Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood in Jean Beaudin`s Being

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Brenda Longfellow
Ironically, too, the harsh political reality of the contemporary civil war
between the Armenian and Azerbaijhan commucnitiesneverintrudes into
the detached observance of the photographer's gaze.
20. Egoyan's film seems to correspond to Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson's
insight that: "as actual places and localities become ever more blurred and
indeterminate, ideas of culturally and ethnically distinct places become
perhaps even II!pre salient. It is here that it becomes most visible how
imagined communities come to be attached to imagined places, as displaced
peoples cluster around remembered or imagined homelands, places or
communities in a world that seems increasingly to deny such firm
territorialized anchors in their actuality." Cultural Anthropology, Volume 7,
Number 1 (Pebruary, 1992), p. 10.
19.
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Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood
inJean Beaudin's Being at Home with Claude
!
Andre Loiselle
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RESUME
L'ADAPTATION CINEMATOGRAPHIQUE DE LA PIECE DE THEATRE BEING
AT HOME WITH CLAUDE, DE RENE-DANIEL DUBOIS, DEBUTE AVEC UN
PROLOGUE EN NOIR ET BLANC QUI NOUSMONTRE LES ANTECEDENTS DU
DRAME ORIGINAL. CEPROLOGUE, CREE DE TOUTES PIECES PAR LE
CINEASTE JEAN BEAUDIN, A PLUSIEURS FONCTIONS, DONT CELLE DE
l
GATOIRE CONSTITUANT L'ENSEMBLE DU TEXTE DE DUBOIS. MAIS AU DELA
~.
DE SON R6LE INFORMATIONNEL, CETTE PREFACE ILLUSTRE AUSSI DE
[
FOURNIR CERTAINES DONNEES SUR LE MEURTRE QUI PRECEDE L'INTERRO-
FAC;:ON SUBTILE, SURTOUT PAR SON UTILISATION TRBS BREVE DE LA
COULEUR POUR REPRESENTER LE SANG QUI GlCLE, LE PROCESSUS
D'ADAPTATION AUQUEL LA PIECE A ETE SOUMISE. EN ANALYSANT tES
Brenda Longfellow is an Associate Professor and Co-ordinator ofthe
Film Program at Atkinson College, York University. She has
written extensively on Canadian andfeminist cinema, and has
recently completed a documentary, Balkan Journey I Fragments From the Other Side of War which premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival in 1996.
RAPPORTS QUI EXISTENT ENTRE LE TEXTE ORIGINAL, LE FILM DANS SON
ENSEMBLE ET LE PROLOGUE,EN P.."RTICULIERAU NIVEAU DES SIGNIFIANTS CHROMATIQUES ET DES MODES DE VISUALISATION EMPRUNTES
PAR BEAUDIN POUR CINEMATISER LE PROPOS DE LA PIECE, CET ARTICLE
TENTE D'OFFRIR UNE LECTURE DE BEING AT HOME WITH CLAUDE QUI
SITUE L'OEUVRE DANS LE CONTEXTE DE CERTAINES THEORIES COMPARATIVES DU CINEMA ET DU THEATRE.
J
ean Beaudin's 1992 cinematic treament of Rene-Daniel. Dubois's
drama Being at Home with Claude (1985) marks a turning point in
the recent history of Canadian cinema, for it was the first production
to demonstrate clearly the commercial and artistic potential offeature
film adaptations of Canadian plays. As I have explained elsewhere,l
prior to Being at Home with Claude, there had been only a handful of
Canadian and Quebecois dramatic texts brought to the big screen and,
beside a few notable exceptions like Gratien Gelinas's Tit-Coq (1953)
and William Fruet's Wedding in White (1972), these adaptations
generally attracted very little critical and popular interest. Since the
Canadian }OlInull of Film Stlldte5/1tevIIe a1nadtenne d'etllde5 dnbnatograplti'l"e5 Vol' N° Z
Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood..•
And re Lois e 11 e
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environment (with Claude's home as the synta~atic destination of
the camera's journey away from the mob). Accordingly, the pictu~es
of urban frenzy, which dominate the first half cifthe prologu~, vamsh
when the camera, having reached its goal, enters Claude s abode
through a window and"reveals in lyrical, slow-motion photo~aphy
the copulating men in the homely milieu that had only been ghmpsed
previously.
