To examine Jacques Rivette’s oeuvre in terms of enclosure, writing about La Religieuse (1966) is most and least appropriate. A filmmaker of exhilarating invisible architectures, Rivette compulsively refracts structures of inside and outside, control and freedom, enclosure and escape. An axiom of enclosure in Rivette’s cinema might begin with the ghostly mansion in Céline and …
Cinema of Enclosure II: Ladies They Talk About
Notes on Ladies They Talk About and Beguines by Carolyn Funk “When can I see my cell?” “Mine looks like a chorus girl’s delight.” So quip Barbara Stanwyck and Lillian Roth while on tour of Stanwyck’s new residence, San Quentin State prison, in Ladies They Talk About (1933.) The film is hallmark pre-Code: pre-Code referring to talking pictures made in Hollywood …
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Cinema of Enclosure I: The Spirit of the Beehive
This is the first in a series of posts by Carolyn Funk, who will continue to draw parallels between medieval claustration culture and the enclosures found in film. The following piece traces enclosure in the iconography of the Annunciation through to the space of the all female classroom, noting the mimicry of the Holy Spirit …
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