In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard praises the native home, that first ‘matricial’ place that welcomes the movement of childhood and institutes – between reverie and boredom – a ‘topography of our intimate being’. Bachelard’s home is a maternal figure, which, ‘even more than the landscape, is “a state of mind”’. It is an autonomous space, protected from the outside, where the voices of the unconscious are expressed and where the manners and materials of dreams unfold. Disconnected from the dark rumours of the world, the house is, according to the philosopher, a ‘primitive hut’ that protects from conflictual agitation and centrifugal forces, a shell conducive to withdrawal. To dwell, then, is to remain temporarily, to exist in and through the imagination, and it means to seek relief from the weight of everyday domestic life, to minimise the burden of the commonplace, to abbreviate and compress the intrusive and cataclysmic forces of the outside world, and to prefer contemplative states of reverie.

However, houses ‘in films’ are not necessarily Bachelardian in inspiration: they are, in turn, primordial settings, spaces of passage and circulation, or even shelters; they are the natural spaces of cinematographic scenarios, from the most classic to the most adventurous. Houses are the privileged scenic and scenographic tools where the sometimes intimate, sometimes collective psychological journey of the characters unfolds. Often, they are projected before the spectator’s eyes as the catalysts, and as the crystallising environments of suspended or forthcoming dramas. The fact that houses are the privileged spaces of reception and collection of dialogues and confidences does not imply that they are ‘seen’, or even that they are inhabited. In fact, houses ‘in films’ are most often either beautiful, deserving of contemplation, or disgraceful and repellent: they have the virtues of social identification – ensuring close and intimate relationships or creating separations between the characters. They find their place in films as elementary architectural garments, and they are framed as empty vessels despite the stature that scenarios frequently attempt to confer upon them. In this sense, the representations of houses ‘in films’ mostly draw facades, technical settings where the characters’ movements are organised. The home is thus limited to being a building that houses the characters, a building that is nonetheless absent since it has no real presence on screen, as it is limited to being a contextualising space.