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Transcript of Jeanne Dielman
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Deja-Vu Melodrama: An Iconographical and Iconological Analysis of
"Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"
Editor's Note: As you will notice, this is quite a long essay on many aspects
of Chantal Akerman's masterwork which has reopened this week at FilmForum with a new 35mm print. This article investigates and discusses
specific details about the film, including the possibly shocking ending (if
you don't know what's coming). While this essay may help inform a first
viewing of the film, it includes "spoilers" of the events that take place in the
film not that there are really that many. Just wanted to warn everyone
going in. JH
The purpose of this essay is to investigate what I shall claim is a liaison
between Chantal Akermans 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du
Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and the melodrama. Multifarious by nature,
Jeanne Dielman consequently resists being shoehorned into any specific
category, genre, or mode, thus the aim here is not to force an overdetermined
prefix onto the film, but rather to highlight its critical potential as it engagesin a larger sociopolitical and aesthetic discourse both with and via the
melodrama. By analyzing the structure of the film, together with its use of
mise-en-scne, the focus in the first part of the essay will be on elements the
film appropriates from the melodrama, and how the relationship between the
melodrama and Jeanne Dielman can be characterized, via investigating to
what degree the film can be defined as a generic pastiche. This
iconographical analysis will further compare the film in relation to the
framework of the Hollywood family melodrama, as defined and explainedby Thomas Elsaesser in his article "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations
on the Family Melodrama."
The second part of the essay will focus on different levels of critique
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inherent in the filmic text of Jeanne Dielman, by focusing on three such
critical discourses I believe the film engages in. The first, and most basic
level of critique has to do with the relationship between Jeanne Dielman as
an avant-garde and/or modernist film and its attitude towards the
traditional and commercial art institutions and industry in this context theHollywood industry and specifically the Hollywood family/domestic
melodrama. The second and third levels of critique will be investigated in
relation to the films ambiguous ending, through looking at the pre-
determined socio-political framework inherent in the melodrama: the
bourgeois framework, which defines much of the realm of the (Hollywood)
melodrama. This aspect will be highlighted through a discussion of the
films relation and approach to the happy ending, where further the feminist
potential of the film will be researched though looking at different feministinterpretations of the film. Finally, these aesthetical and political discourses
of Jeanne Dielman will be brought together and considered in relation to the
ideological schematics and categories of Comolli and Narbonis canonical
1969 essay Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.
Melodrama and the structure of Jeanne Dielman
Jeanne Dielman of the films title is a widow and a housewife/homemaker of
the petite bourgeoisie in Brussels, who lives alone with her teenaged son
Sylvain, and earns her income through prostitution, accepting a different
client in her apartment every afternoon. Over the course of three days in
diegetic time, the film depicts in great detail the quotidian routine and
platitude of the protagonists life, a routine that consists of conducting banal
household chores. As Jeanne Dielman with small, precise gestures and
minimal effort peels potatoes, shines her sons shoes, prepares dinner or
brews coffee, the camera continually keeps her in medium close-up as she
spends large parts of the day in the kitchen. There is further an absence of
the shot-reverse-shot editing technique found in classical Hollywood
continuity style, as the protagonist is constantly to be found within the static
frame, or in two-shots with her son. The shots varies between being long
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often longer than two minutesand consequently constitute whole scenes or
sequences, rhythmically interrupted by intervals of shorter shots, as Jeanne
paces back and forth between the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the
bathroom, and back. Most of Jeannes actions are depicted in real time, with
no edited cuts or ellipsis, so for example when Jeanne peels potatoes or takesa bath, it will take three full minutes both in the diegetic and real time
everything is literally done as well as enacted. A notable exception to this
convergence of diegetic and real time happens as Jeanne welcomes her daily
male customer into the apartment, and leads him to the bedroom which she
has carefully prepared by letting in fresh air and putting a white towel over
the bed covers. In these events the camera does not follow Jeanne into
bedroom as it has done earlier, but rather lingers in the hallway, and through
ellipsis and progressively darker lighting, the passing of time is marked.Extremely little dialogue is uttered in the film, with the exception of hasty
conversation at nightas Sylvain is in the habit of interrogating his taciturn
mother about sex and sexualityoften in relation to his deceased father;
when Jeanne formally greets her male customers, and lastly brief exchanges
of dinner recipes with her neighbor.
