Sade and the cinema. Gaze, body, violence
by Alberto Brodesco
Publisher : Deep Red (November 2020)
Language : French
Number of pages : 352 pages
Representing Sade in the cinema does not amount to choosing one subject among others: the directors who work there undertake to deliver images that can only be described as intolerable. Sadian cinema is constructed and reasoned around two taboos: death and the little death, the orgasm. Questioning the impasse of representation implied by the adaptation of such a literary production, Alberto Brodesco returns to the aesthetic, thematic, philosophical and narrative issues of the texts, among others through the Sadian spaces, to better define the devices of vision elaborated by the writer, which challenge cinematographic art. The book is not content to link to describe the different transpositions of the work of the divine marquis; it develops a reflection on the passages from the written word to the screen, on the theories interested in the relationship between images and violence (violence in the image, the violence of the image), on spectatorial positions, on the tensions between reflection and sensory perceptions, on cinema dedicated to the body (from body art to body horror )… While highlighting Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Brook, Jess Franco, Jan Švankmajer, the author draws on many international examples, including in the more contemporary field of the mediasphere, to provide the broadest possible panorama. And his consequent critical apparatus shows that he has assimilated numerous readings on the subject to produce a lively and renewed synthetic approach.