This manoeuvre away from public, explosive chaos to pnvate,
self-centred love-making is reversed in the second portion of t?e
opening sequence. As the two lovers reach orgasm, Yves grabs a kmfe
and slashes Claude's throat. Claude's efferent blood gushing on the
walls, furniture and appliances, the first colour images in the film,
precipitates a series of shots showing Yves runnin,g away from the
scene of the crime into the disorderly urban settmg. Soon after, a
fade-out terminates this precursory filmic assemblage and raises the
curtain on the play proper, which focuses on the police interroga~ion
as ~n inspector Uacques Godin) seeks to understand why Yves killed
his lover.
Through this initial arrangement of sounds and images, Beaudin
manages to summarize the main. con~enti~n at the. ~ore of the
subsequent dramatic discourse, that IS, a dialectical OPPOS1tJO~ b~tween
a threatening open space peopled with brutal or, at best, lOdlffer~nt
individuals and a closed, comfortable realm where lovers can enJoy
intimacy. This dialectical structure is not readily perceivabl~ in the
play, for Dubois's work harbours an uncommon compleXity that
parallels the intricate psychology of its central ch~ract.er. whose.
voluntary surrender to the police seems to contradict hiS absolute
refusal to explain why he murdered Claude. A close reading ofthe ~ext,
however, reveals that the basic motivation for Yves's behavlOur
emerges directly from this diametrical opposition between home and
the world out there' .
Throughout Dubois's one-act play, the inspector tries t.oreconstruct the events surrounding the crime from the snatches oflOformation wrung out ofYves, without ever managing to disentanglethe web
of paradoxes with which he is presented.· O~ly at the v:ry end of the
play does Yves finally reveal the impetus behlOd the slaylOg ofClaude.
He slit his throat as they were enjoying mutual orgasm to preserve
this instant of pure ecstasy from the corruption of the outside world.
At the climactic point of this perfect communion with C.laud.e. Yves
saw troubling images of the sordid universe that defines hiS eXistence,
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populated by ingrate clients and impersonal coition in the dark trails
of Mont-Royal, and realized that this ruthless environment would
never permit their loving relationship to survive:
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Pis "a s'pouvait pas qu'on reste enfermes comme des moines, les stores
baisses, a vivre du grand amour. Pis "a s'pouvait pas qu'on r'trouve c'qui
s'passait 1;}, queuqu'menutespar mois, en passant I'rest' du temps a negocier
avec tout l'monde. Fas que tout c'que j'me rappelle c'est que d'in coup,
j'avais I'couteau a steak dans une main. Pis "a sen v'nait.'
Following his confession, Yves is taken into police custody, leaving the
inspector baffled by such a revelation.
Yves's long testimony at the end of the drama thus vindicates
Claude's murder as the only means to protect their amorous relationship from the atrocities of the exterior world-the antithesis of their
beautiful love. At the apex of sexual excitement, it dawned upon Yves
that he had to take action to preserve this rare moment of intimacy
with Claude. " ...j'savais qu'y avait unmove a faire," he relates to the
inspector:
Qu'on pourrait pusjamais r'sortir de c't'appartement.la comme avant. Pis
y fallait pas....]'erais en train d'me noyer en lui, avec1ui. Pis y'avait I'restant
du monde. Le contrairede c'qui etait en train d'nous arriver.Je I'sais.Je l'sais
qu'la vraie vie, c'estd'ct' capab' de faire I'un pis raut'oJe l'sais. Qu'y'a pas
rien qu'la beaute. Je I'sais qu'y'a la marde. rai paye assez cher pour
l'apprend', rai pas besoin d'cours hl·d'sus. Mais la. rpensais pas, c'etait "a.
<;a. Rien qu'"a. Pis "a s'pouvait pasqu'on reste enfermes comme des moines,
les stores baisses, a vivre du grand amour.'
To save Claude from having to face the outside world, from having
to "passer sesjournees dans marde [spend his days in shit]," Yves killed
him (Dubois 110).
In addition to this basic paradox-killing one's lover to remain
with him forever-other seemingly contradictory actions performed
by Yves prior to the commencement of the play add to the intricacy
ofthe plot. After having killed Claude, Yves isolated himselfcompletely in his apartment for two days, tearing off the phone and the door
bell because "y m'as pris l'envie de ... de pus efla pour personne," he
tells the inspector, "que personne puisse me r'joind', De disparait'."s
Subsequently, Yves chose to surrender to the authorities rather than
flee. He then arranged to obtain the keys ofajudge's office where he
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summoned the police to meeLhimand whence he refuses to move
until the end of the -play. Finally. he secun;:d the assistance of a
journalist who agreed to expose the judge's involvement with the male
prostitute if Yves is forced out of the office by the police (Dubois 44).