The film presents and depicts Jeannes routine in great detail, and the same
actions are to a large degree repeated every day. In the same way that the
film invests a lot of time in establishing Jeannes routine, it spends close to
the same amount of time on the unraveling of this routine. It is a about
halfway through the films running time, then, and correspondingly close to
halfway through the three days of the films diegesis, that Jeannes first
mistake is made, and she finally but unwillingly disrupts the routine she so
carefully seems to have organized and imposed on herself1. This first
rupture happens as Jeanne during the afternoon of the second day, as usual,
goes to put her hard-earned cash in the porcelain soup tureen that stands on
her living room table, but forgets to put on the lid, which is her usual habit.
Jeanne discovers this mistake later in the evening, as Sylvain gets home
from school, and puts the lid back on. And so, throughout the following day
which is the third and last day of the films narrativeeverything really
begins to unravel around Jeanne Dielman and her routine massively falls
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apartbeginning with an undone button in her robe, shoeshine spilt on the
sleeve of her night gown, and then her schedule becomes displaced as she
arrives at the post office too early, then at her regular caf too late. When she
returns to her apartment that afternoon, she discovers that has received a gift
from her sister that she barely has time to open before her male client of theday arrives, and she hurriedly hides the gifta pink nightgownunder her
bed, leaving the pair of scissors she opened the parcel with on the dresser.
Here then, for the first time in the film, the camera follows Jeanne into the
bedroom with the customer, and the film finally reaches its climax
literallyas Jeanne unexpectedly has an orgasm. Also for the first time, the
camera is positioned above Jeanne, who is laying on her back on the bed,with the client on top of her. The film then cuts to Jeanne sitting in front of
the mirror in her bedroom, which reflects the customer dozing off on her
bed, and as Jeanne finishes buttoning her blouse and straightening her skirt,
she gets up, grabs the pair of scissors, exits the frame, then suddenly
reappears in the mirror frame as she plunges towards the man, stabbing the
scissors in his throat and consequently kills him. In the next and last scene,
Jeanne quietly sits in the dark by her dining table, vis--vis the soup tureen,
for seven whole minuteshands and clothes bloodied.
The film operates with several codes and elements from the Hollywood
family melodramas vernacular and structure, which is perhaps signified to
the fullest through the films mise-en-scne, and corresponds to Thomas
Elsaessers claim that the melodrama is iconographically fixed by the
claustrophobic atmosphere of the bourgeois home and/or the small-town
setting (62). Interestingly then, in Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles, even the title of the film, which gives the full address of the
protagonist, fences the character in, and defines her within a very limited
and ineluctable sphere: the bourgeois home. For Elsaesser, this signifies the
iconographical framework of the melodrama, but as I shall argue in the
following, it is also the iconological framework in Jeanne Dielman, that the
film explores and critiques from different angles.
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Inside her apartment, Jeanne is surrounded by quotidian objects, each
assigned a very specific function, not to mention a specific place in the
apartment where it belongs, as Jeanne meticulously and compulsively puts
everything back in the right place after having used the object, so that the
dish used for breakfast is immediately cleansed before re-using the same
dish for lunch, and the tote bag is emptied and hung up on the hook above
the sink after grocery shopping. In a similar way, Jeanne Dielman has her
own defined place in the apartment where she belongsthe kitchen, where
she spends most of her time seated at the kitchen table preparing meals, or
standing by the stove waiting for potatoes to boil or coffee to brew. Also
confirming Jeannes designated place in the kitchen is the color schema of
the film, which operates with a palette of grays, greens, browns and blues,
and Jeanne too becomes a part of this mise-en-scne when she puts on her
blue and gray checkered kitchen apron and consequently in a chameleon-like
way becomes a completely integrated part of the environmentthe kitchen
sphere, from which she cannot be separated but is completely absorbed.
However, not only does the mise-en-scne define Jeanne Dielman within
this atmosphere, but as we have seen, the cinematography too. Jeanne is
constantly in the frame in medium close-up throughout the films running
time, with the exception of the moments when she moves between rooms. Inthis sense, the film is doubly confirming Jeannes role within the four walls
of her home, both through the camera framing, and with the mise-en-scne.
