3 - Everyday Style
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2017
Summary
My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. (Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat, 531)
Be precise in the form, not always in the substance (if you can). (Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer, 119)
Fifteen minutes before the end of Bresson's final film, Money, a kindly old woman who has taken in a self-confessed murderer asks him why he has killed – prompting that there must be a reason. Without looking up from the soup she has given him, Yvon responds in monotone, ‘I enjoyed it. I took very little and I've spent it all.’ This exchange provides an answer, albeit unconvincing, for the central character's slaying of two hoteliers. The event to which he is referring is elided, but we do witness the aftermath in fragments as Yvon walks downstairs with bloodied hands, washes them – the water running red, then clear – folds a pair of bloodstained trousers and empties the hotel's cash drawers. Yvon is visibly unmoved by this act of violence; rather he holds the same rigid facial expression he has worn throughout the film.
This example highlights the central concerns of this chapter – both the undramatic representation of violence, and a confronting deficiency of meaning with which to reconcile it. Both Bresson's Money and Haneke's The Seventh Continent preclude textual containment through a lack of authorial guidance on how to respond to violent narrative events. This is achieved with a paring back of film style in which moments of violence are afforded the same aesthetic weight as the representation of ordinary and mundane routines. While Chapter 2 dealt with ordinary moments in extraordinary films, this chapter explores another aspect of the spectrum of the everyday in cinema: the concept of the everyday as a film style, and its relationship to the everyday as subject matter. More importantly, it will consider how we might best approach films which bring these two poles into tension. A brief synopsis of both films will help to articulate the central tension between style and content that this chapter explores.
Loosely adapted from Tolstoy's short story ‘The Forged Coupon’, Bresson's Money begins with a schoolboy, Norbert, who asks his parents for an advance on his allowance so that he can repay a loan.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Troubled EverydayThe Aesthetics of Violence and the Everyday in European Art Cinema, pp. 37 - 59Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017