Interestingly enough, these precursory actions. although paradoxical
on the surface, all evince a similar wish for enclosure and retreat from
the outside world. To protect Claude from the outside world, Yves
killed him. And to protect himselffromthe out;ide world, he not only
elected to surrender to the authorities, but also found shelter in the
judge's office whence. thanks to the journalist, he would not be
expelled. All these actions, which Yves arlmitshavipg committed,
confirm the interpretation of the play provided by Maximilien Laroche
in a briefbut perceptive study on Bf'ing a.t Home with Claude and Marcel
Dube's Florence (1960), in which the critic explains Yves's behaviour
in terms of his wish to withdraw from the world: "I1n'y a plus de
solution de compromis etseule demeure la solution illusoire de refuser
Ie monde exterieur en lui substituant un monde interieur [emphasis
added],"6
Of course, there is always the possibility that Yves's account of
the actions that transpired before the play is sheer prevarication; ifthis
were the case. the foregoing analysis would be groundless. However.
the principal action that Yves performs during the play itself, that is, his
adamant refusal to disclose certain details about himself and Claude,
confirms Yves's recourse to the "solution illusoire" of a self-centred
withdrawal into an internal world. Throughout the interrogation. Yves
adopts a cryptic attitude. constantly evading the inspector's queries,
giving only perfunctory replies. which results in a seemingly endless
reiteration of the same questions and answers-a circular structure
punctuated by the inspector's chronic directive: "r'commence [one
more time]" (Dubois 20. 41, 73). Yves's unwillingness to respond
directly to the inspector echoes a common practice in modem plays
of the type of Being at Home with Claude, in which characters use
silence. or oblique phraseology, to manifest their withdrawal from the
external environment. The following quote from Leslie Kane's The
Language ofSilence (1984), which describes dramatic conditions akin to
those deployed in Dubois's text. indicates the connection between
retreat from language and retreat from the world:
In plays ofinaction, when nonprogression in language and nonprogression
in time, combined with confined settings, underscore the sensation of
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:entrapment, silent-response and muteness reinforce the portrait of a man
as not merely estranged from his world, but entrapped in the hell ofthe self.
As a .~etaphor of solitary confinement, silence confirms man's inability or
unwdhngness to relate to others and his concomitant torture by exclusion. 7
The term "silence" is understood, here. as denoting "not only
nonverbal symbolism. but also many forms of connotative indirect
dramatic expression such as innuendo, intimation, hesitation, :eticence
and bivalent speech,"s Consequently. Yves's laconic behaviour hi~
a~tive short-circuiting ofcthe communication mechanism be~een
h1mself and the inspector. can certainty be read, in the light of Kane's
description, as a retreat from the wor(l)d,
Furthermore, ids important to note that the information that Yves
most contentiously refuses to let out pertains to his and Claude's
na~es. In the ?peningexchange, the first question that Yves forcefully
res1~ts answermg concerns his identity. "Ton nom [your name]," asks
the 1Os~ector, t~ which Y~~s replies, H<;a, oubliez era, vous l'saurezpas
[forget 1t, I won t tell you] (Dubois 18), Shortly after, Yves also refuses
to te!l Claude's names. "Meme a lui, tu veux pas dire son nom? [you
won t even tell us his name]" inquires the inspector. "Non" retorts
~ves (Duboi~27). Without embarking on a psychoanalytical investigat10~ ~fYves s pathological need to silence proper names, it is worth
po~tmg out that such a reticence to speak certain words can stem. as
Gregory L. Ulmer observes, from "the refusal to mourn a lost love
?bject [w~~h] ~auses the obj7ct to be preserved like a mummy (mom)
10 a crypt. Usmgthe Freudian case of the WolfMan to examine the
"me~aphorology"ofthe Name ofthe Father as formulated byJacques
Dernda, Ulm~r ~xplains how proper names can become unspeakable
when th~y are 1Ocorporated as literal equivalents for a love-object
whose disappearance is unacceptable. The "word-things" are then
sealed in a "ps~c~~c vault" in a vain attempt to retain the love-object. 1o
~s .U,lmer puts it, the symptomatic words. linked to memories of high
bbidmal value (the shared secret of a desire jU!filled), cannot be uttered,
are locked away in a crypt [Ulmer's emphasis],"l1 Yves's refusal to
sp.eak~is.a~~Claude's names, the two words most directly associated
W1~ h1~ bb1d1Oal memory ofa desire fulfilled (the perfect fusion oftwo
~od1~~ mto one, the un~istinguishable symbiosis of primary narciss1sm), reproduces prec1sely the pathological wish to confine the
love-o~ject in a c~t. Yves's "cryptophoric" propensity corresponds
to the 1mpetus behmd all ofhis actions, whether narrated or performed
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during the play, from the slayi,ng ~f Claude to protect him from the
outside world, to his own retreat in the judge's office and his reticence
to disclose his purpose.
