From An American in Paris: Identify and desire in two musicals by Vincente Minnelli
p. 47-60
Texte intégral
1In Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Peter Wollen recounts Joseph von Sternberg’s self-criticism for including a real exterior shot of the sea in The Saga of Anatahan, thereby ruining the ambiance of what was otherwise an artificially created film universe.1 It is interesting to note that the one startling exterior shot in Vincente Minnelli’s The Pirate is also of the sea. Doubtless, von Sternberg sought to place himself within an anti-realist tradition. As Wollen correctly points out, von Sternberg’s wanted to stress the iconic character of the cinematic sign at the expense of cinematography’s indexical and existential bond with reality. In this manner, he surely thought he was creating purer cinema by exploiting purely cinematic qualities.
2It would be easy and obvious to place the American musical, especially in its mature form as practiced by Minnelli, in this context if it wasn’t for that exterior shot of the sea, for in this act I read Minnelli’s deeper understanding of cinematic signification. It was not Minnelli’s intention to break the existential bond between image and reality, but to test its limits through an increasing refinement of visual abstraction and stylization. By placing the teal Caribbean in the context of the well-oiled mechanics of M-G-M studio product, Minnelli demonstrates his understanding of the latitude of directorial power in a way that captures effectively his philosophy of cinematic style. On one hand, the sea is something which is beyond directorial control—its movement dominates the content of the frame—except by virtue of its being filmed, which automatically sets up a polarity in the image between its iconic (the fact that it is a picture of the sea) and its indexical (the fact that it indicates the previous existence of the sea itself) qualities. But on the other hand, when this image is cut against an image of Manuela gazing in the direction of the wind with soulful eyes, the sea becomes a symbol outrunning its physical presence in the frame, signifying a young girl’s romantic fantasies of piracy on the high seas. Minnelli’s ability to evoke the mythic qualities of the film image far beyond its substance through stylization, while at the same time recognizing the limitations of its existential connection with reality, is part of his power as a director.
3And so, in the American musical this desire for an artificial world must be counter-balanced against an acknowledgment or recognition of “reality.” Moreover, this division between world and image is often reproduced as a split between character and actor, or rather, her or his star persona. The desire for a different world in the American musical (the spectator’s desire in the movie theater no less than the characters’ desire for a fantasy world that only music and dance can express) is also an ontological desire—the drive to uncover or to find again, identity or the truth of one’s identity, although, of course, this truth, too, only resides in an image. In this respect, sustaining fantasy in the musical relies on a peculiar “knowledge-effect” that structures the logic of performance. In the musical, the performer never disappears into the character; rather, what the audience desires is that the character find or express the performer within herself, or that the character become (again) the star we have always known her to be. Two films by Vincente Minnelli, The Pirate (1948) and An American in Paris (1951), exemplify this performative logic of identity and desire in the American film musical.2
4Throughout The Pirate, Minnelli develops a dramatic strategy that exploits the three dimensions of the cinematic sign. The dramatic mode of film narrative is necessarily that of acting, where the quality of performance determines a character’s domination of screen events. This domination is effected through the stylization of movement (both of the camera and the actor in dance) and of sound (in musical themes and especially songs). Additionally, the power of performance organizes desire through the relationship of actor to audience, and through the actor’s ability to create a dramatic fantasy of identity and desire motivated by his star-image. Moreover, this dramatic fantasy is often developed through an appeal to theatrical convention and by the extension of theatrical space into the framework of cinematic space.
5The Pirate opens with a storybook recitation by Manuela (played by Judy Garland) depicting her mythic conception of the pirate, Macoco, and her fantasies of romance on the high seas, the accumulation of untold wealth, and of sexual domination. On the image track, the story is conveyed through a series of illustrated pictures, the frame of which equals the frame of the film. At the end of the recitation, Manuela herself is shown among her girlfriends framed by the iron-work of an ivy-coveted veranda. When Aunt Inez enters with news of the arrangements for Manuela’s forthcoming marriage to Don Pedro, it is evident that Manuela is living in a closed, well-defined world over which she has little control. Her conception of what lies beyond those boundaries is defined by her fantasies (“I know the difference between the dream and practical worlds”), which further accent a provincial entrapment that will become irrevocable after her marriage. As Don Pedro, the new mayor, checks his appearance in the mirror before his interview with Manuela, we fully realize that he is the focal point and the reflection of this isolated, self-enclosed universe where love and marriage are mutually exclusive terms, and economic domination is confused with sexual domination almost to the point of religion (“He should be your saint, Manuela,” relates her Aunt Inez).
