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No 10 THE STAR SYSTEM IN EUROPE: STAR STUDIES TODAY

Editorial. The star system in Europe. Star studies today
Núria Bou and Xavier Pérez

ARTICLES

Star Studies in Europe

ABSTRACT

This essay provides a succinct consideration of some of the key constituents of what might be called ‘European Star Studies.’ Rather than a comprehensive survey of the academic literature on European stars and stardom originating across Europe, it is limited to a relatively small sample of influential studies published in English. Divided into three main sections –pre-Stars, Stars and post-Stars– the essay examines the following: European studies of stardom that pre-dated the publication of Richard Dyer’s Stars in 1979; the key concepts and methods used by Dyer in Stars; and a range of star studies published in the twenty-first century by European film scholars, some of which have advanced Dyer’s work while others have departed significantly from it in order to address a different set of topics and use alternative methodologies for exploring these. Even an examination limited to studies that have been published in English indicates that Star Studies has spread across many European nations, large and small, and that important work on film stars and stardom has been conducted, particularly since 2000. All of which has been instrumental in sustaining the vitality and diversity of this rich branch of film studies.

Martin Shingler

To capture the ephemeral

ABSTRACT

For a long time the actor’s performance (and more especially the specific nature of the film actor’s performance) have been considered to be peripheral and insignificant by film criticism and analysis. In fact, studies on performance are based on the paradox of adopting a normative approach in an area that seems to be averse to scientific objectivity: the actor has traditionally been considered as ephemeral, and our relationship with him or her is based essentially on affect. For this reason, the analysis of performance is fundamentally different from that of mise-en-scène, even if it is also developed using a rationale of observation, description and comment. In line with these premises, in this article I will examine three gestural registers of the actor, which are juggled simultaneously and are also administered or favored according to their nature or to the specific moment in the film: the credible, which relates to the ordinary and the real and is concerned with the character; the theatrical, which includes conventions and mannerisms and is concerned with the performer, and the ornamental, which includes everything associated with the non-natural (and choreography) and is concerned with the creator, who may be the actor or the director, or may even arise from a combination of both.

Christian Viviani

Types of stardom during the Franco regime: some dominant formulas

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a methodology for studying the phenomenon of film stardom during Francoism from a historical perspective. Starting with the idea that the Spanish phenomenon, in spite of the context of dictatorship, cannot be understood outside of transnational tendencies in the configuration of the industry, we offer three fundamental models. The first can be defined as the hybridization of cinema with other forms of popular entertainment, particularly those from song and variety shows, in the consolidation of sound film. The iconography developed by these figures combines features from different forms of entertainment, and it would continue during the dictatorship in the españolada genre or in films starring singers. The second is a consolidated industrial model, the company Cifesa being the crucial representative here, where stars were the fundamental mainstay of company policy. In this way, stars become an object of experimentation in various narrative genres and also in iconographic terms, in order to constantly renew and innovate their image in the eyes of the public. The third model refers to figures with a powerful, unmalleable iconographic appearance that would characterize film productions just after the fall of the big studios in the 1950s. The cohesive strength this brings to the project requires the maximum expression of its iconic value and its eroticism. To illustrate each of these models, we offer three case studies which examine in greater detail the careers of Imperio Argentina, Amparo Rivelles and Sara Montiel, each being the highest representative of one of the proposed models.

Vicente J. Benet

Perspectives, models and figures of the study of Italian divismo

ABSTRACT

The privileged position that the actor has historically taken in the transmission of popular culture in Italy, a melting point of commedia dell’arte and of the scenic methods that flourished in Europe’s modern theatre, allows a figurative tradition that is rich in models and deep in culture. Cinema perpetuates this circumstance and owes some of the most essential moments of the history of Italian film to the expressive capacity of the actors and actresses, from the primitive diva cinema of the 1910s to the impact of Italian transnational stars in the 1950s and 1960s. Because of these essential reasons, Italy is a particularly interesting context for an approach to star studies, as the impact of its stars seems to motivate a debate on the actor before the splendour of American classical cinema fostered the development of a solid methodology. Guided by an interest on certain figurative models, this article attempts to elaborate an essential cartography to Italian star studies, from its origins, its first solid expressions in the 1950s, until today, and considering its essential perspectives, its more frequent models and the discourses that the current perspectives suggest.