Clearly, the first half of the prologue in Beaudin's adaptation
signifies Yves's desire, namely, withdrawal from the external world
towards a self-contained internal universe, as the camera literally
evades public spaces and finds refuge at'home with Claude. However,
the second half of the prologue, from the very moment of the slaying
onwards, throws Yves outside, into the world, hence seemingly
contradicting his inward desires. But rather than contradicting the
points made above, the second half of the prologue actually points
toward two other important facets of,Being at Home With Claude: first,
Claude's own desire; and second, the transformations effected upon
the play through the very process of cinematographic transposition.
One ofthe most notable semiotic additions introduced by Beaudin
in his cinematic preamble to the original text, and further developed
during the remainder of the film, is the' use of black-and-white
photography through01,lt the whole overture, with the sole exception
of Claude's blood seen splashing around the kitchen where the two
are having sex. Conversely, the scenes in the judge's office are all in
colour except for Yves's black-and-white flashbacks, which punctuate
his narration of the story to the inspector. At fi~st sight, the way in
which black-and-white scenes alternate with colour sequences seems
to suggest a rudimentary nexus between black-and-white imagery and
the past, as is commonly witnessed in mainstream movies. This
interpretation, however, is not consistent with Beaudin's actual
utilization of the chromatic signifier. Ifwe postulate that the introductory segment is in black and white simply because it occurs before the
present tense of the interrogation, then how can we account for the
vivid rea of Claude's gushing blood?
Moreover, there is one flashback, later in the film, that is not in
black and white. As the inspectorreIates the facts, "Samedi soir, a ooze
heures et d'mie, quelqu'un appelle au quartier general pis dit quya
un gars mort au 8574 Casgrain,"13 we are presented with a colour
re-enac~ment of the police officer's description of the discovery of
Claude's dead body. Beaudin's insertion ofthis colour flashback in the
film contradicts any straightforward equation between black-and-white
renditions and the narrative past-tense. Within this colour flashback,
however there are a number ofblack-and-white pictures representing
photogr:phs of the corpse taken by the inspector's assistant. The
Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood...
incorporation of these snapshots in the flashback, rather than operating
as a syntagmatic shift between present and past, actually cull from the
natural unfolding of action in colour paradigmatic moments arrested
in time, correlating,black-and-white imagery with the notion ofevents
being captured as in still photography.
The hermeneutic cue afforded by this utilisation ofblack and white
permits a retrospective interpretation ofthe prolegomenon not merely
as Yves's remembrance, but more precisely as what can be contained
in, or captured by, his cryptophoric memory. This explains why the
dichotomy between the chaotic exterior and the harmonious intedor
is enunciated in such explicit terms in the preface, for this section
represents Yves's own articulation of his relationship with Claude,
safely cloistered from the menacing external surroundings. The
prefatory sequence is, in fact, a literal visualization of Yves's final
explication of the incident: "j'tais en train d'me noyer en lui, avec lui.
Pis y'avait l'restant du monde. Le contraire de c'qui etait entrain
d'nous arriver". Only the blood flowing from Claude's body is in:
colour, because that vision is precisely what refuses to fit into Yves's
recollection of his own desire for withdrawal, symbolizing, as it does,
Claude'~ outward yearning. For, indeed, while Yves seeks to shut
himself in permanently with Claude, certain hints about the latter's
personality revealed throughout the film and the play, allow the
audience to perceive that Claude did not entirely share Yves's aspiration.
Claude's behaviour, at least as described by the prostitute, suggests
that he knew how to negotiate between outward demands and inward
drives. Rather than resorting to Yves's radical gesture of killing his
love-object to conserve their cloistered rehitionship, Claude had opted
for the compromise solution of compartmentalization to come to
terms with these conflicting pressures. This attitude is reflected in
several aspects of Claude's characterization, such as the fact that he
kept both an intimate journal in which "y a un Yves qui est la a tou'es
lignes, quesiment [someone called Yves is mentioned in almost every
sentence}," and a financial record in which mention is made of
everyone who owes him moner. except Yves (Dubois 46). This
translates a distinct delineation between the domain ofpublic transactions and the realm of private emotions. Moreover, for weeks Claude
maintained two relationships, one with a woman involved in the
separatist movement, in which Claude was also involved, the other
with Yves, and never alluded to one in front ofthe other (Dubois 42-3).