6Conversely, when Serafin (Gene Kelly) appears in Port Sebastian, he is coming off a ship, which is to say coming from beyond the frontiers of this enclosed world. He is defined within an open space, rising high above the crowd, riding atop Manuela’s trousseau. Serafin immediately dominates the crowd, and by virtue of his performance as an actor, the screen as well. As he checks his appearance in the mirror back-stage, we realize that he is the focal point and reflection of the stage world, and that instead of wishing to delineate a closed, introspective social universe, Serafin, with the characteristic vanity of an actor, wishes to extend the proscenium arch across the whole of Port Sebastian.

Niña
7Soon afterwards, in the “Nina” sequence, Serafin conquers the cinematic space by defining its borders through dance in an intricately choreographed duet with the cameta in which he moves around the town square, up on verandas and down drainpipes. He gains control over every girl in Port Sebastian by including them in the stylization of his fantasy, defined by the dance and especially by the song, which incorporates every girl into the paradigmatic category of “Niña.” This sexual control, however, by way of its abstraction, is merely symbolic and effective only to the extent that Serafin can perform his own mythos. This is an unruly desire, and at the end of the dance, he is once more strolling by himself.
8Serafin and Manuela finally meet at the extreme frontier of her sheltered universe—that is, the Caribbean Sea. His intrusion into that universe is no less abrupt and comically disturbing than that of the image of the real sea in what ate otherwise studio shots, and no less important to the progression of the narrative. For the equilibrium between the two poles of the film’s comic universe has been disturbed—the mutual exclusiveness of love and marriage placed in doubt—and there can be no resolution until this contradiction has been effaced.
9That night’s performance by Serafin’s troupe opens with the camera craning in on the stage until the proscenium entirely fills the frame. The trompe l’œil backdrop suggests a relationship between the stage and the cinematic space of Port Sebastian, which by implication extends to the cinematic space of the screen and our perception of it. In other words, the performance will only be effective to the extent that we give in to the mythic trompe l’œil of the theater qua screen.
10At this point, Manuela is flustered and uncomfortable. The closure of her room produces a comic claustrophobia and she is drawn down to the streets and rhe stage. The delighted Setafin sees it as his task to reveal her “romantic longings and hidden depths of emotion” through the power of hypnosis, in spite of the warning of one of his players (“Don’t do it, Captain. The last person you hypnotized hasn’t woken up yet!”). As the high priest of performance (the revolving mirror seems purposely consttucted to resemble a chalice) Serafin desires to mesmerize the audience and to bring out their emotions and actualize their fantasies, but his blossoming of Manuela backfires when she easily upstages him.
11During the “Mack the Black” number, the fact that it takes hypnosis to bring out the “Judy Garland” in Manuela is disturbing. We know that Judy Garland is a vibrant actress, that she possesses an existential bond with the character of Manuela, and that out mythic conception of this star must be actualized at a strategic point in the dramatic universe of the film. Despite the stylization of the sequence, there is a definite shift in her identity that makes her seem more “real,” as if she were finally fulfilling our desire as well as that of Serafin. Her song and dance dominate the screen in the same manner as Serafin’s did previously. Here Manuelas ability to evoke her romantic fantasies is structured by the necessity of placing all men in configuration with Mack the Black, in a relation that mirrors Serafin and “Niña.” Her performance enchants Serafin, as it does the audience. He leads het up to the stage, and unable to wake het by any other form of magic, kisses her, invading the fantasy actualized in her song and dance with romantic reality, thus destroying the performative space she has constructed. Frightened at her sudden awakening in unfamiliar territory, she rushes off to het room, closes off the outside, and demands to be taken back to the safety of the village.

Manuela
12The next scene opens with Manuela’s bridal silhouette being traced on a lace screen. Projected by a magic lantern, this image is reflexive expression of cinematic representation, which is placed in direct opposition to the image of the sea. In this regard, Manuela’s metaphoric movement in the narrative has receded from a tendency toward openness and freedom to one of closure and restraint; that is, her image is about to be inscribed in the well-defined social context of marriage.
