Film 211 final

Dirty Pictures, Deadly Pictures:
Reoccurring Themes of Sex and Death and Their Relationship to the Image
in Three Films by Peter Greenaway


















Caitlin Burke
Film 211-52, Meltzer
Final Paper
May 18, 2006
999214658
Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as saying “the only two certainties in life are death and taxes.” For a film maker, only the prior is really of interest to an audience, and so another certainty must be found. Director Peter Greenaway considers the action that brings about the opposite of life to be the completion of the pair. “We live in a deeply sensuous world, and I think if we respect cinema we should let cinema be a part of that… What is a film itself it is again a form of translation of human experiences, again very subjectively organized.” (Badt) Peter Greenaway sees the essentials of existence as revolving around sex and death. Yet as a former landscape painter and current film maker, the importance of the image (both the presentation of those themes and cinematic significance of his technique) is raised parallel to these other two, creating a triumvirate whose interactions with one another and combinations are ever present in Greenaway’s explanation of his created worlds. Comparison of three notable Greenaway films: The Belly of an Architect (1987,) The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989,) and A Zoo: A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) reveals the presence of these themes and their presentation visually.
What is a film if not a collection of images? Who is a filmmaker as an auteur if his stamp cannot be applied to those images? Peter Greenaway’s films are immediately recognizable from a catalog of camera movements and compositions. The trademarks Greenaway uses in establishing the images of his film may be simplified to a long duration tracking or dolly shot, very few close ups, and a general long shot focal distance during moments when the cinematic convention would move the camera closer for greater intimacy. An example of the familiar tracking shot, usually accompanied by instrumental score, is repeated throughout The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) Immediately following the intertitles (pages of the restaurant’s menu) the camera begins its tracking shot either at the front of the kitchen, following the same path past the women plucking the feathers off fowl, the shirtless sauce maker, and Pup singing his solo aria. It then passes the divide into the restaurant with a notable color and saturation switch from the muted green of the kitchen to the vibrant crimson of the dining room. Passing by inconsequential diners with relative speed, the camera then dollies in to Albert Spica’s table, but never closer than a medium long shot. It is then that the first cut in the scene takes place, after an almost two minute long single shot. This sort of imagery is repeated in The Belly of an Architect, moving from a profile of the pantheon past a fountain at relatively the same pace as the identical shot in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and, similarly, accompanied by a classical score. Without pause the camera moves past an outdoor café to rest upon a large banquet table with Stourley Kracklite, the protagonist, seated in the center of the composition. The scene then cuts to a closer shot of a large, architecturally designed cake that is brought to the table from the foreground (while the actors remain distanced from the lens and less in focus.) This appearance identifies the film as by Greenaway, as does the limited yet highly symbolic color palette and the removal of the camera from moments of emotional significance, to be discussed in context later.
Peter Greenaway is undoubtedly attuned to the images of his film. Frequently in published works, he mentions how film has become simply a visual adaptation of the novel; everything in the film falls subordinate to plot. It is Greenaway’s attempt, therefore, to convey to the audience the importance of the image, putting emphasis on the subtle and solely visual as vital storytelling mechanisms. (Badt) Were one to turn off the sound of a Peter Greenaway film, his colors alone could imbue the overarching context of the scene. Peter Greenaway’s limited palette of significant colors includes green, blue, and red. The use of green in the three films to be discussed is the most complicated in that its symbolism is somewhat inconsistent. Overall, green can be seen to represent death, either current or predicted. Examples of this can be seen in The Belly of an Architect when the green light of the Xerox machine flashes as Kracklite photocopies the stomachs of statuary out of his obsession over his own terminal ailment. It may be seen again filling the large windows at the museum out of which Kracklite flings himself to his death. A Zed and Two Noughts uses flashing green light as well, although more obviously connected to death, as it is the color that illuminates Oswald’s decomposing subjects for their periodic photographing. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover brings a complication to the significance of the color green, as it is the muted tone cast throughout the kitchen. As most of Georgina and Michael’s sexual encounters occur in the kitchen, one would consider the green to symbolize fertility and life rather than death and decomposition. Yet one must consider the spaces where Georgina and Michael fornicate. Generally, it is in pantries or meat lockers, surrounded by carcasses ready to be recycled from their death state to providing life- nourishment- for the patrons of the restaurant. Additionally, when Spica force feeds Pup his coat buttons and cuts out his belly button, the boy is wearing his green kitchen smock, even though the thematic color of the outside of the restaurant is blue. The color blue in Greenaway films can be read as conveying harsh reality. Spica wears a blue sash and is cast in a blue light as he smears his debtor with excrement outside the restaurant. As Alba’s leg is being amputated in an early scene of A Zed and Two Noughts, (as well as when the doctor takes her other leg) the hospital room is bathed in blue light. Additionally, as Oliver paces alone in his house, with not even the television available as company, the entire setting takes on a blue tone to convey the reality of his grief and solitude. Red, like green, is up to a little more variance of interpretation, although it generally appears to represent the inverse of green: life and vitality. The dining room at Le Hollandaise where Spica and the other customers come to sustain themselves with food is painted a brilliant crimson; additionally, as Spica is a co-owner of the restaurant, it is his “livelihood.” When Alba discusses her pregnancy with Oswald and Oliver in A Zed and Two Noughts, her room is filled with red furniture and a red glow, similar to the lighting when either of the twins sleeps with Venus De Milo, reaffirming their living state in contrast to their deceased wives. Very few of the scenes involving Stourley Kracklite have him outfitted in red, as he is dying, but his wife Louisa (carrying a new life inside her belly rather than a tumor that will end her life) is frequently outfitted in the color, and in the majoring of her meetings with Caspasian, the man who will provide her the opportunity to start a new life without her husband, the draperies are red. Following these color patterns throughout Greenaway’s career allows one to incorporate the image into the plot with a greater depth.
Having spent a significant amount of time discussing cinematographic images employed by the director in saturating his film with meaning, now it is time to turn attention to the “image” or representation and its importance. In each of these films, a representation becomes almost an obsessive focus, and it is often the work of a celebrated classical artist that shapes the behavior and outward appearance of the film’s subjects. The character most obsessed with images is Stourley Kracklite in The Belly of an Architect. Not only is his entire artistic purpose centered on celebrating an architect (Etienne-Louis Boullee) who never finished a building, but he is also consumed with representations of the body part whose rebellion will lead to his eventual demise: his belly. (Lawrence, 27) Kracklite photocopies the stomachs of representations of architectural greats (the emperor Hadrian, Boullee) and draws his ailments in order to illustrate his pain for his doctors. Kracklite’s fascination with Boullee seems appropriate in that it mirrors his own creative impotence; in the scene in which Kracklite catches Caspasian in the act with his wife, one cannot tell if he is enraged because his conjugal property is being stolen, or because Caspasian is using his model of a Boullee lighthouse as an enlarged surrogate phallus. The fact that his two image obsessions somewhat mirror each other in form (as the repeated form in Boullee’s sketches is a dome quite reminiscent of Kracklite’s bloated belly) marries his creative life and impending death and solidifies the reality that it is likely Kracklite will go the way of Boullee and die without many major constructions to carry his image forward into the future.
Oliver and Oswald are similarly consumed by images in a need to placate grief, yet in their case presented in A Zed and Two Noughts, it is images of the dead that complete this desire, similar to the way they complete one another symmetrically as separated conjoined twins. The classical artist who lends his style of imagery to the construction of the film’s images is Johannes Vermeer, with whom the doctor who has amputated Alba Bewick’s leg is fascinated. Whenever Alba or the twins converse with the doctor (who, as the film points out, is named after a famous copier of Vermeer’s work) the lighting in the scene is amber and sourced from the lower left corner of a frame, similar to the way Vermeer depicted light in his paintings. This is most notable in the scene in which Oliver and Oswald approach the doctor to ask him to “complete them”- to return them to their “natural” state as conjoined twins. The two sit naked on either side of a couch with two large portraits behind their heads, and rise in unison when the doctor arrives, disrupting the symmetry of the composition. The lighting in this scene is notably Vermeer, which seems suitable for the director, as “With Vermeer, everything is ambiguous, and this is what makes him an ideal figure for Greenaway.” (Lawrence, 85) The symmetrical, centered composition is a trademark of Greenaway’s theatrically composed scenes, and reappears when the twins sit with Alba in her hospital bed, one on either side, and when they join her in bed at home after her second amputation. Each brother puts the leg closest to Alba outside the covers to show her the scars left by their separation; in a way, this gives her the two legs she is missing due to amputation and completes each member of the composition so that the whole is symmetrical.