Together, these elements underline the extremely defined boundaries of her
existence.
The films use of excess is another element of the film that corresponds to
the melodrama, and in Jeanne Dielman this is first and foremost an excess oftime signified through repeated gestures, actions, and routine. As we have
seen, the film uses diegetic time synchronically with real time, and scenes
that would normally only be referenced or hinted to as an off-screen event in
a commercial Hollywood melodrama, is instead played out from beginning
till endthen recycled and accumulated, such as the preparing of meals,
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doing the dishes, drinking a cup of coffee, et cetera. Elsaesser explains that
in the melodrama there is: an intensified symbolization of everyday actions,
the heightening of the ordinary gesture and a use of setting and decor so as
to reflect the characters fetishist fixations (56). In Jeanne Dielman it is this
strict routine and schedule that functions as the fetishist fixation of Jeannein the film, and consequently the intensification and accumulation of these
ordinary gestures presses the narrative and the character towards as
resolution, as her surroundings and routine will become increasingly
problematic and suffocating, (elements which will be further explored when
discussing the films ending in later parts of the essay).
Jeanne Dielman and pastiche
As we understand how Jeanne Dielman employs much of the structure and
vernacular of the melodrama, it is however clear that the film is not a typical
or conventional melodrama in itself, as it displaces and negates much of the
generic conventions of the genre or mode. Ivone Margulies in her book
Nothing Happens, has articulated Jeanne Dielmans appropriation of the
melodrama as such:
Jeanne Dielman continuously evokes the feeling that its narrative spreads
over, selects and recombines elements of another, fully constituted narrative.
The film seems to stretch over a conventional narrative and to displace its
melodramatic affect, otherwise conspicuously absent, into banal and
mundane gestures. At times, an action like brushing shoes, or waiting for
water to boil for coffee, seems to take on the dramatic intensity of one of
those incidents in a 40s Hollywood melodrama when someone slaps
someones face or waits anxiously for a lover (84).
As becomes evident with this quote, there does not exist any specific pre-
text for the pastiche, but rather a whole decade of Hollywood melodramas.
In this sense, the nature of Jeanne Dielman as a pastiche must be
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characterized as highly palimpsestic, as it is layered over a whole subgenre
of melodramasthe family and domestic melodramas, by appropriating
certain elements of the melodrama such as the bourgeois milieu, the female
heroine in a claustrophobic setting, and her repressed sexuality, while other
elements are negated or displaced like the excess of emotion, the negation ofmelos, and more. In this sense, the film can be understood as a generic
pastiche of the family/domestic Hollywood melodrama, as it pastiches the
framework of the melodrama more than quoting any specific film. In
addition, I will here suggest that the film is a simulacral pastiche: a copy
with no original, which effectively allows the film to simultaneously
establish a strong relationship with the melodrama, while also critiquing and
subverting it, as it is neither too close nor too distant from it. Thus, in
concordance with Richard Dyers assertion that: pastiche reminds us that aframework is a framework (177), Jeanne Dielman highlights both the
qualities that correspond to, or negates the melodrama, and the framework
and structure of the melodrama itself becomes important because the
pastiche must always remind its audience that it is one step removed from
that which it pastiches.
If we consider the film a generic (simulacral) pastiche of the Hollywood
family/domestic melodrama, perhaps pastiche as it is utilized in this context
lies closer to the postmodernist definition of the term as advocated by
Frederic Jameson, who places the pastiche close to the parody (Dyer 157),
like Jeanne Dielman here seems to have chosen the family melodrama as its
generic clich (Margulies 85). For example, elements that points towards
parody are: the constant allusions to the Freudian Oedipal-conflict, as
Elsaesser points out was employed extensively in the Hollywood family
melodrama (58). In Jeanne Dielman, this element is close to being ironical
and comical, like how the relationship between Jeanne and Sylvainmother
and sonis articulated through overt references to the Oedipal drama, as
when Sylvain expresses anger towards his deceased father for using his
phallic sword on his mother, and the question of the (law of the) father and
patriarchy becomes central, as Sylvains relation to his mother is
fundamentally characterized by his oscillating between wanting to be like, or
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unlike, his father (Nowell-Smith 71). As the film echoes the structure of the
melodrama and plays with our expectations towards the genre as suggested
by Margulies, the overt emphasis on the Oedipal conflict seems like a
fundamentally parodical element of the film. In this sense, the film seems to
be masquerading itself as a melodrama, which is to say that the filmironically poses as a melodrama while at the same time is clearly aware that
it is not, which it signals through employing several aspects of the
melodramatic framework and vernacular, while at the same time
exaggerating some of these aspects, while displacing or negating yet others.