13After Aunt Inez advises that one can make anything come true simply by wishing for it, Manuela’s caressing of the soggy hat that precipitated her meeting of Serafin, accompanied by the “Mack the Black” motif makes clear the fondness of her memory of Serafin and her association of him with her dreams of romance. But when her desire is immediately fulfilled by Serafin’s arrival, her reaction is completely different—at all costs, he is to be kept out of the house.
14Serafin, with characteristic impulsiveness, is not so easily defeated. He spryly climbs up to a veranda and walks a tight-tope into her room. This hilarious scene is cut back and forth between Serafin on the tight-tope and Manuela frantically trying to cut it, until Serafin walks into the familiarity of a two-shot and the privacy of Manuela’s bridal chamber. (A similar staging will play an important role in a subsequent scene between the two at Don Pedro’s house.) The ensuing argument between them is interrupted by Don Pedro’s arrival on the scene. His enraged bellowing makes it clear to the enlightened Serafin that he is indeed Mack the Black retired into the safety of a mayorship and a middle-class existence. This is precisely why Don Pedro can no longer “bear the sea.” Serafin comes to this realization while standing beneath the netting over Manuela’s bed, which resembles the drawn curtains of the proscenium, for soon afterward he hits upon the idea that the way to Manuela’s heart is through Macoco’s identity, just as Macoco wishes to find it through the wealth and respectability of Don Pedro. After all, if the infamous Mack the Black is able to play the part of town mayor, the famous Serafin, an actor who, according to his own claims, has been compared with the great David Garrick, is well qualified to play the pirate.
15In the following scenes, Serafin-as-Macoco conquers the village through his usual cinematic tactics. In the filmed universe, it is sufficient to invoke the mythic power of the pirate in order to actualize teal power over screen events. His triumphal dance, timidly but intently watched by Manuela from behind her shutters, builds in intensity until Manuela’s identification of herself with a white jackass at the beginning of the fantasy sequence elevates the narrative to a new level of abstraction in the pirate ballet, which temporarily suspends all codes of cinematic vraisemblance, exploding the film universe into a mythic world of movement, color, and sound, in which Serafin’s silhouette is much larger than himself.
16At this point in the narrative, Serafin-as-Macoco completely displaces Macoco-as-Don Pedro by taking over his house, his position of power over the town, and his bride-to-be within a period of ten minutes. This prompts Don Pedro to lock Manuela in her room and go for the Viceroy and the militia, while representatives from the village hover outside her door and beg that she give herself over as virgin sacrifice to the black Macoco. In opposition to Don Pedro as saint, Setafin is seen as “the devil incarnate” and an incarnation of the devil Macoco is exactly what he is. Manuela’s tearful refusals from behind the door ate undercut by comic melodrama when Minnelli shows us the inside of her room, where she busily beautifies herself to make her dream come true. As she checks her appearance in the mirror, thereby establishing herself as the dramatic focus of the narrative, her reflection is framed by the tell-tale netting over the bed. Her fantasies unveiled, she becomes the actress par excellence. She finally unlocks her door, moving from the sanctity of her room through the universal mourning of the town to Don Pedro’s house, where Serafin is waiting. Her marriage to Don Pedro is about to be ironically effected by proxy through Macoco’s identity.
17While Manuela waits for Serafin at Don Pedro’s house, one of the players inadvertently lets slip just exactly what is going on. “Isn’t this what, you’ve always dreamed about,” he says, at once connecting and divorcing Serafin from the role of Macoco. At this moment a startling thing happens. Manuela has been sitting on a divan resting against a wall. But at the moment of the revealing remark, there is a reverse shot from behind the divan where the camera cranes up slightly, at once calling attention to itself and completely violating the continuity of cinematic space. The model of closure that previously determined Manuela’s conscious actions has now been destroyed.