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover portrays the scum of the earth, dressed to the nines and playing gentlemen. Albert Spica and his band of crooks pattern themselves after the Frans Hals painting that hangs in the restaurant almost directly behind their table, inviting comparison between these despicable characters and the more upstanding gentlemen depicted in the art: the abject and the genteel appear in the same clothing. (D’Arcy) The painting (The Company of St. George, 1616) depicts a company of officers, rank made apparent by their red and white sashes, staring out at the audience. In its place in the film, it is almost as if these faces are bearing witness to Spica’s deplorable behavior and condemning him and his posse for sullying the uniforms of dignity these men wear so proudly. Notably, the painting always appears first in the tracking shot before the camera reaches Spica’s table, inviting comparison between the two exceptionally disparate groups dressed in the same costume. In the final scene of the film, when Albert is alone in the restaurant before he is to be served Michael, his table is set up so that when the crowd of those he has harmed files in behind the gurney bearing his cooked victim, the men in the Company of St. George continue the collective of condemnation, as the expressions of those living and those painted show equally critical consideration of Albert Spica, isolated at his table. As so much of the film is centered on the shock of “well dressed people behaving badly” (D’Arcy) it is fitting that the comparison between the proper gentlemen in the Hals painting and Spica and his lackeys addresses how by his garb Spica aspires to respect, yet his lewd, inappropriate behavior always sullies his image.
The colors green and red, symbolic of death and life, are often presented concurrently in the visual composition of Peter Greenaway’s films. Similarly, the incorporation of end of life elements with creation presents a continuous, regenerating depiction of existence, emphasizing the inevitability of death and thus, mankind’s fascination with it. It has been noted that Peter Greenaway’s fascination is deeply rooted in the concepts of eros and thanatos- the conception through passion and the ceasing to exist. “Many people say my films only deal with death. I think they are correct. But there are only two things which really count: sex and death. What else is important? One can disguise sex as romance or love but it’s always about sexual desire. Every one of us has been touched by death in some form already.” (Bachholz, 56) The connection drawn between sex and death in Peter Greenaway’s films is notable in that its communion between a fundament of the creation of life and the complete absence of it. The parallelism between what is growing inside Stourley Kracklite in The Belly of an Architect (a tumor, bringing his death) and what is growing in his wife Louisa (a baby, new life) is a harsh contrast. When Louisa reveals to Kracklite that Flavia, her lover’s sister, has photographed her nude with her pregnant stomach, Kracklite explodes, calling her indecent in showing this form, even though he is sitting on the floor amidst a veritable carpeting of belly photographs and replications either of his own stomach or others he has captured. The reality is that what is growing inside Stourley is the truly indecent, abject growth, but in his own fear of his demise he must objectify her growing life as an outrageous display. In a similar vein, the abject is called to the forefront in the final scene of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover wherein Albert Spica is forced to “eat his words” although not in the same very literal way that he has forced Michael to do so (by ramming pages of a book down his throat until he suffocates.) In an earlier scene, before Georgina and Michael flee to their oasis of safety in the book depository, Albert tears apart the kitchen searching for them, screaming repeatedly how when he finds Michael he is going to kill him and eat him. With the first part of this satisfied before he enters the dining room for what will be his last supper, all that is left for Albert to fulfill his threat is the latter portion, which Georgina has conveniently arranged for him with the help of Richard, the cook. By ingesting his wife’s lover, Spica must not only swallow his own threat but also the actuality of his actions- this man is dead by his hand, and his corpse is being used to perpetuate Spica’s life (by providing nourishment in the form of food.) Even though all food is dead before it is served, the reality of eating this man Spica had encountered during life brings forth the striking realization of his lack of life, and how by ingesting him he is making the man who has stolen his wife a part of him. “The idea that, for life to flourish, we need death, is not original, but is still deserves attention.” (Gras, 30) Granted, after Albert chokes down a few bites of Michael’s flesh, Georgina ends his life with his own pistol. She calls attention to the abject nature of the situation by closing the film with the epithet “Cannibal.” Although all food is dead, processed matter, the idea of eating a person one has killed and thus sustaining oneself through the death and digestion of another is an ultimately objectionable principle.
Death comes immediately in A Zed and Two Noughts; the opening sequence depicts the car accident that claims both Oliver and Oswald Deuce’s wives. The first dialogue of the film is an interchange between Oliver and Oswald in which the later asks about how quickly the decaying process will begin, and specifics of what happens first in decomposition. Like in many other significant emotional moments in Greenaway films, this scene is made clinical by the long shot held for the duration of the conversation on the characters, keeping a long focal distance that makes intimacy with the twins impossible, even in this moment of their greatest vulnerability. The twins find different fascinations following the deaths of their wives. Oliver screens an eight part film series on evolution, and devotes his time to understanding the origins of life. Oswald, on the other hand, turns his attention to death, and begins to photograph the decomposition of a variety of plants and animals, initially unconnected, but eventually those that he can in some way associate with his wife: prawns, the last food