And so, by making a detour to photography and the artist Cindy Sherman, I
will illustrate and exemplify in what way Jeanne Dielman is a parodical and
simulacral pastiche of the melodramatic genre or mode.
Cindy Sherman developed a series of photographs named Untitled Film
Stills in the mid-1970s, in which she poses in front of the camera dressed up
in costumes, imitating conventional female stereotypes in Hollywood films
where the housewife-character from the melodrama recurs. However, these
photographs are not replicas of any pre-existing film (stills), they rather play
with the memory and familiarity of the audience with the melodrama, byoperating with a clearly recognizable iconography. Like Jeanne Dielman
then, Cindy Shermans Film Stills never refer to any specific film, actor, or
character, but the composition of the images, and the mise-en-scne is
fundamentally recognizablemuch like a dja-vuso that the question of
the referent will always be evoked. However, there is no specific referent in
existence, and the images rather exist as monadic signs. I would assert that
this is also the case with Jeanne Dielman, which through its agency of being
a generic and simulacral pastiche is heavily referencing the melodrama, butto pinpoint specifically what it pastiches becomes difficult, as there is no
single scene, line of dialogue, or part of the mise-en-scne which implies a
referent, or an original. Instead, it is the memory of the melodrama that is
evoked in the spectator, from seeing the pastiche, and experiencing a dja-
vu.
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Critiquing melodrama from the inside-out and the outside-in
As a simulacral pastiche of the melodrama, Jeanne Dielman draws attention
to its structure and framework by negating or displacing several elements ofthe melodrama, while enhancing yet others. In this sense, by employing the
structure and vernacular of the melodrama, Jeanne Dielman succeeds in
critiquing the genre or mode, both from the inside-out as well as from the
outside-in.
Remembering that Jeanne Dielman is an avant-garde and modernist
film, we understand that this critique and foregrounding of the filmsstructure and technique is in large part inherent to its avant-
gardist/modernist nature, and that this critique will be directed towards
the institutions and definitions of established practice, as well as negating
the dominant cinema (Smith 399). In this context, the Hollywood family
melodrama is the dominant cinema institution that is criticized. One element
of critique in Jeanne Dielman is expressed via negating conventions of
Hollywood film, which first of all is manifest with the length of the film,
which is more than double the length of the mainstream Hollywood film.
Elsaesser points out how the Hollywood melodramas needed to be
compressed as a commercial necessity (52). As an avant-garde film,
however, the same commercial conditions and/or conventions do not apply,
and in Jeanne Dielman, the length of the film is foregrounded to accentuate
the false narrative efficiency of the family melodramas, as they leave out the
very elements that Jeanne Dielman chooses to highlightnamely the
platitude and banality of the protagonists routine, life, and existence.
The cinematography is a further critique of the conventional film language
in Hollywood melodramas, as it refuses to film Jeanne in close-up, or show
her point of view. Instead, we see her in medium close-up, in an open frame,
and are never allowed her point of view. Another element the film critiques
and subverts is the films use of excess. However the excess of time in
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Jeanne Dielman does not correspond directly to the melodramas excess of
pathos and action, or even melos, it is cosequently a fundamentally different
use of the pattern of excess than found in the conventional family
melodrama. This gap as well as others, between the melodrama and Jeanne
Dielman as an avant-garde film, opens up for a critical discourse of themelodrama, and it is especially the ending of the film that have sparked
fruitful discussions of the film in film theory.
