Polanski toys ...with the thriller convention to create a cognitive dissonance in the viewer and uses artistic devices to reflect the process of restoring the identity by the protagonist. In particular, the author examines the frame of the movie and its compositional and semantic functions and compares selected scenes with René Magritte's paintings, to show how the director depicts the experience of the main character and the blurring of boundaries between the perpetrator and the victim. Also, colours, props, and landscape motifs associated with each character are analyzed to explain their symbolic and dramatic function in the film.
El cine de Roman Polanski es uno de los más ejemplos más clarificadores del empleo de la escenografía como catalizador psicológico. En una de sus aportaciones al género cinematográfico del terror ...psicológico y del fantástico, Rosemary’s Baby (La semilla del diablo, 1968), se consolidan muchas de las constantes audiovisuales que podrían formar parte de dicho mecanismo, que bien podríamos denominar «dispositivo escenográfico-psicológico». Se trata de un sistema estético que parece conformar y unir gran parte del cine del director francés. El presente estudio indagará acerca de dichas operaciones textuales escenográficas, que se erigen como una de las principales bases de la identidad visual del largometraje, especialmente en sus secuencias oníricas, seleccionadas oportunamente para esta disección.
Marek Hlasko's literary autobiography is a vivid, first-hand account of the life of a young writer in 1950s Poland and a fascinating portrait of the ultimately short-lived rebel generation. Told in a ...voice suffused with grit and morbid humor, Hlasko's memoir was a classic of its time. In it he recounts his adventures and misadventures, moving swiftly from one tale to the next. Like many writers of his time, Hlasko also worked in screen writing, and his memoir provides a glimpse into just how markedly the medium of film affected him from his very earliest writing days. The memoir details his relationships with such giants of Polish culture as the filmmaker Roman Polanski and the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski. Hlasko is the most prominent example of a writer who broke free from the Socialist-Realist formulae that dominated the literary scene in Poland since it fell under the influence of the Soviets. He made his literary debut in 1956 and immediately became a poster boy for Polish Literature. He subsequently worked at some of the most important newspapers and magazines for intellectual life in Warsaw. Hlasko was sent to Paris on an official mission in 1958, but when he published in an \u00e9migr\u00e9 Parisian press his novel of life in post-War Poland, he was denied a renewal of his passport. In effect, he was called back to Poland, and when he refused to return he was stripped of his Polish citizenship. He spent the rest of his life working in exile. Marek Hlasko was a rebel whose writing and iconoclastic way of life became an inspiration to those of his generation and after. Here, in the first English translation of his literary memoir, Ross Ufberg deftly renders Hlasko's wry and passionate voice.
Repulsión (Repulsion, Roman Polanski, 1965) es una de las películas más interesantes de la filmografía de su director por lo significativo de los temas tratados —la alienación del individuo en las ...sociedades modernas, fundamentalmente— y la narrativa audiovisual que se emplea para expresarlos. La bibliografía de referencia en los estudios sobre Polanski coincide en señalar que las películas del cineasta son representativas de la crisis de la modernidad que se debate en el pensamiento filosófico, particularmente en Francia, a mediados del siglo XX. Hay, sin embargo, pocos análisis que exploren la conexión entre esa cuestión y el lenguaje narrativo de Polanski. Este artículo estudia el modo en que el director emplea en Repulsión los cinco componentes fundamentales de la sintaxis cinematográfica —imagen, montaje, narración, sonido y puesta en escena— para expresar algunas ideas claves de la crisis de la modernidad, como la oposición entre libertad individual y vida en sociedad, objetivismo contra subjetivismo, y orden frente a caos.
Roman Polanski's films frequently portray experimental configurations of identity. In this article, I use an auteurist approach to investigate the effect of Polanski's blending of the inanimate with ...the animate in The Tenant (1976) and The Lamp/Lampa (1959), and how that blend effectively yields a new hybrid identity, one that erases the notion of an autonomous self. I argue that this hybrid entity occupies the liminal space of Masahiro Mori's 'uncanny valley'. I use interdisciplinary research on the psychological effect of victimization, as well as Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject and the lens of genre studies (in terms of analysing aspects of the horror film) in order to explore how Polanski's films activate the uncanny valley. This exploration leads to the conclusion that these films ultimately seek to contain the disruptive potential of the inanimate other encroaching on the territory and borders of the animate self and thereby reject the possibility of total integration between self and other (or 'us'es and 'them's) in the real world.
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