A autoralidade no cinema de Luchino Visconti: filmes à deriva

Abstract

In this thesis, I present the result of a bibliographic, iconographic and filmographic research that investigates the possibility of adherence of Luchino Visconti's cinematographic work to the politique des auteurs, a theoretical movement of cinematographic criticism that emerged in the 1950s in the pages of the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and that since then it has influenced the parameters of film analysis adopted by countless critics, essayists and researchers. Also known as the author's theory, it advocates the existence of film directors whose films express an original and creative worldview, using recurring themes and audiovisual characteristics that show that the director has an identifiable philosophical and artistic identity throughout his work. Although Visconti is solidly established as an essential director in 20th century cinematography, he is rarely mentioned or studied through the prism of the author's theory, which made me consider it pertinent to open new analytical strands on a work that remains in full availability and circulation. . We defined as the research corpus three feature films considered by critics as dissonant in the Viscontian opus: White Nights (1957), The Foreigner (1967) and Ludwig (1973), which at the time of their release were received with several reservations and still today are treated as works of lesser relevance in the director's filmography. In this choice, we start from the premise that despite the existence of problematic issues detected in these films, if their exegesis supports the concept of authorship, it becomes possible to extend this vision to the whole of the Italian master's work. This approach represents a challenge for scientific research, because the politique des auteurs was never programmatically elaborated by its creators and therefore any advance in this theoretical field needs to overcome the scarcity of specific texts with a careful reading of the critical fortune generated around the filmmakers elected as canon by the movement. In the first chapter of this thesis, we structure and categorize the elements that emerge from the reading of texts produced and interviews conducted by authorist critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, as well as the textual production of authors such as André Bazin, Andrew Sarris, Antoine de Baecque, Jacques Aumont, Peter Wollen and Robert Stam. In the second chapter, we analyze the creative trajectory and the construction of Visconti's personal style, taking as a theoretical basis the approach of David Bordwell in the stylistic field, 9 which promotes the interrelation between technique and the inner meaning of the image, also using the writings of the author himself and testimonies preserved in the form of interviews. The third chapter is dedicated to analyzing the chosen corpus in all its creative and technical dimensions that contribute to the achievement of mise-en-scène, identifying the points of convergence of these works with the author's theory. In this way, we arrive at the conclusion that the politique des auteurs, as it constitutes a process in constant dialogical flow, did not allow itself to be erased nor was it made unfeasible by the contribution of new perspectives in the field of cinematographic theories, both in the scope of cinephilia and in academic studies. It remains an open, lively and pulsating territory, capable of welcoming both the new directors of the 21st century and the great masters of the past such as Luchino Visconti.