she ever bought, a swan, much like the one that killed her, and other black and white animals such as a Dalmatian and an illicitly received zebra, the subject of much of the film’s fascination. In his attempt to fully understand the new physical condition of his wife that he will never be able to experience directly, Oswald becomes so obsessed with interval photography of decomposition that when the doctor presents him with the chance to observe a specimen identical to his wife’s condition (the prostitute Venus De Milo, approximately the same age and at the same point in her pregnancy as was Oswald’s wife) the moral implications of photographing this decomposition are forgotten in his eagerness for it to assist in his grieving process. Unfortunately, both Venus and Alba, who had willingly volunteered to serve as Oswald’s crowning specimen, are soon out of reach. Oliver and Oswald themselves must take their place in photographically documenting the human decomposition process, although what benefit it would do in aiding Oswald through his grief after he himself is deceased is unclear. The twins prepare themselves as the final specimens in L’escargot, Alba’s property, but after they have taken the lethal injection, the snails of the garden short circuit the camera equipment, rendering both deaths entirely in vain.
As the ultimate creative force, both in the sense of inspiration as well as remaking the tangible, sex is a device consistently preoccupying Greenaway characters and allowing them different venues for expression. Greenaway views of eros and thanatos (sex and death) as only essentials of existence; they are what are certain to occur as well as the major creative and destructive forces of life in the universe. Therefore, it is not unusual in Greenaway films when sex is paired with death. Whenever Louisa and Kracklite fornicate, the conversation either turns to Boullee, the deceased architect, or Kracklite’s own demise. In the first scene of the film, a fast moving landscape of the Italian countryside is intercut with scenes of Louisa and Kracklite having sex on the train. The next cut is back to the countryside, and then to an image of an Italian graveyard. After Kracklite has finished, and the two discuss their trip to Italy, the next cut takes the scene to an image of a mausoleum, the camera panning across several burial sites. When they are about to have intercourse in their Roman hotel, the conversation turns to an emasculation of Stourley for his relatively low production of architecture and his obsession with a man who has created almost as little as he has. (Lehman, 73) Louisa brings up the topic of what could possibly be displayed at Kracklite’s post-mortem retrospective, and it is at this point that Kracklite’s first stomach pains (later revealed to be terminal cancer) are made apparent. Stourley questions why Louisa must discuss death during sex, and her reply is “Everyone in Rome talks about death.” This incorporation of morbidity into the bedroom is not the first and certainly will not be last occasion in Greenaway’s films. However, his treatment through the lens of both Kracklite’s revealing of his illness in the bedroom and Louisa’s revelation of her pregnancy is notably sterile. In both cases, Louisa is portrayed in long shot, and Stourley is so far removed from the camera that he is not in focus. In the pregnancy scene, he is situated in the bath and framed by a doorway dividing him from Louisa, who is in the foreground. When she returns to leave him for Caspasian and his illness is finally discussed, he is seated on a chair in the center of the composition but reflected in a mirror. By removing the personal connection available through closer shots, Peter Greenaway brings a more critical analysis to these pertinent moments, refusing to allow the audience the intimacy with the characters that a close camera would provide and thus necessitating a more cerebral, situational relationship. For the creative being, death either signifies unrealized creativity in action or a cease of production. It is a realization of the mortality of those without surviving works or incomplete immortality of those who have born them- either way, art suffers after death. In this way, the conception of art and the conception of life, one through the creation of the image and one through intercourse, may be understood through the concept of The Belly of an Architect as a connection between sex and creativity, both equally threatened by death.
This connection between the nude and the deceased or abnormal body is best exemplified in A Zed and Two Noughts. “Our interest in the nude, he [Greenaway] suggests is more than sexual: it also has to do with our knowledge of our own mortality. Many of the bodies he shows us are dead, or at least… acting dead. Since these are not sexual bodies on display, they can and do depart from the usual cultural standards of beauty.”(Woods, 162) Alba Bewick, the focal sexual interest of both Oliver and Oswald Deuce, spends ninety percent of the film bedridden, her body positioned similar to a corpse. When she is out of bed, her usual and grotesque form disrupts the symmetry of the composition orchestrated both by Greenaway’s camera and Oswald and Oliver’s increasing similarities. While Alba is a sexual object, as she is so frequently represented as dead or incomplete she may escape the boundaries of traditional sexual attractiveness. As Alba is an amputee, two of her limbs have died, and the audience is drawn to this asymmetrical character as a sex object to understand her mortality and, consequently, their own in terms of sexuality. “Greenaway’s insistence on the body’s inescapable vulgarity at once liberates it (and him) from the structures of middle class respectability and lowers it by calling attention to the less exalted attributes of