Marc Cerisuelo (Université Gustave Eiffel and Institut Universitaire de France)

ABSTRACT This talk elaborates on a few “reception” genres (that is to say, genres that were called such post factum and not following the studios’ deliberate intention), i.e. those which I propose to call “psychopomp fictions”, after one of God Hermes’s functions in Greek mythology, namely that of accompanying souls in the afterlife. To this end, I will build upon two existing publications I authored, a 2016 Portuguese-language one (“Filme, fantasia, fantasmagoria, fantasmas : os “4 Fs” e a projecção, ou um novo eixo na relação literatura-cinema”) and a 2018 French-language one (“Drôles de genres : la descendance cinématographique d’Erwin Panofsky”). Both take the cue from some seminal passages of Panofsky’s 1947 essay about cinema (“Style and medium in the Motion Pictures”), as well as from an interesting exchange between the German art historian and his fellow German exiled scholar Siegfried Kracauer. In my 2016 and 2018 studies, a few other likewise “odd genres” were intentionally referred to: the “Jane’s daughters” genre (a subset of the “female gothic” genre), the “fantasy’s constants” one (within 1950s American comedy), and “Eurydice’s stories” (on love lost in time travels). This third “odd genre” (the first in fact, chronologically) is what I properly mean by “psychopomp fictions” and accounts for a hitherto new relationship between the living and the dead in cinema. These films are metaphysical fantasies made in several different countries and eras, with the 1940s as a “temporal epicentre” thanks to such works as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (A. Hall, 1941), It’s a Wonderful Life (F. Capra, 1946), A Matter of Life and Death (M. Powell et E. Pressburger, 1946), Orphée (J. Cocteau, 1950). In talking cinema, the (double) prototype is the adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s theatrical piece Liliom in Hollywood (F. Borzage, 1930) and Paris (F. Lang, 1935). These are the main examples, but one can go back to silent cinema too, or forward to our own contemporary days, or even look into the several remakes that have been made in the meantime.

What matters in these fictions is their transitional stage between life and death: not a passage from one to the other but rather a constant coming-and-going, back and forth, where the celestial messengers are the main operators of communication between the two worlds. Making death relative and transitory (lasting as long as the film’s screentime, or even a single superimposition) goes against any logics no matter how elementary and against any customary conception of human finitude. Such is the paradoxical interest of this “odd genre”, of these actually metaphysical fantasies borrowing as much from comedy’s resources as from an inevitably darker tone.

Marc Cerisuelo is Professor of Film Studies and Aesthetics at the Université Gustave Eiffel (Paris) and a member of  Institut Universitaire de France, he collaborates with Positif magazine and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Critique (for which he edited and co-edited a number of special issues - including, among others, on André Bazin, and Friedrich Nietzsche). His many publications include, among others, “Jean-Luc Godard” (Editions des Quatre Vents, 1989), “Hollywood à l'écran” (Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2000), “Stanley Cavell: Cinéma et philosophie” (co-edited with Sandra Laugier, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2001), “Vienne et Berlin à Hollywood: Nouvelles approches” (edited collection; PUF, 2006), “Comédie(s) Américaine(s). D'Ernst Lubitsch à Blake Edwards: Histoires d'une forme, avatars d'un genre” (Capricci, 2021), “Oh Brothers! Sur la piste des frères Coen” (with Claire Debru; new augmented edition; Capricci, 2022).

Note that to receive information about joining the meeting online, it is mandatory to register in advance: zoom link.