Andre Loiselle
Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood...
To disconnect his sexual life from his political career, Claude also
evicted his roommate so as to convert his apart~ent into an a-political
territory for his encounters with Yves. Hqwever, he did not stop
attending his partisan assemblies (Dubois 101). Finally, on the night
of his death, he turned down his separatist friends' invitation to go
manifest against Expo (the play is set itl 1967), saying that he had
something more important to do, but specified as well that he would
contact them on the following day, thus asserting that this rejection
was not categorical (Dubois 10~).
From what the audience can make out ofClaude's actions through
Yves's descriptions, it surfaces that he could function positively in both
the interior and the exterior worlds. He could even tolerate Yves's
"public" life. Not only did he never castigate his lover for his nightly
activities, but when Yves would demand to be killed to avoid having
to face Montreal's demi-monde, Claude would simply hug him and
console him by telling him stories (Dubois 97-8). However, when the
roles were suddenly reversed and Yves perceived a gleam of anxiety
in Claude's eyes, as they were making IQve (Dubois 107-8), the
prostitute could not reciprocate the comforting rhetoric that his lover
had tendered to him. Not nearly as articulate as Claude, Yves's only
option was to terminate Claude's life, as he sometimes WIshed his own
existence would be terminated, to prevent further agony. Able to speak
beautifully (unlike Yves), genuinely altruistic (he used to visit and bring
food to an elderly neighbour [Dubois 45]) and involved in politicS,
Claude was as much of an 'outward' figure as Yves is inwardly.
Yves's comments on the last few seconds of Claude's life and his
description ofthe young man's dead body demonstrate the antithetical
attitudes of the lovers. "Y souriait. Y availles bras en croix.... Pis y
est mort de plaisir. Sans jamais avoir eu a passer ses journees dans
marde:'14 says Yves near the end of his confession (Dubois, 109). This
passage suggests that Claude died fulfilled; that Yves's fatal gesture
accomplished Claude's ultimate desire. Always on the basis of Yves's
report, it is apparent that Claude's desire, far from seeking inward
recoil, was actually oriented toward a complete outward, efferent
movement. As Yves states, Claude experienced pleasure in having his
throat cut open, and never tried to stop the gush of blood splattering
.....dans les fnetres, pis su I'frigidaire. Su l'poele. Su'a tab' [on the
windows, on the fridge, the stove. the table]" (Dubois 109). Moreover,
the torrent ofblood discharging from Claude's ecstatic body was aug"
mented by his ejaculation, as Yves claims: "Pis en meme temps, j'sen-
tais son sexe,comme un' arb', qui explosait.... Sa gorge saignait.
Y'v'nait, pis en meme temps son sang r'volait jusque dans les fnetres."u Thus Claude's (altruistic) desire, fulfilled both by sexual
intercourse and the slashing of his throat, entailed propelling himself
outside of his own body toward the other. Conversely, Yves's inward
impulse is clearly manifested in his gesture of incorporating inside his
own body Claude's discharging fluids: "j'buvais son sang. J' m'en mettais
partout [I was drinking his blood; covering my body with his blood.]"
(Dubois 109). Yves's narrative of this moment ofunparalle1ed passion
with his lover bears witness to the contradictory. yet complementary,
impulses of the two men. one seeking to absorb the other's erupting
body.
But the blood that is not absorded by Yves defies his inward,
afferent, centripetal drive and cannot be assimilated in his narrative.
Significantly, in his last monologue, Yves never actually says that he
slashed Claude's throat: .....pis j' nous voyais pus jamais r'sortir de chez
eux. jamais nous r'lever. Pis, en meme temps, j'sentais son s~xe,
comme un arb', qui explosait. Pis deja, y'avait pus d'couteau dans rna
main [emphaSis added]:'16; and as Yves recounts these events late in the
film, the shot ofred gushing blood is not shown again, for this moment
of pure outward eruption, negates Yves's inward desire. Blood
splashing aU over the place is unequivocally outside the realm of the
drama as related by Yves. Only the exclusively cinematic prologue, that
preceeds the play proper, could present this discharging image.