the human animal.” (Lawrence, 49) It is this reasoning that allows Oswald to consider two women he has had sexual relations with (one for whom it is questionable whether he has fathered her child) to be the study specimens in his exploration of decomposition, as the woman whose body was the previous venue for his sexual encounters is now deceased as well. Just as Oswald considers Venus and Alba to be perfect samples for his study, Greenaway’s camera takes on a very clinical edge when addressing Oswald and Oliver’s feelings on sex or death. The closest the camera gets to the twins during a sexual moment is when they complete Alba by discussing their original conjunction at birth, yet this is still a full body shot, despite the significance of the material being revealed. When the twins discover they are the fathers (or the father, as the medical implications of two men fathering twins seem unlikely) of Alba’s children, the discussion is filmed through a doorframe, creating great distance between the camera and the subjects at this very monumental occasion. As was addressed before, whenever the death of the wives is to be discussed, whoever is doing the talking is shown in long shot, as is Alba when mentioning the last food Oswald’s wife bought was prawns. Prior to this discussion, Alba has been show in her bed in alternating medium shot and medium close up, but when the material becomes of a sensitive nature the camera pulls back, discontinuing a close association with the characters. A quote from Greenaway can certainly explain this objective treatment by the camera of the tender moments in this film: “All of my films are about loss in some way- a Zed and Two Noughts is about a very serious loss, obviously- and although I do not feel extraordinarily emotional about it, somewhere in the back of my mind I want to explore the consideration society gives to cancer as a disease, what we do about it, what it means in our lives…so much information gets lost when somebody dies.” (Ranvaud, 45) The grotesque as sexual object and removal from intimate imagery found in A Zoo: A Zed and Two Noughts perpetuates the established tenets that make this film notably a creation of Peter Greenaway.
Abjectification, the making of the utterly disgusting out of the formerly attractive, is the name of the game in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Albert Spica is free to sodomize Georgina in the privacy of their home, but it is when he openly discusses his sexual matters at the dinner table, creating an abject sexuality through his frequent references to coprophilia, his material is made objectionable and forced upon Georgina as the receptacle. However, the film warns, breaking away from the abject is not necessarily a positive decision; when Georgina reclaims her sexuality and has the affair with Michael, violence and death are the results. Aside from the questionable nature of having sex inside a meat locker (connecting the potential creation of life by the lovers and its destruction by a butcher) sex and waste are freely compared and associated throughout much of the film. Spica openly discusses receiving infections from toilet seats in the same breath as he considers Georgina the one responsible for pleasuring him. He aptly draws a connection between food and sex, justifying his discussion as appropriate for a restaurant: the positioning of the genitalia so close to the rectum almost invites the commingling of “the dirty bits” with “the nasty bits” and providing rationalization for his coprophilia, in which he gets a sexual kick by blurring the boundaries between food and its eventual end, excrement. The abject has free reign throughout the dining room in the Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but frank discussion of infertility (or Georgina’s genetic death, as it were) is absolutely taboo. When Spica forces Michael to join the diners at their table, a three shot of Michael, Georgina, and Spica is held while Spica forces Georgina to tell Michael of her great wealth and luxury provided to her by her husband. Yet when the conversation switches to Georgina’s exceptional gynecologist, who has assured her that due to her several miscarriages she will never bear children (causing the end of the Spica line and the death of the family name) the fact that she is not given focal significance in the frame becomes apparent. This most serious discussion of sexuality, forbidden by Spica who merely minutes earlier had engaged in a conversation about eating testicles, is shot closer than the typical Peter Greenaway moment of intimacy, but as Georgina is merely one of three equally framed characters in the shot, the emotional connection is still made more difficult. Discussion of sex is a free for all in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but when it is at all connected to death, genetic or physical, it is made immediately taboo by Spica, suggesting his brutishness goes against Peter Greenaway’s celebration of eros and thanatos on an equal plane.
A discussion of these themes in Peter Greenaway’s films could continue endlessly; as his body of work increases, that which he considers the most important thematic elements will undoubtedly reappear. But as for the three films addressed, it is apparent that the priority given to an image and its representations of sex and death in the film follows Greenaway’s cinematic imagery and creates a recognizable, consistent thread that runs throughout his work, regardless of specific topic. Using symbolic colors and repeated camera techniques allows the audience to understand a work as Greenaway’s and to then pay suitable attention to his incorporation of sex with death, of the eros and the thanatos, and the unbreakable bonds between the two as the major constructive and destructive forces of the universe.
Works Cited:

