Sussex film historian features in National Gallery video
How do Italian Renaissance painters and Hollywood film directors use architecture to get us to ‘enter the picture’’
Taking Antonello da Messina’s ‘ Saint Jerome in his Study ,’ painted in about 1475, and the films of 1950s director Douglas Sirk as examples, University of Sussex film historian Dr John David Rhodes reveals in a short video for the National Gallery how both use the same devices to stage entrances, fracture time across space and make us long to enter the detailed worlds they create.
Dr Rhodes, Reader in Literature and Visual Culture at Sussex, features in one of five films commissioned by the National Gallery giving contemporary perspectives on its exhibition ‘ Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting , which runs until 21 September.
Dr Rhodes is particularly interested in cinema’s engagement with other aesthetic forms, including architecture, visual art and literature.
He says: “When we go to the cinema, we leave one space behind and enter another space.
“So cinema is forever staging that, often as concretely as we see Renaissance painting staging that. A film may emphasise an architectural structure or a surface or a threshold so as to stage our entry into the film.
“One thing that’s very clear from looking at Renaissance paintings that have privileged the architectural in some way, is that this is where cinematic space is born. This is where, in a sense, the cinema comes from.
“The pleasure of these paintings consists in the possibility that one will enter into the space in all of its detail, in all of its manifold variety and depth.
“The pleasure and promise of cinema is the same: that we can enter into and apprehend a world, if only with our eyes.
“That’s why we return again and again to these images, both to these paintings and to the cinema - this possibility of entering something, if only imaginatively.”
Dr Rhodes is exploring some of these ideas in more detail in a monograph he is currently working on that studies the representation of the house in American cinema.
Posted on behalf of: School of English
Last updated: Monday, 9 June 2014
If you’d like to leave a comment, enter your ITS username, password, and your comment. The comment may need approval before it is displayed, so don’t expect your comment to appear right away.
By submitting a comment you are agreeing to the Acceptable Use Policy.
General
University of Sussex
Sussex House, Falmer
Brighton, BN1 9RH
United Kingdom
T +44 (0)1273 606755
E information [a] sussex.ac (p) uk