18When Serafin enters, she meets him on his own terms. As he tries for once in his life, to “drop the mask,” Manuela puts on a performance that not only blocks his attempts at truthfulness, but also insults his ability as an actor, putting him on the defensive. The scene is structured so that Manuela and Serafin are framed in two-shots that pan in such a way as to isolate one or the other off screen as the dynamics of the argument of Serafin’s ability to “play the actor” are developed. Ironically, it is now Manuela who has invaded and dominated the dramatic space precious to Serafin.
19Manuela coquettishly enters the next room to lay her trap for Serafin, and another interesting thing happens cinematically. As she systematically destroys the physical space of the setting by hurtling every available object at Serafin, the continuity of cinematic space is restored in a series of point of view shots that establish all four walls of the room. As she hits Serafin over the head with a painting, and then causes another to drop on him knocking him out, an equilibrium is restored. Manuela has finally reconciled her dreaming and practical worlds. She no longer needs the vehicle of the pirate fantasy and is able to love Serafin for himself. But with love comes another closed world that is interrupted by the militia.
20Serafin is effectively framed by Don Pedro because, in the Viceroy’s eyes, his appearance successfully fills the mythic image of the pirate (“Most men of your profession that I’ve come up against look more like bookkeepers than pirates. But you, you fill the eye!”). Manuela’s unsuccessful pleading is drowned by the drum rolls, and her discovery of Don Pedro’s true identity as she matches her engagement ring with the stolen booty shows that honesty isn’t enough to save Serafin from hanging. Serafin himself realizes that to save his life he must regain control of the cinematic space through a performance, moving the dramatic focus from the noose to the stage. When the Viceroy gives his consent, remarking, “There’s something rather perverse about all this,” the chains miraculously drop from Serafin’s hands.
21The stage is prepared and a trompe l’œil backdrop once more sets the mood. Serafin makes a quick-change, and in the “Be a Clown” number restores his domination of cinematic space by reactualizing the performative character of the star in song and dance. Afterwards, he tries his hypnosis act on Don Pedro but is interrupted by Aunt Inez who sweeps the revolving mirror from his hands. Manuela, though, comes to his aid by acting as if she was hypnotized, and Serafin leads her onto the stage. There she melodramatically reaffirms her love for Macoco the Magnificent, and disparages Don Pedro as an insignificant bumbler to such an extent that it brings out the Macoco in him. Enraged, he jumps on stage, invading the artificiality of theatrical space with real anger, and realigning all the previously confused identities. Tragedy and real death are averted when he is hit with a juggling pin and then set upon by actors armed with jumping hoops and fists, as the theater takes her revenge on the transgressor.
22Performance and the power of the star image win out in The Pirate. As a device for bringing out unconscious desire as performance, the revolving mirror is a compelling device for turning one image onto another. At one and the same time, it expresses a “true” image (star performance) and a division within the image in which the character does not recognize her or himself as a performer. This structure of divided identity and desire is taken to a new level in An American in Paris, where romantic crisis is again set in terms of the distance between character and actor, and the resolution of the romance depends upon our recognition of the character as a star, independent of the character himself.
23In this respect, from the very first moments of An American in Paris, Jerry Mulligan’s voice-over introduction to a mythic Paris and to his own character poses an interesting problem in the preservation of cinematic vraisemblance. As the camera follows along, Mulligan’s voice mediates and shapes our knowledge of his city, his street, his home, and finally himself. Before locating our narrator, the camera pauses at a window where two lovers are kissing and Mulligan must direct it up to his own sleeping form. We know that it will be the form of Gene Kelly, for we are seeking to link up the familiarity of voice to appearance. Mulligan wakes and puts his cramped artist’s garret in order with what turns out to be a quite elaborately choreographed dance. The scene eventually ends with Mulligan’s effacement of a self-portrait in charcoal.
24In this short sequence, we are immediately impressed with Mulligan’s physical grace as opposed to his dissatisfaction as an artist. And, just as the camera’s premature stop leads us to expect as a romantic complication in Mulligan’s life, we ate also led to expect the resolution of this complication to occur through Mulligan’s dancing. This is, after all, a musical and not a documentary on the lives of American artists in Paris.
