Academic literature on the topic 'Mulholland Dr. (Film)'

While the initial reception of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) was unspectacular, it made its presence felt in a host of other films – from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983), to Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976), and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (1999). What seemed to have eluded the critics at the time is that Vertigo is a film about being haunted: by illusive images, turbulent emotions, motion and memory, the sound and feeling of falling into the past, into a nightmare. But it is also a shrewdly reflexive film that haunts filmmakers, critics, and artists alike, raising fundamental questions about the ontology of moving images and the regime of fascination (exemplified by Hollywood) that churns them out. Douglas Gordon's Feature Film (1999), D.N. Rodowick's The Wanderers (2016), and Lynn Hershman's VertiGhost (2017) are contemporary examples of how the appropriation and contemplation of some the film's most iconic motifs (the figures of Madeleine, the spiral, the copy or fake, and the fetish), themes (liebestod, obsession, the uncanny) and strategies (mirroring, duplicity, and disorientation) ask us to rethink the relation of fetishism to fabulation, and supplementarity to dissimulation and social engineering. Feature Film, The Wanderers, and VertiGhost are supplementary works, but like the original film they are about duplicity, doppelgänger, and dissimulation. What interests us is how they challenge the authority over, or even proximity to, that which returns in the form of the supplement. And ultimately, attaching themselves to the chain of forgers and forgeries, these supplementary works take their place in the vertiginous sequence of substitutions the film established: a neat allegory for a reign of the digital ghosting that Hitchcock could never have anticipated.

This article considers four films released in American independent cinema since 2000 that contain examples of female masturbation as linked with shame within the character constructs: Mulholland Dr. (2001; dir. Lynch), Secretary (2002; dir. Shainberg), Margot at the Wedding (2007; dir. Baumbach), and Black Swan (2010; dir. Aronofsky). Utilising formalist analysis of the relevant masturbation sequences in the films, along with psychoanalytic theory in relation to both masturbation and the concept of shame, this article aims to demonstrate how these films frame masturbation as negative and transgressive, and link autoerotic behaviour to the concept of shame within the development of the characters.

This arrticle explores the instability and trauma implicit in the representation of the female image in David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001), and more especially the ways in which this links to the clothing worn by the two female protagonists. By examining the role of mourning and nostalgia, the figure of the amnesiac, the complex pairing, doubling and splitting of the characters of the two female leads, and the relationship of these to identification, it will argue that the costuming practices in this film exemplify a crisis of identification within a specifically feminine cinematic image. The costumes represent an approximation of self; they work as devices that desperately attempt to secure some form of identity, doubling and mirroring the self in a vain, ultimately failed, attempt to fix the female subject and resolve her ontological ambiguity. Within a cinematic context, such a failure represents the breakdown of a central and defining paradigm and raises questions concerning the stability of concepts such as subjectivity and identification.

One of the genres which has been neglected by the Academy Award is the metacinema, which for practical purposes I will consider to be a cross between the complexities of self-reflexive cinema (highly connoted with modernism) and the Hollywood Film (the classical films about the urge to “make it” in Hollywood). Indeed, these films have always existed and some, as Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950, USA) and Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001, FRA/USA), have even made it to the ceremony, but were, predictably, defeated by other more serious or less reflexive products in the main categories. The United States has always insisted on not revealing the tricks of the trade at the same time that made films about it to cater to the curiosity of the cinema-inclined spectator. For this reason these films are usually about the universe of cinema but not its medium, at least not in a way that discloses the operations of the technical apparatus. Why are these films not viewed as serious enough and artistic enough to be awarded Oscars by the Academy in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography? Are they being discarded for the same reasons that comedy and musicals usually are? Or are they being punished for being too unveiling? Or is the industry going for commercial products that can easily pushed on a global scale and make a profit?