Feminist and political critique
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith in his article Minnelli and Melodrama defines themelodrama as a fundamentally bourgeois formmade for and by the
bourgeoisiecreating a sphere where no social power exists and where
characters can really only occupy the middle ground (71). Jeanne Dielman
both incorporates and foregrounds this class construct and its relationship
with the melodrama as a generic pastiche. The claustrophobic framework of
class and genre conventions that belong to the realm of melodrama becomes
accentuated in the films denouement, and questions whether a happy ending
is really possible according to the genre or mode. In the elongated ending of
the film, which starts with the protagonists mishaps and miscalculations and
further accelerates into a total disintegration of her routine and schedule, the
narrative slowly presses towards a resolution as Jeannes ineluctable
situation with a life consisting ofand dominated byquotidian objects
and strict routine has finally crowded in on her, becoming more and more
complicated and excessive. Ernst Bloch discusses the happy ending in
relation to capitalist and socialist societies in his book The Principle of
Hope, and writes:
The consciousness reaches the other side in a mediated way, enters into the
struggle for the happy end, which already senses itself, almost announces
itself in the dissatisfaction with what is available. The discontented person
then sees all at once how bad capitalist conditions are and how urgently the
socialist beginnings need him (444).
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Here, Blochs writings can be transferred to Jeanne Dielman who signifies
the discontented person, dissatisfied with what is available for her within
the capitalist-bourgeois sphere she inhabits, and therefore already
envisioning a happy ending for herselfeven if it might be in despite of
herself. In addition, the feminist text of the film adds another dimension to
the dissatisfaction of Jeanne Dielman, underlining her repressed situation, as
she is probably forced into prostitution to make money in a society that
defines her role within the domestic sphere where her capitalist
responsibility is to consume goods, but not participate in the profit-making
side of capitalism. Instead, as a widow with modest means whose first
obligation is to take care of her son and run a representative household, not
being able access the male-dominated job market freely, has had to find
alternative ways of earning money: hence prostitution. Jayne Loader
describes her as such: [Jeanne] is presented as an automaton, geared for
maximum efficiency and functioning perfectly, a victim of both the domestic
science movement and the petit-bourgeois Belgian culture that produced
her (330).
In the essay Classical Hollywood film and melodrama E. Ann Kaplanwrites: for feminists, melodramas open up space prohibited by the so-called
classical realist film text, which is restricted to oppressive patriarchal norms
(278). Here then, it becomes interesting to consider how various feminist
critics have interpreted the ending of the film differently, and how they
evaluate to what degree Jeanne Dielman opens up space. Feminist critics
Jayne Loader and Claire Johnston represent two opposite poles in their
evaluation and interpretation of the film with its ending. Johnston
approaches Jeanne Dielman from a semantic and psychoanalytic point ofview in her essay Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses, which
builds on Laura Mulveys essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,
and asserts that the film signifies a repressed sexuality with the main
character, which in the ending erupts like a parapraxis in the moment of
jouissance. For Johnston, the murder of the male client functions as an
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annulment of this pleasure and takes place to restore the symbolic
(patriarchal) order (326), and she further evaluates that this ending has
positive connotations for feminism, as it has succeeded in underlining the
artificiality of the patriarchal language and the Symbolic Order (326).
In contrast to Johnston, who summa summarum evaluated the film and its
ending as a successful critique of the dominant patriarchal cinematic
language, Loader in her essay Jeanne Dielman: Death in Installments
reads the same ending as a capitulation to the same patriarchal language, by
turning to violence in the films ending. As Loader points out, both Jeanne
and Sylvain are victims in this film, but as Jeanne willingly accepts her
victimized position she is consequently responsible for the victimization ofher son, through conserving the traditional patriarchal values (333).
Therefore, the murder cannot be a total act of liberation for the character,
because it does not express a rebellion towards patriarchy per se. Instead, for
Loader, the murder symbolizes the monstrosity of Jeanne, as she is willing to
go to extremes to have autonomy in the only sphere possible: the home
(334).
A third reading of the films ending, then, is done by Ivone Margulies in her
book Nothing Happens. Margulies is fundamentally skeptical towards
psychoanalytic readings of the film, as it for her seems dangerous to assume
that the unconscious of the character can be made cinematically visible,
and further warns against reducing the film to its climactic murder scene
(95). Instead, Margulies reads the murder as a narrative necessity, as the film
is using a narrative clich which demands a resolution (98). However, for
Margulies it is impossible to argue either for or against whether Jeanne acts
through a monotonous, routine, nonintelligent movement automatically
or instead of her own will autonomously (99). Important to remember
then, is Linda Williams explanation that the female hero [in melodrama]
often accepts a fate that the audience at least partially questions (Williams
in Margulies, 1996, 85).