25With respect to the similar, subsequent introductions of the two male co-stars, it is easy to see that narrative crisis and resolution will play out in a structure of identity and desire marked by a logic of méconnaissance/reconnaissance.3 Adam Cook, the disgruntled concert pianist who has never given a concert, dismisses the camera’s “mistake” with, “Naw, that can’t be me. He’s too happy.” Henri Baurel, the French music hall performer who everybody recognizes on the street, dismisses the youthful figure in the mirror with a similar admonition before his own image appears. There is, however, a fundamental difference between these two introductions and that of Jerry Mulligan—Oscar Levant is a disgruntled concert pianist turned actor and Georges Guétary is a French music hall performer turned actor. Within the méconnaissance/reconnaissance structure, their characters are recognized, complete, and isomorphic with their identities as actors, unlike that of Mulligan/Kelly.
26The borderline between the actor and his character is drawn by the voice-over narration. The presence of a first person narration, even a series of them, is not startling here, having been conventionalized in the 1940s with film noir. But a noir voice-over served to situate the narrator in the present and the narrative in the past—the subjectivity of the narrator was a function of the abstraction and subjectivity of the noirs visual universe. In An American in Paris, the case is startlingly different because the narration is simultaneous with and separate from the narrative. The image and voice tracks define two diegetic spaces that are formally separate but existentially related—we are led to think that the character has some sort of existence exterior to the narrative, that of the actor. When this idea is linked with the documentary connotations of such a narration (especially when it is opposed to the stylized fictions of the studio sets) the méconnaissant relationship between Kelly, the actor, and Mulligan, the character, is even more strongly pictured.
27Of equal interest is the introduction of Lise as the romantic focal point. Once again two separate but equal diegetic spaces are created, Lise’s image being evoked by Henri’s description of her as all things to all men, in reaction to Adam’s misogy-nistic responses, as her character evolves through the méconnaissancelréconnaisance structure: each statement of Henri’s is interpreted by Adam in his own garrulous way and Henri must reinterpret. The sequence begins with their reflecrions in a mirror, as the camera moves forward until the mirror’s frame fills the screen, dissolving to Lises series of dances, which portray each mood Henri evokes. Like Adam, the spectator sees Lise only through Henri’s reflection and Henri’s fantasy as mediated by his narration. The Lise he creates is a mythic being, a projection of his own desires, but she is no more mythic than our conception of Gene Kelly’s star persona. The narrative thus begins forming her as the logical complement to Mulligan/Kelly, since the audience has no prior, well-developed expectations about Leslie Caron (An American in Paris was her first film). A split is developed in her between the salesgirl and dancer, just as Kelly is split between the painter and dancer, that will require the accomplishment of their romantic union in the dance, specifically the dance by the Seine.
28From this perspective, the wealthy art patron, Milo, works very well as the romantic foil, for it is her intention to reinforce Jerry’s identity as a painter, and, not surprisingly, in a very bourgeois sense—his success will be determined by a production schedule within which he must produce a given number of paintings. Like most castrating figures, Milo is trying to substitute male sexual power for something she possesses, money. She wants Jerry for the show, for the sake of appearances, so that by the time he meets his deadline he will be just another museum piece, albeit a wealthy one. Her many “loans” to Jerry (car, chauffeur, materials, studio, etc.) are calculated to make him a successful artist by giving him the appearance of one. I don’t think that we are ever expected to believe that Jerry is a very talented painter, nor does he seem a very convinced or unreluctant artist except when inspired by Lisa’s love.
29The comic side of the méconnaissant is depicted in the cafe scene where Adam discovers that Jerry and Henri are in love with the same woman, and the chance of their recognition of that fact nearly sends him into a neurotic frenzy as the “love-strucked” exchange advice. If Milo substitutes money for sex, Adam clearly compensates orally. He understands her motives better than any other character because he understands the narcissism involved in Milo’s desire to mold Jerry in an image of her choosing (“Tell me, after the marriage, will you keep your maiden name?,” Adam remarks). Of course, Adam’s fantasy of playing, conducting, and congratulating himself in Gershwin’s Concerto in F is the most blatant example of narcissism in the film, and, to a certain extent, Henri’s fantasy of the many Lise’s is also narcissistic in his desire to have her conform to his projected images of her.