Badt, Karen. “Peter Greenaway Holds Court: An interview at the Venice Film Festival.” Film Criticism, Winter 2004 vol. 29 No. 2

D’Arcy, Chantal. “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.” Literature Film Quarterly, Vol. 27. No.2 April 1999

Gras, Vernon and Marguerite, eds. Peter Greenaway, Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2000

Lawrence, Amy. The Films of Peter Greenaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997.

Lehman, Peter. “Review: Being Naked Playing Dead: The Art of Peter Greenaway.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998) pp. 72-74

Films Referenced:

A Zoo: A Zed and Two Noughts. (Greenaway, Peter. 1985)

The Belly of the Architect. (Greenaway, Peter. 1987)

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. (Greenaway, Peter. 1989)

The Masculine, the Feminine, and the Sea Worthy

The Masculine, the Feminine, and the Sea Worthy:
Attention to Gender Roles in Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante



















Caitlin Burke
999214658
September 30, 2005
Boys will be boys, as the common adage prescribes. Without too much extrapolation, one may conclude that similarly, girls will be girls. As World War II upset the gender equity in most involved nations, gender roles were forgone in favor of pragmatism. Yet, pre-World War II love stories usually adhere to a stringent outline of trite occurrences: boy and girl are married in the church, with a white dress and a tuxedo, and everyone lives happily ever after in a house with many children. Husband goes to work, Wife keeps house. This may anger the more modernist train of thought that entitles women to the same agency granted to men, but considered contextually, this perspective does not defy tradition. Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, made in 1934 (just as the storm clouds of the great conflict began to brew) would do well for itself to follow these conventions and exist as a relatively simple romance. What makes L’Atalante remarkable in this sense is its subversion of the expected. Dudley Andrews indicates in his article “Fever of an Infectious Film: L'Atalante and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity” that the titular ship herself possesses characteristics of both the masculine and feminine. (Andrews, 63)However, those aboard the ship, even when they disembark, cannot maintain a duality of gender. They are human, after all, and naturally must ascribe to one or the other. Nevertheless, throughout L’Atalante, socially prescribed gender roles are subverted and reversed by the three main characters: Jean, Juliette, and Pere Jules.
It is a maritime tradition to refer to the ship or boat, an inanimate object, with female pronouns. Because inanimate objects are generally genderless, the context of such a reference is ignored and acknowledged simply as a convention of the language of the sea. While a ship may always be prescribed the female gender, this does not take into account the abstract fulfillment of both gender roles by the vessel. Actively, Atalante the ship takes on the male role as the penetrator- bearing through the waves, pushing its way through a series of locks and canals. In a passive sense, the ship is female. She is under the physical control of a crew of men who dictate her every action. But avoiding sexual associations, the ship Atalante is feminine below decks, serving as a resting place for her “family” and providing them protection from the elements. The physical nature of the ship has a duality of gender roles as well: she is, like a mother, a home; yet like a patriarch, she is the means of employment and the sole source of income for her crew-family.
Early in their time aboard the ship, even whilst boarding the ship, Jean and Juliette effortlessly present the ideal of masculine and feminine. Like a proper bride, Juliette enters the harbor in her white dress, and as tradition dictates, her groom “carries her over the threshold” of their new marital dwelling. Granted, Juliette swings over to her home on the water on the boom of the mast, but Jean has brought her over, albeit through mechanical manipulation, and thus the wedding tradition is safely enacted. At this point, gender roles are established concurrently with sexual roles: Jean is male, masculine, and the husband/dominant/provider; Juliette is female, feminine and the wife/submissive/caretaker, and Jules is also a representation of the male/masculine. The ship’s fourth crew member is also male, yet his role in the film is so negligible that for the purpose of this paper, his gender significance will not be discussed. He is referred to as “the child” and exists in relative neutrality. Even the way in which they refer to each other carries gender connotations, as Juliette is the “boss-lady”, Jean is the “boss” or dominant, and Jules is “papa”. Juliette, like any good housewife, sets to work in her unusual home at traditional domestic tasks, and attempts to gather the ship’s laundry, indignant that they have left this task dormant for so long. It is here that the first step outside the boundaries of gender roles occurs. Jules appears quite frustrated that Juliette wants to do his wash, as expresses he has always done his own before and the addition of a woman to his environment will not limit his self sufficiency. Here, Jules refuses to give up his traditionally domestic work of cleaning laundry, yet it is not apparently so much subversion because he is fighting for control; his birthright as one gendered male.