As such, Claude's blood epitomizes the notion ofcinematic excess,
as Kristin Thompson designates it: "Outside any [narrative] structure~
lie those aspects of the work which are not contained by its unifying
forces-the 'excess' ."17 Beaudin's depiction of excessive blood during
the killing does not only evade Yves's narration, but also allows cinema
to undermine the centripetal theatrical roots ofthe playscript. Indeed,
there exists an evident correlation between, on the one hand, Claude's
blood overwhelming Yves's desire for containment and, on the other
hand, cinema's centrifugal shattering of theatre's afferent pull.
The notion that cinema explodes the limits of closed theatrical
space, like Claude's red gushing blood defies Yves's proclivity for
enclosure, has often been suggested by theorists analyzing the contrasts
between drama and film. The best-known argument along those lines
is probably Andre Bazin's contention that "the force of the theater is
centripetal, with everything functioning to bring the spectator,like the
moth, into its swirling light. The force of the cinema is on the
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contrary, centrifugal, throwing the inte,rest out into a limitless, dark
world which the camera constan~ly strives to Hluminate,"18 Bazin's
comments have influenced many later critics, like Egil Tornqvist, who
quotes Bazin in his 1991 comparative analysis of theatre and film:
In the theatre, "drama proceeds from the actor, in the cinema it goes from
the decor to man:' Thematically, this means that, whereas stage drama
traditionally emphasises the conflic~ between (i) man and man, or (ii) man
and God, screen drama will emphasise the conflict between (iii) man and
his environment, sincl:' the environment is precisely what the film camera
can superbly and almost limitlessly describe'"
But Bazin was not the first film critic to suggest this contrast
between the two art forms. As Kenneth MacKinnon reminds us in his
useful survey of early comparative theories ofthe stage and the screen,
in Greek Tragedy into Film (1986), "for Erwin Panofsky, writing in 1934,
the space of the theatre is essentially static, while that of the cinema
is essentially dynamic:' zo Comparing the effects of film and theatre
mise-en-scene on the spacial deployment ofnarrative episodes, the realist
critic Siegfried Kracauer, says Mackinnon, similarly argued that "the
theatrical story can, in this sense, be classified as 'closed', the cinematic
as 'open' :'ZI Martin Esslin echoes these concepts in his 1987 book, The
Field of Drama, when he writes:
[A] decisive difference between live and cinematic drama lies in the
fundamental distinction between the theatrical and the cinematic space.
Whereas the stage (whether ofthe "peep-show" type, an open arena or "in
the round") confronts the spectator throughout the performance and is its
basic "given", the cinema or television screens are doors through which the
spectator freely enters a space which is infinitely variable and constantly
changing.... Because the camera acts as the spectator's eye, the spectator
enters any space into which the camera takes him: he speeds along in a car,
runs in and out houses, approaches and recedes from objects. This increases
the spectator's "mobility in space".22
Almost ten years before Esslin formulated his theory, Roger Manvell
had already come to a similar conclusion in his famous treatise Theater
and Film (1979):
The great difference between stage and screen is that the film is always free
to use natural or man-made locations, adapting real streets, landscapes, seas,
and mountains for its environmental territory; the screenplay unlike the stage
Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood...