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Perhaps these various interpretations of the ending will always co-exist, in
addition to possible other readings. In this sense, characterizing the ending
as either happy or unhappy is difficult, if not impossible, as the film
oscillates between the two, and therefore occupies the same middle ground
where Nowell-Smith places the characters of the melodrama, with the lack
of social power to go beyond its determined framework, even if the dream of
achieving a happy end, as Bloch suggests, will always be present. Therefore,
according to the genre conventions of the melodrama, the protagonist exists
within an overdetermined situation, fenced in by the social, political, and
economical framework of the (petite) bourgeoisie, that forces the protagonist
to realize what is on the other side of the fence: the happy endingand
pushes the protagonist into a struggle for itwhile at the same time
disallowing the protagonist to fully achieve this happy ending, but instead
allowing for an unhappy happy endingthe middle ground between the two
alternatives.
Cinema/Ideology/Criticism
Having highlighted the different levels of aesthetic and political critique at
work in Jeanne Dielman, it becomes interesting to consider the film in
relation to the heavily influential essay by Narboni and Comolli from 1969,
contemporary with the film itself. For Comolli and Narboni, all cinema was
inherently ideological, or an expression of the dominant ideology. The
question was only to what extent the film was aware of this fact itself, and
how it approached the ideological system it functioned within. According tothis idea, the authors developed a system of categories and arranged films
according to their (critical) approach to the dominant ideology.
As Jeanne Dielman operates with an ideological critique on (at least) two
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levelsboth politically and aestheticallyor on the level of the signified
and signifier, as Comolli and Narboni writes, the category (b) seems to
summarize neatly the potential of critique inherent in Jeanne Dielman.
According to Comolli and Narboni, for a film to belong to this category, the
film must engage in a double action, attacking the ideological assimilation ofthe film on two fronts, namely on the level of both the signifier and
signified. The latter here means dealing directly with a political subject
(816), which Jeanne Dielman quite frankly does through tackling both a
feminist and (bourgeois) political subject-matter. On the level of the
signifier, it is an attack of the dominant form, which is implied, and which
we also have seen that Jeanne Dielman does, through its pastiching and
appropriating the melodrama, while at the same time critiquing this genre or
mode from within.
And so, via this iconographic and iconological analysis which has
investigated the Hollywood family melodramas vernacular and framework
and its liaison with the avant-garde film Jeanne Dielman, I hope to have
illustrated how the film ultimately succeeds in analytically critiquing the
melodrama genre or modefrom both the outside and insideby
employing certain tropes and structural codes of the melodrama, while at the
same time subverting and negating several of these same elements. Reading
the film as a simulacral and generic pastiche of the melodrama, the
relationship between the melodrama and Jeanne Dielman allows for an
understanding of how the film can be defined as a copy with no original.
Finally, by pastiching and appropriating elements from the melodrama, the
film opens up an arena for several layers of critique, both on an aesthetical
level, as well as on a political level in relation to the films ambiguous
ending, which ultimately illustrates how the film corresponds to the category
(b) of Comolli and Narbonis ideological classification system.
Bibliography:
Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
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1995.
Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale
University
Press, 1995.
Comolli, Jean Louis, and Jean Narboni. "Cinema/Ideology/Criticism."
Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Sixth ed.
vols. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969/1989.
Dyer, Richard. Pastiche: Knowing Imitation. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Elsaesser, Thomas. "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family
Melodrama." Home Is Where the Heart Is. Ed. Christine Gledhill. vols.
London: British Film Institute, 1987.
Fowler, Cathy. "Chantal Akerman." The Oxford Guide to Film Studies.
Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Art and Culture. Critical
Essays.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
Johnston, Claire. "Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some These."
Movies and Methods. An Anthology. Ed. Bill Nichols. Vol. 2. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
Kaplan, E. Ann. "Classical Hollywood Film and Melodrama." The Oxford
Guide to
Film Studies. Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998.
Krauss, Rosalind. Cindy Sherman 1975 1993. New York: Rizzoli
International
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Publications, 1993.
Loader, Jayne. "Jeanne Dielman: Death in Installments." Movies and
Methods.
An Anthology. Ed. Bill Nichols. Vol. 2. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
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