Nowhere more in L’Atalante is there a better visual and contextual representation of the lack of concern over society’s gender prescriptions then right before the ship docks in Paris. Jules arrives late, and Juliette as provider hands him his plate; the crew eats as a family. The scene is quite domestic, barrign the fact that it takes place in the hold of a ship. This subtle deviation from normalcy paves the way for further deviations. The framing of the shot shows nothing out of the ordinary; in fact, it almost over emphasizes the attention to which the characters are behaving appropriately. “The first third of the film is dominated by Jean’s authority and his desire. As spectators we are all too ready to accommodate him and his desire to frame and possess Juliette.” (Andrews, 72) Juliette is constantly framed by two objects: first her husband and the wall, then two wine bottles, then Jean and the right side wine bottle. The men in the scene may have one side blocked off by a wall or another individual, but they are usually not completely framed, as is Juliette. Interestingly, that which frames her is usually an object of the household- a pitcher, a wine bottle, a chair, as if she is being fenced in by her domestic position. The lighting is consistent with how it has appeared throughout the rest of the film, with bright fills illuminating Juliette and setting her apart visually from the men, who are allowed to exist in greater depth. As the meal ends and the characters exit, the strict control over gender roles dictated by this domestic activity is loosened. Juliette crosses the screen to sit at her sewing machine, and she is shot so that she appears to diagonally intersect all of the other vertical planes in the image; in a sense, she is free. However, the camera follows her in her descent down the stairs, as if she can not escape its watchful eye. As there are few camera movements in the film, this motion is significant and noticeable. She is seen for one of the first times in the film in a less direct, bright lighting, and her typical glow is notably absent. Jules follows her, still shot slightly from below. This gives the impression that his size and masculinity are notable contrasts against and are imposing upon Juliette’s more delicate female form. When he sits next to her at the sewing machine, although there is still notable contrast between his broad back and hers, they are on the same plane. “At Juliette’s sewing machine, he is quickly by turns more domestic than she… the narrative cannot hope to enclose either this character or this actor; he is a signifier of the excess of life over history.”(Andrews, 61) Throughout this sequence, the characters are either depicted in a two-shot or a medium or long shot. This is a marked difference from the rest of the film, which frequently cuts to medium close ups of Juliette’s face. In this scene, as she and Jules take a departure from their gender expectations, Juliette does not have to play the role of the idealized female, and can be a major player in a scene without being subject to an unhindered gaze. The uniform view of both Juliette and Jules, as well as the uniform lighting, establishes that at this point in the scene, they are equals, neither dominant nor submissive. “This is the film’s most important development: the emergence of Jules as the character of beauty and mystery, displacing Juliette as the primary object of our gaze.” (Andrews, 73)
Still ambiguously presenting both characters within their associated genders, the sequence picks up as these conventions are left behind. After Jules is sitting at Juliette’s level, she suggests he is accomplished in all trades, slightly poking fun at his skill at a traditionally domestic, thus feminine, task. His response is to assert his dominance, strangling her in jest; an assertion that masculine hands that create may also destroy. This very masculine gesture is the turning point of the sequence, and the point at which Jules’ departure into the noticeably feminine begins. Juliette takes on the role of the superior, and pushes Jules to the ground. He is then shot from slightly above, diminishing his size (as is typically done for Juliette.) Additionally, while he is on the floor, Jules is framed between the table leg and a chair, taking on the posture of confinement the audience has seen exhibited by Juliette mere minutes earlier. He rises, and regains his stature and masculinity, yet he is still framed by the table and wall, indicating he has not completely returned to the position of dominant male. The purgatory between genders in which Jules exists is taken advantage of by Juliette, who wraps her skirt around his waist, relegating