Résumé / Abstract
Du fait du caractère volatile de la performance théâtrale, certaines interprétations légendaires survivent essentiellement par le souvenir et le témoignage des critiques et d’une partie du public. Ces performances et leur aura pourraient être particulièrement exploitées dans le biopic de comédien, sous-genre qui met la notion de performance actorale au cœur de son propre dispositif en représentant des vedettes qui revivent ainsi à l’écran avec une époque révolue qu’ils symbolisent. A travers deux films hollywoodiens de l’ère des studios, Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney, 1957) et Star ! (Robert Wise, 1968), cet article se propose d’examiner la manière dont certains biopics a priori idéaux pour la rétrotropie artistique, résistent en partie, voire totalement, à cette notion. La reconstruction de la performance, parfois fidèle au texte, à la mise en scène, et, quand cela est possible, à l’expressivité du modèle ne devient pas toujours un garant pour le public ou la critique de réussite artistique. C’est dans l’affrontement non résolu entre les personas des stars contemporaines (Kim Novak, Julie Andrews) et celles des actrices incarnés dans les films (Jeanne Eagels, Gertrude Lawrence) que réside l’explication la plus convaincante d’un échec de la représentation rétrotopique à l’écran, signalant l’importance des star studies dans la compréhension de la réception d’un film. Dans certains contextes, le biopic semble finalement ne pas être tant le lieu privilégié d’une évocation du passé que celui d’une exaltation de la contemporanéité.
The Difficult Representation of Vanished Talent: Actorial Stakes in the Biopics of Jeanne Engels and Gertrude Lawrence
As a theatrical performance is, by essense, a volatile one, some legendary interpretations survive only in some critics’ and audiences’ minds. Those performances and the aura which is attached to them should be used in the comedian’s biopic, a subgenre which puts the idea of performance into the center of its own aesthetic, showing in action some stars who symbolise the beauty of their era. Examining two Hollywood movies of the Golden and Silver Ages, Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney, 1957) and Star! (Robert Wise, 1968), this article analyses the resistance and the integration of an artistic retrotopia in those pictures, which seems, at first, an ideal space for it. The performance’s reproductions, even if faithful to the original in text, staging and even the subjects’ way of acting is not enough to ensure the respect and love of critics and audiences. Actually, the unresolved conflict between the contemporary movie stars’ persona (Kim Novak and Julie Andrews) and that of the personified stars’ is probably the best explanation to the failure of the retrotopic recreation in those two movies. That notion confirms the importance of star studies in movies studies, which, in those cases, shows the biopic is sometimes more about modernity than about nostalgia.
The Difficult Representation of Vanished Talent: Actorial Stakes in the Biopics of Jeanne Engels and Gertrude Lawrence
As a theatrical performance is, by essense, a volatile one, some legendary interpretations survive only in some critics’ and audiences’ minds. Those performances and the aura which is attached to them should be used in the comedian’s biopic, a subgenre which puts the idea of performance into the center of its own aesthetic, showing in action some stars who symbolise the beauty of their era. Examining two Hollywood movies of the Golden and Silver Ages, Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney, 1957) and Star! (Robert Wise, 1968), this article analyses the resistance and the integration of an artistic retrotopia in those pictures, which seems, at first, an ideal space for it. The performance’s reproductions, even if faithful to the original in text, staging and even the subjects’ way of acting is not enough to ensure the respect and love of critics and audiences. Actually, the unresolved conflict between the contemporary movie stars’ persona (Kim Novak and Julie Andrews) and that of the personified stars’ is probably the best explanation to the failure of the retrotopic recreation in those two movies. That notion confirms the importance of star studies in movies studies, which, in those cases, shows the biopic is sometimes more about modernity than about nostalgia.
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