29
play, by its photographic nature is liberated from the confines of the theater's
acting area [emphasis added].zl
And in ~e straightforward phrasing of Neil Sinyard: "in some ways,
"the two' forms are antithetical: theatre is artificial lighting and illusion,
and cinemais open-air and realism; theatre is verbal, Cinema visual;
theatre is stasis, cinema is movement [emphasis added]:'z4
More convoluted, but equally pertinent to my argument, are the
distinctions that Steven Shaviro draws between film and theatre in the
introductory chapter to The Cinematic Body (1993). For Shaviro, as for
Bazin, cinema differs from theatre principally in its ability to dissolve
the presence of the actor, which stands at the centre ofthe centripetal
space of the stage (the "two-fold concave mirror" as Bazin puts it), into
the boundlessness ofvirtual filmic space. Talking about the intrinsically
distanced quality of the cinematic space, Shaviro explains,
...Brechtian techniques have an entirely different impact when they are
transferred from stage to screen. The fact is that distancing and alienation-effects serve not to dispel but only to intensify the captivating power
of cinematic spectacle. Precisely because film is already predicated on what
[Walter] Benjamin (1969) calls the destruction of the aura, because it is
already an "alienated" art, its capacity to affect the spectator is not perturbed
by any additional measure ofalienation....[WiIliam] Flesch (1987), follOWing
Benjamin, therefore speaks of "the proximity without presence of the virtual
space offilm" in opposition to. the power ofthe aura asimplied by "charismatic, theatrical presence" (p. 287). tn film's virtual space, visual pleasure
and fascination are emphatically not dependent upon any illusion of
naturalness or presence. And consequently, this pleasure and fascination
cannot be reduced by traditional modes ofcritical reflection. Alienation-ef·
fects are already in secret accord with the basic antitheatricality ofcinematic
presentation [Shaviro's emphasis].zl
The antitheatricality ofthe cinematic presentation, which ensues
from the absence of the charismatic human body in the limited space
ofthe theatre and the overwhelming presence ofits distancing image,
thus destroys the theatrical aura exactly like Bazin's realistic film space
evacuates the "human soul" from the cinematic decor and denies "any
frontiers to action."z6 Although Shaviro never talks of film's virtual
space in terms ofcentrifugality, his description ofthe cinematic image's
explosive potential corroborates Bazin's impression. "The cinematic
image," Shaviro adds in the same section,
30
. And r e L 0 i s e lIe
in i~s violent more-than-presence, is at the same time immediately an
absence: a distance too great to allowfor any son ofpossession. In its disruptive
play of immediacy and distance, film is n'ot just an art without an aura; it
is an art that enacts, again and again, what [Georges] BataiIle calls the
sacrifice ofthe sacred (auratic) object, or what Benjamin calls the disintegra~
tion of the aura in the experience ofshock [emphasis added].z7
Constantly projecting the spectator at an unbridgeable distance
from the space that it presences through the imaginary mode, cinema
annihilates any possibility~,for the stable space intrinsic in theatrical
performance and, in the process, brutally shatters the charismatic bond
that the stage actor establishes with the audience. Shaviro later
designates the destructive shock value ofcinema in terms ofabjection:
"What inspires the cinematic spectator is !l passion for that very loss
ofcontrol, that abjection, fragmentation, and subversion ofself-identity
that psychoanalytic theory so dubiously classifies under the rubrics of
lack and castration."z8 Cinema, unlike theatre which hinges on mutual
interaction between performer and spectator, is "a technology for
intensifying and renewing experiences ofpassivityand abjection [emphasis
added]."z9 Keeping in mind Julia Kristeva's description of the abject as
"ce qui ne respecte pas les limites,les places,les regles [what does not
respect limits, places, rules],"30 it appears that cinema's abject nature
is directly connected to its ability to break boundaries and subvert
spatial and temporal limitations. Thus, film is centrifugal, eruptive,
abject.31 Film is Claude's red gushing blood. Moreover, Kristeva further
defines the abject in these terms: "Ie cadavre-vu sans Dieu et hors
de la science-est Ie comble de l'abjection. 11 est la mort infestant la
vie, Abject,"3z Film, therefore, as an incamation of abjection, is the
dead body, Not surprisingly, Beaudin's visual analogy for cinema's
abject boundary-breaking potential-Claude's blood-is associated
with the character's cinematized dead body.
This is not to say, ofcourse, that there cannot be blood or corpses
on stage, or that all films have to show splashing bodily. fluids.
However, the fact that Beaudin added to the original text a 'purely
cinematic segment that emphasizes the element of free-flowing
eruption that Dubois's closed drama implies but never actually
represents on stage, bears witness to the filmmaker's understanding
of a key distinction between theatre and film, namely, the latter's
ability, because ofits imaginary constitution, to magnify the texture,
pressure and "redness" ofhuman blood. While Dubois's Being at Home
with Claude, as closed drama, is limited to evoking Yves's excessive
Cinema, Theatre and Red Gushing Blood.••
31
ac~ion and Claude's lacerated body exclusively through dialogues and
monologues, and thus cannot avoid imposing the constraints ofverbal
language on the visceral potential of the spectator's experience,
Beaudin's cinematic version exploits the centrifugal, abject character
of film to foreground the unseen violence of the play. One could
rightfully argue that the tragic power of Dubois's work lies precisely
in its purely linguistic narration of the actions performed prior to the
drama. Yet, Beaudin's choice to introduce his subject through a
syndoche that not only encapsulates the antecedents and content of
the play but also analogizes the transpositional process, far from
deminishing the impact of the original, embodies the dramatic text in
a way that affords a viewing experience which is ultimately closer to
that of the· central character than what drama could provide. For
following the film's graphic prologue, the spectator remains, like Yves,
haunted until the end by the abject, uncontainable vision of Claude's
red, gushing blood,
NOTES
The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable help of Dr. Sheila Petty and
Rob Keys, University ofRegina, ProfessorJerry Wasserman, Dr. Brian Mcilroy
and Dr. Alain-Michel Rocheleau, University of British Columbia.