30In most comedies, filmed or otherwise, the moment of recognition is the moment of resolution, as the barriers to the romantic union are destroyed, but it is easy to see that Minnelli is working to subvert this strategy. The moment of Lise’s and Jerry’s recognition of their love for each other seems to be the moment that will separate them forever—Lise in her marriage to Henri, and Jerry in his economic union with Milo. The existence of their love has been contingent upon preserving a state of méconnaissance by agreeing not to acknowledge the presence of a world outside of the mselves. This world is defined by their descent from the garish bustle of the streets to the quiet, muted backdrop of the river walk. Their fantasy world is doomed from the start by the foreknowledge that one must always ascend again to the streets, and by the approach of the deadline set for their two marriages. Their relationship cannot last until it is recognized and incorporated into the larger community of the film, until descent and ascent are matched within the filmic space. Their desire to preserve their own special world underscores its intrinsic selfishness and self-deception.
31In this respect, Minnelli consistently undermines the comedic structure of the film. Ironically, the stare of recognition is the guarantee of separation, widening the internal division in the characters and forcing them back into roles that the audience finds untenable. The separation of Lise and Jerry is undeniably the bleakest point of a film that has, until this time, been generally light and optimistic. Furthermore, the meeting of the mismatched couples at the students’ ball, their gracious lies and polite beating, shows that the poles of the opposition have widened, opening up a chasm in the narrative into which all hopes of a comic resolution seem to be sliding, lost in the visual chaos of the ball. To escape this blind alley, Minnelli must find a way to close over this gap and resolve the narrative. This is precisely the function of the American in Paris ballet.
32Prior to the ballet, the presence of fantasy or daydream has caused a split in the narrative structure, a divergence; in other words, daydreams are the projections of desires, which are grounded in the everyday lives of the characters but are irresolvable as a function of the narrative. It is necessary to open up a space in the narrative to accommodate the fulfillment of the fantasy whose presence does not intrinsically progress the narrative. In this respect, the ballet, ostensibly Jerry’s daydream, signifies instead the resolution of a gap, a contradiction that has opened up in the narrative itself, vis-à-vis the split between Mulligan the painter and Kelly the dancer. The moment when Jerry walks through the united halves of his torn and discarded sketch to begin the ballet is an exciting moment of recognition for the audience, accomplishing, in fact, our desire. Ironically, this resolution is affected by essentially discarding the narrative and releasing the film’s potential for fantasy and abstraction. With respect to both character and narrative, Minnelli jettisons functionalism in favor of stylization, at a stroke resolving a structural tension that has been present from the film’s opening moment. The question is why does this outrageous resolution, which works admirably, seem so readily acceptable?
33The answer may be found in Minnelli’s use of the mirror metaphor, sometimes ostensibly on the visual plane (e.g. Lises introduction through Henri), but usually as an intrinsic part of Minnelli’s conception of the material of film itself. In this regard, character mirrors actor, style mirrors function, and cinema mirrors world as fantasy mirrors reality. For this idea to become more than simply the listing of a series of oppositions, it must be placed in the context of the “mirror-stage” conceived by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The fundamental idea behind Lacan’s argument is that the formation of the self is lodged in the moment of great joy when a child first recognizes his own image in a mirror. In “Le signifiant imaginaire,” Christian Metz applies this principle to cinematic perception, accounting for our fascination with the image not only as a moment of recognition and identification, but also in a feeling of power as the viewer takes an omniscient attitude towards his separateness and distance from the image.4 This concept is necessarily contingent upon a contradiction whereby the viewer recognizes a resemblance between himself and the projected world without accounting for or recognizing his distance from it.
34Here Minnelli’s grasp of the mirror metaphor takes the distance between viewet and image and converts it into a function of the narrative itself, reversing the opposition. In Minnelli’s œuvre, the moment of recognition is contingent upon the image’s separateness and differentness from the world, not its similarities. Minnelli accents distance in lieu of identification, turning méconnaissance into reconnaissance in an astounding dialectical somersault. When Jerry Mulligan fulfills his potential for becoming Gene Kelly, when each frame of a window, painting, or mirror fulfills its potential for becoming the frame of the film itself, then the cinema is in the presence of its own mirror-stage, in the first recognition of itself and its inherently cinematographic identity.