him once again to the feminine role. A change in lighting, bringing Jules into the brighter, fuller light usually reserved for close-ups of Juliette, is a further visual indication of this role switch. Jules’ behavior takes on a more feminine tone as he models the skirt, his typical awkwardness remains, but he giggles freely and prances about, definitely not modeling machismo as the latest Parisian fashion. Juliette’s back is to the camera and the only form to gaze upon or idealize in the way that the audience had the privilege with Juliette throughout the film is the now feminized Jules. “Reaction shots of Juliette reverse her role so that suddenly we find the need to go beyond her as image of our desire.” (Andrews, 73) He is shot from above as he sings and sways his hips, diminished by this camera angle to appear smaller. Similarly, as Juliette hems the skirt, her back fills up much of the frame, commanding the amount of space in the frame previously only occupied by male characters.
Even though they play at assuming each other’s gender specified characteristics, it is all a farce. In his silliness with the skirt, Jules and Juliette get into a tugging match over the material. He then fans at her with the skirt as if she were a bull. At this point, Jules is stooped over and parallel to Juliette, indicating their parallel status with neither as dominant. It is this moment of equality that is the second turning point in the sequence and marks the return to the expected roles of masculine and feminine. After wrestling the skirt away from Jules, Juliette becomes the domestic again, handing him his laundry. His back is now to the camera, and her face is in full view, for one of the first times in this sequence. He rises in front of the camera to take back his clothes, and fills the screen, once again the imposing male form he was at the beginning of the sequence. As the sequence ends with Juliette returning to her chores and Jules to work, their return to traditional roles is not acknowledged. The camera projects its traditional angles, and the film continues on seamlessly as before this interruption.
Calling the ship Atalante home, there is relatively little that Jules, Juliette and Jean do that can truly be considered a step outside gender conventions. But what of when they take leave of the ship, and, in doing so, each other’s company? Angered by Juliette’s behavior in Paris, Jean rashly decides to set sail without her, leaving her completely removed from the nurturing confines of the Atalante. Initially, Juliette’s reaction is not outside feminine norms: she worriedly searches for the ship, and falls victim to a purse snatcher. But left without resources, Juliette does not cater any further to her role as damsel in distress. She instead takes the offensive, even if this means breaking out of her role as wife and domestic. She wanders Paris searching for work. This was not uncommon in the depression era in which the film is set, yet Vigo makes a point about the unconventional nature of Juliette’s position by casting her unemployed sympathizers as all male. Even in the throes of a depression, Vigo comments visually, few women found their way onto a work line. Meanwhile, employment has become a potential matter of concern for Jean as well. He is distraught over his desertion of his love, and it is reflected in his work and his unkempt appearance. The owner of the shipping company makes it clear to Jules that Jean’s tenure with the company will be short lived unless there is a marked improvement in his performance. This suggests a potential reversal: were he to return to Juliette, she would be both his caretaker and the provider of the singular income which would have typically been the duty of the male partner. Juliette’s absorption of both roles would certainly have proved emasculating, furthering the complications of the situation. Although modern times make conceptualizing women as weak, flighty and emotional totally inappropriate, at the loss of Juliette, Jean’s breakdown and irrational behavior could be considered a “womanly” or weak reaction to stress. Luckily, the couple’s reunification allows both to quietly return to their prescribed roles within the relationship without questioning one another’s recent gender subversions.
As desperate times call for desperate measures, unusual conditions force the usually conventional to sidestep social restrictions and act out of necessity. The unique situation in which the crew of the Atalante find themselves makes conformity to gender roles impractical. Actions are performed out of need and desire, and survival does not care much for social niceties. Because of the unconventional climate aboard and surrounding the ship in L’Atalante, it is not unseemly for Jean Vigo’s principle characters Jules, Jean and Juliette to take a cue from the dual gendered significance of the ship to ignore, subvert, and refuse to subscribe to traditionally dictated gender roles.

Works Cited:
Andrews, Dudley. “Fever of an Infectious Film: L'Atalante and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity.” Pages cited in work.