Description
Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) is known for his screenplay for Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, as well for the literary genre he described as nouveau roman. His film work as a screenwriter and director is less known today but still relevant. This paper discusses his theory and practices of screenwriting. Robbe-Grillet rebelled against the tradition causal/linear narrative construction, which according to him represented only a by ideology tainted worldview that aimed at ordering the chaos of Nature. This Barthes’ inspired opinion was complemented with the (Marxist) view that this narrative scheme was promoted as the only ‘logical’ one. As an antidote Robbe-Grillet advocated a dys-narrativity, which is neither narrative, nor anti-narrative, but a playful resistance that chafes the viewer’s desire for ‘logic’. The basic principle for the narrative construction of his screenplays would be seriality, or aleatoricism, based on the combination of générateurs, images and sounds that combine to express meaning in a tableau générateur (a ‘generating table’). In a sense a complex system is formed. This implies that the concepts of ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ are present in Robbe-Grillet’s oeuvre in two ways. On the one hand the narrative structure as a complex system —obtained through this ‘combinatory play’— creates the impression of chaos even though there lies a strict mathematical logic behind it. On the other hand, Robbe-Grillet claims that narratives originate from the continuous conflict between and synthesis of chaos and order, or rather what Robbe-Grillet himself would call ‘slippages’ or ‘displacements’ of order and disorder.Besides a critical discussion of these (theoretical) ideas with parallels to dynamic systems approach, I will present a case study of two of his films held against these views: the script and film L’Eden et après (1970) and its ‘anagram’ N. a pris les dés (1971), where the same filmed material was used to compose two distinct narratives.
| Periode | 14 sep 2019 |
|---|---|
| Gehouden op | Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal |
| Mate van erkenning | International |