Faces of Leather, Faces of Wax

the Contradictory Destinies of the Face in Hollywood Cinema

PIA PANDELAKIS

Interdisciplinary Conference January 30-31, 2015

University of Bergen - Department of foreign languages and literatures

AGEING: HISTORIES, MYTHOLOGIES, TABOOS

2 0 1 5

> BEAUTY INDUSTRY & the "fountain of youth"

a binary discourse: desirable vs. repulsive body

+ the "right" use of surgery...

sandra bullock,2015 Golden globes

1

...and its opposite:youth signifiers turned monstruous?

meg ryan, 2013mickey rourke, 2010mélanie griffith

2

the caked facethe face disappearsbehind a mask

Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti, 1971.Mr. Skeffington, Vincent Sherman, 1944.

understanding the actor’s relationship with age

virginia blum

kathleen woodward

gilles deleuze

Flesh Wounds, The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, University of California Press, 2003.

"Performing Age, Performing Gender" in NWSA Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, 2006.

L’image mouvement, Éditions de Minuit, collection : Critique, octobre 1983.

> age blindness > age as a gendered process

Oblivion, Joseph Kosinski, 2013.

"Gender plays a further role in the strategies of exclusion: not only are men on screen granted a longer life-span as sexual beings, but they retain a status as individuals, defined in terms of (actual or past) activities, professional, cultural, or political".

martine beugnet"Screening the Old: Femininity as Old Age in

Contemporary French Cinema" in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 39, No. 2 , 2006.

> old age threatens the individual's ability to appear as a sexual subject> women have a harder time maintaining this status

> the aged body on screen> maintaining a status /

questioning a process

Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood, 2008.

1

2

Little Big Man, Arthur Penn, 1970.

age as a function of the narrative

Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder, 1950.

age as decay, loss of dignity3

> the face : the location of the star persona

> the face, central in a revelation process

The Fugitive, Andrew Davis, 1993.

"Le visage est cette plaque nerveuse porte-organes qui a sacrifié l’essentiel de sa mobilité globale, et qui recueille ou exprime à l’air libre toutes sortes de petits mouvements locaux que le reste du corps tient d’ordinaire enfouis".

gilles deleuze

> the face is splitbetween surface & structurebetween a contour / a series of micro movements

> the functions of movie makeup> making the actor look older

Dick Smith working on Dustin Hoffman, 1970

“The effect of the very materiality of the body in age can be that at a certain point it performs us, reducing the latitude promised in part by the very concept of performance”

kathleen woodward

> the body/face is performedthe makeup performs the actor

> a closer look at two moviesThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher, 2008.

Tron: Legacy, Joseph Kosinsky, 2010.

> a reversed aging process

> benjamin button (2008)

> tron: legacy (2010)> sequel to tron (1982)

> tron: legacy (2010)

> tron: legacy (2010)> meeting the fake father, clu

> tron: legacy (2010)> meeting the real father

> 2 actors constructing a younger body

> brad pitt

> jeff bridges

acting +hmc

> the process of motion capture

1

applying the movements to a modelized face

2

providing a body to the face

3

> an intricate rewriting of the notion of performance

> cf. aylish wood

> the complexity of mo-cap

"a construct of performances"

" Contests and Simulations: Tron: Legacy’s Connections with Technologies" in Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 66, No. 3, Fall 2014.

> a thousand faces

"La série intensive"expanding from deleuze

> a new materialitythe impossibly smooth

benjamin button (2008)

> a new materialitythe impossibly smooth

> an impossible face> its opposite, therefore coded

as "real"

faces of wax faces of leather

a reconciliation narrativebecoming a body of light in tron

a reconciliation narrativereturn to a symbolic mother

> performance & mo-cap: blurry lines

>mediation and the aesthetics of the face

> a symbolic unity // aesthetic deconstruction