35The ballet is precisely a celebration of this recognition. In the Minnelli musical, one could easily make a case for the tendency to subvert traditional narrative structure in search of more cinematic forms. Minnelli’s narrative strategy has always involved the increasing refinement of visual stylization and abstraction of screen motion, particularly in the dance. It would be interesting to go through the ballet and to identify the various thematic concerns and narrative elements that are reflected from the rest of the film, but Minnelli’s stripping away of the narrative strait-jacket releases a connotative potential in the image that this soft of analysis would not do justice to. With respect to context, the ballet is contrasted to the rest of the film. The absence of dialogue signifies its freedom from the voice-over schizophrenia of the film’s beginning. In contrast to the preceding ball, the chaos of blacks and whites is transformed into a painstakingly choreographed dance of color and light. Stepping back behind the boundaries of the text, it is easy to see that the potential for this transformation has always been present, especially in the daydreams of Baurel and Cook. But while their fantasies were narcissistic, exclusive, and méconnaissant of the filmed world, the ballet is reconnaissant of the filmed world, self-inclusive, and exclusive of the méconnaissant characters, Baurel, Cook, and Milo. Jerry’s fantasy is a metaphor that is carried beyond the boundaries of his own character—it is, in many respects, the desire of the film itself to be recognized as such.
36At the end of the ballet, Kelly is left alone and diminished in extreme long shot, and must effect his transition back through the drawing and into the “real” world. For Minnelli, the recognition and exaltation of the cinema’s differentness necessitates a return from the fantasy world, just as Jerry and Lise must ascend from the river to the streets, and Manuela from the sea to the village. The desire to remain in the fantasy world is punishable by the threat of perpetual exclusion from it, as we have already seen. However, Minnelli has formulated his compromise with the tradition of the classic Hollywood cinema, for Lise and Jerry meet at the halfway point on the stairs, and thus will be able to continue their lives in the splendor of Minnelli’s Paris.
37This ending is somewhat open, compared to The Pirate, whose epilogue celebrates the resolution of identity and desire in the performative capacity of its leading man and lady. The story could quire satisfactorily conclude with the capture of Macoco, but instead, Minnelli casts aside a conventional ending in favor of an encore performance where Serafin and Manuela, now seeming more like Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, launch into a rousing finale of “Be a Clown.” The entire sequence takes place on the little stage, which now fills the screen (cinema again recognizing its own desire), and the backdrop is now merely decorative father than trompe l’œil. This scene is a final, glorious tip-of-the-hat to the artifice of theatrical and cinematic conventions. “Sure we’re actors,” they seem to be saying, “and this is cinema. But isn’t that why you love us?” This is why it is unreasonable to set Minnelli in an anti-realist tradition: he glorifies the ambiguity of cinematic signification, which pulls both towards and against its existential bond with reality; and sometimes, he even transcends those ambiguities through a cinematic self-consciousness while never letting the reins out of his hands. The convention may be perverse, as the Viceroy seems to think; but, after all, would we love the Hollywood musical if it did not solicit our desire and confirm its identity there?5
38This essay is based on two of my earliest texts, which first appeared as program notes for the Cinema Texas film series at the University of Texas at Austin. Written as a graduate student in February 1977, just before my first year abroad in Paris, I offer them here in a revised form to Jean-Pierre Berthomé, whose friendship reminded me, more than twenty years later, what it means to love American musicals in France.
Notes de bas de page
1 Indiana University Press, 1969, p. 137.
2 On identity and desire in the musical, also see my essay “Le circuit du désir,” in Le cinéma américain: analyses de films, II, Flammarion, 1980, p. 163-190.
3 On structures of identity and desire as a logic of méconnaissance and reconnaissance, see Jacques Lacan’s essay “Le stade de miroir comme formateur de la fonction Je,” dans Ecrits, Seuil, 1966, p. 93-100.
4 In Le signifiant imaginaire, 10/18, 1977, p. 9-109.
5 This essay is based on two of my earliest texts, which first appeared as program notes for the CinemaTexas film series at the University of Texas at Austin. Written as a graduate student in February 1977, just before my first year abroad in Paris, I offer them here in a revised form to Jean-Pierre Berthome, whose friendship reminded me, more than twenty years later, what it means to love American musicals in France.
Auteur
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David Rodowick
David Rodowick is Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. His most recent books is The Virtual Life of Film (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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