Marga Carnicé Mur

FILMS UNDER DISCUSSION. INTERVIEWS

White Gypsies: An interview with Eva Woods Peiró

ABSTRACT

This interview with Eva Woods Peiró, a scholar specializing in Hispanic Studies, mainly addresses the issues present in her book White Gypsies: Race and Stardom in Spanish Musicals. The book studies some of the most important female stars of Spanish ‘folkloric’ musical cinema from the 1920s to the 1940s, using a transversal perspective that deals with themes of stardom, gender and, above all, race. Woods Peiró analyzes folklórica stars like Raquel Meller and Imperio Argentina, white female stars who gained huge popularity performing female Roma characters on screen. Studying these ‘white gypsies’ allows Woods Peiró to approach issues rarely addressed in the historiography of Spanish cinema: from the filmic representation of race and gender to the idea of stardom as a narrative of social ascent. The author concludes that these figures, while favoring a national discourse of non-problematic racial assimilation, also contained within them a transgressive component by the fact that they portrayed mestizo characters in extremely popular films.

María Adell

A train that derails: does a European star system exist? A conversation with Axelle Ropert

ABSTRACT

Filmmaker and critic (former editor-in-chief at La Lettre du Cinéma) Axelle Ropert analyses the actor as star in European cinema in relation to the American star system. After giving her point of view on specific Hollywood stars (including Katharine Hepburn and Gene Tierney), the filmmaker goes on to address the following issues: does a European star system exist? What would its foundational gesture have been? Which filmmakers have created plastic methods to achieve the composition of the actor, particularly within French cinema? How should we react to feminist criticism of the American star system? As a French critic and filmmaker, Ropert has to deal with the possible ideological evolution that auteur theory may have imposed on the star, and the possibility that Nouvelle Vague might have modified the notion of ‘star’ in French cinema, by corrupting it with that of ‘icon.’ In the final part, the interview focuses on the major schools of actor direction in France: the Bressonian approach, the one that derives from Pialat, as well as the possible influence that painting might have had on the filmmaker’s work, with the actor as the raw material.

Fernanzo Ganzo

DOCUMENTS

The 7 families game: The families of actresses
Axelle Ropert

Cinema and its actors
García Figar

Asking the directors: What foreign actor’s personality corresponds to...?
Josefina de la Torre

REVIEWS

GODART, Caroline. The Dimensions of Difference: Space, Time and Bodies in Women’s Cinema and Continental Philosophy.
Fang Qi

BRADATAN, Costica; UNGUREANU, Camil (eds.) Cinema and Sacrifice.
Rebecca Anne Peters

 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS Nº 15

Deadline for submissions: [EXTENDED] January 30th, 2020.

More information HERE.

 

No 9 EZTETYKA

Editorial. Eztetyka
Albert Elduque

DOCUMENTS

Revolution
Jorge Sanjinés

Tricontinental
Glauber Rocha

Godard by Solanas. Solanas by Godard
Jean-Luc Godard and Fernando Solanas

FILMS UNDER DISCUSSION. INTERVIEWS

A combative cinema with the people. Interview with Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés
Cristina Alvares Beskow

Conversation with Eryk Rocha: The legacy of the eternal
Carolina Sourdis (in collaboration with Andrés Pedraza)

The necessary amateur. Cinema, education and politics. Interview with Cezar Migliorin
Albert Elduque

ARTICLES

Reading Latin American Third Cinema manifestos today
Moira Fradinger

From imperfect to popular cinema
Maria Alzuguir Gutierrez

The return of the newsreel (2011-2016) in contemporary cinematic representations of the political event
Raquel Schefer

ImagiNation
José Carlos Avellar

REVIEW

TEN BRINK, Joram and OPPENHEIMER, Joshua (eds.) Killer Images. Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence
Bruno Hachero Hernández

MONTIEL, Alejandro; MORAL, Javier and CANET, Fernando (coord.) Javier Maqua: más que un cineasta. Volumes 1 and 2
Alan Salvadó Romero