Avec « Mulholland Drive » (2001), l’œuvre du cinéaste américain David Lynch prend un tournant radical. Métafilm hollywoodien né sur les ruines d’un pilote de série télévisée, « Mulholland Drive » déroute par sa structure narrative singulière, son aspect hétérogène. Dans un premier temps, en favorisant de multiples figures du contraste (autant au niveau formel que thématique), David Lynch cherche à offrir au spectateur une expérience cinématographique singulière, dans laquelle les sensations et les émotions nées de la rencontre des sons et des images jouent un rôle essentiel. Dans un deuxième temps, en s’inscrivant dans la tradition hollywoodienne du métafilm, David Lynch s’interroge sur l’histoire du cinéma et sur les fondements de l’image cinématographique, notamment à l’époque contemporaine qui voit l’émergence de nouvelles formes audio-visuelles grâce au numérique. Oscillant entre cinéma de genre (film noir, thriller, fantastique) et cinéma d’auteurs européens (Bergman, Godard), « Mulholland Drive » se souvient d’images passées de cinéma et cela afin de mieux projeter le cinématographe vers son devenir…
“Mulholland Drive” (2001) is a major turning point in David Lynch’s cinematographic career. This Hollywood metafilm, created from the remains of an unaired television series, disorients its audience by its heterogeneous aspect and narrative structure. On one hand, Lynch uses multiple forms of contrast (thematically and pictorially) to offer the spectator a singular experience of cinema, in which sensations and emotions play the major part. On the other hand, in following the tradition of Hollywood metafilms, David Lynch wonders about the history of cinema and the essence of cinematographic images in our contemporary society, in which new forms of images are being created with digital cameras. Between genres (film noir, thriller, fantastic) and European film (Bergman, Godard), “Mulholland Drive” remembers ancient cinematographic images and tries to anticipate the metamorphosis of cinema…

Le genre filmique – moteur par excellence de la cinématographie hollywoodienne – s’est imposé, au cours des dernières décennies, comme un champ théorique à part entière des études cinématographiques. Or, sa reconnaissance tardive au sein de la recherche universitaire témoigne du paradoxe structurant le champ cinématographique hollywoodien. En effet, la tension qu’entretient Hollywood entre l’industrie du divertissement et le cinéma d’art se révèle d’une façon particulière à travers la notion de genre cinématographique, qui s’avère à la fois un canevas de fabrication et un espace de création. Ce mémoire vise l’étude du genre filmique selon trois articulations : d’un point de vue institutionnel, d’abord, en questionnant les enjeux du champ cinématographique hollywoodien ; d’un point de vue théorique, ensuite, au moyen d’une plongée au sein des conventions et des procédés de trois genres filmiques ; et finalement, à travers l’analyse d’un corpus de films du réalisateur David Lynch. Ainsi, l’œuvre de Lynch, par son caractère marginal, inclassable et profondément étrange, donnera lieu à un parcours, certes, atypique, mais néanmoins significatif de ces trois niveaux de l’étude du genre filmique, dictant par le fait même une division en deux parties du travail. Dans un premier temps, le mémoire s’attardera à mettre en perspective la définition du champ hollywoodien et la trajectoire de Lynch, ce qui nous permettra d’identifier trois genres filmiques qui présentent un ancrage particulier au sein de la filmographie lynchienne, soit le thriller, le film noir et l’horreur. Dans un deuxième temps, nous procéderons à l’analyse filmique de Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997) et Mulholland Drive (2001), trois films qui adoptent la logique de la trilogie en proposant, reprenant, puis aboutissant à un certain nombre de motifs issus des conventions génériques. Ainsi, les grilles de lecture des genres filmiques explorés par le cinéaste permettront d’observer la dimension à la fois classique et expérimentale de l’œuvre lynchienne par rapport à la cinématographie hollywoodienne tout en exposant les innovations du cinéaste à l’égard d’éléments génériques spécifiques.
The film genre – the driving force par excellence of Hollywood cinematography – has established itself in recent decades as a theoretical field in its own right in Film Studies. However, its late recognition within academia testifies to the paradox underlying Hollywood cinematography. Indeed, the tension that Hollywood maintains between the entertainment industry and art cinema is revealed in a particular way through the concept of cinematographic genre, which turns out to be both a canvas for production and a space for creation. This thesis aims to study the film genre according to three articulations: first, from an institutional perspective by questioning the challenges within the Hollywood cinematographic field from a theoretical point of view; second, by exploring the conventions and processes of three film genres; and thirdly, through the analysis of a corpus of films by director David Lynch. Thus, Lynch's work, by its marginal, unclassifiable and profoundly strange character, will lay the foundation for an admittedly atypical, but nevertheless significant analysis of these three levels of study of the film genre, thereby dividing this work in two parts. Initially, the thesis will focus on putting into perspective the definition of the Hollywood field and Lynch's trajectory, which will allow us to identify three significant film genres within Lynch’s filmography, namely the thriller, film noir and horror. In a second step, we will proceed with the filmic analysis of Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), three films which adopt the logic of a trilogy by proposing, summarizing then culminating in a certain number of motifs from generic conventions. Thus, the analytical perspectives from the film genres explored by the filmmaker will allow us to observe both the classical and experimental style of the Lynchian work in Hollywood cinematography while exhibiting the filmmaker's contribution to certain elements of filmic genre.