See Andre Loiselle, "Scenes from a Failed Marriage: A Brief Analytical
History ofCanadian and Quebecois Feature Film Adaptations of Drama
from 1942 to 1992," Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches thedtrales au
Canada, 17.1 (Fall 1996): 38·58.
2. Leo Bonneville, "Interview:]ean Beaudin," Sequences 157 (Mars, 1992):
20. "The camera is searching for the characters. It goes through the
whole city of Montreal, from West to East, through the buildingS, the
streets, the jazz festival, St-Laurent boulevard with its hookers, until it
arrives at [Claude's] place in total exhaustion. All these places form the
synthesis of the play. Someone who could decipher these nine minutes
would fmd all the elements of the play. Everything is there. The rest of
the film only explains in more words these actions." All translations are
my own.
3. Rene-Daniel Dubois, Being at Home with Cldude (Montreal: Lemeac, 1986)
108: "We simply couldn't continue living on love alone, like monks in
a monastery, with the windows shut. But we couldn't survive eitherjust
by making love a few minutes each week, in between meetings with the
1.
Andre Loiselle
rest ofthe world. So, all I can reme~b"'er, is that a steakknifefell in my
hand. And it was coming."
4. Dubois, 108. "I knew something had to be done. We could never come
out of the apartment the way we were before. And we shouldn't.... I
wanted to drown with him, in him, And then, theie was the rest of the
world. The ex~ct contrary of what we were now experiencing. I know
that in life you gotta be able to deal wi~ both. Life is not only about
beauty. There's shit as well. I learned that the hard way. But at that
point, I was not thinking. All that mattered was us. Us. Only us. We
simply couldn't continue living on love alone, like monks in a monastery,
with the windows shut."
5'. Dubois, 68. "I feltJike I didn't want to be there for anybody. I didn't
want to be reached by anyone. bwanted to disappear."
6. MaJPmilienLaroche, "DeDubeliDubois:l'illusionspeculaire," L'Annuaire
thldtral 5'-6 (Fall 1988/Spring 1989):- 210. "There can no longer be
compromise solutions. The only option is the illusory solution :;f
rejecting the external world and replacing it with an intemal world.
7. Leslie Kane, The Language ofSilence: On the Unspoken and the Unspeakable
in Modem Drama (London and Toronto: Assodate~ UP, 1984) 24.
8. Kane, 15'.
.
9. Gregory L. Ulmer, Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from jacques
Dmida to joseph Beuys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985') 61.
10. Ulmer, 62.
11. Ulmer, 84.
_
12. This symbiotic union is exactly what Yves achieved with Claude: "Vous
savez,les histoires nounounes de: lui c'est moi, moi c'est lui? C'est vrai.
<;a existe. j'sais pas comment expliquer r;a. Mais c'est r;a. Javais p~s
l'impression de t'nir quelqu'undans mes bras. [You know those stupid
stories about he is me and I am him. Well it's true. It exists. I can't
explain it to you. But that's the way it is. I didn't feellik~ I was h~lding
someone else in my arms.]" (Dubois 103). On the notJon of primary
narcissism and its relationship to theatrical representation in Quebec, see
Helene Richard's "Le Theatre gai quebecois: conjoncture sociale et
sentiment de fdiation." Cahiers de thedtrejeu 5'4 (Mar. 1990): 15'-23.
13. "Saturday night at 11:30, someone called the police headquarte~ to say
that there was a dead guy at 85'74 Casgrain." Strangely enough, the only
difference between this line in Dubois's original and in the film is the
address. The published play says "85'44 Casgrain", rather than "8574" as
in the rom.
14. Dubois, 109. "He was smilling, his arms stretched out.... He died of
pleasure. Without having to spend his days in shit."
Cinema. Theatre and Red Gushing Blood...
33
15'. Dubois, 109. "I couldfeel hissex,like a tree exploding.... His throat was
bleeding. He was coming at the same time as his blood was splashing
on the windows."
16. Dubois, 109. "I could see ourselves never coming out ofhis place; never
having to get up again. ( could feel his sex, like a tree exploding. And the
knife had already disappeared."
17. KriStin Thompson, "The Concept of Cinematic Excess," Narrative,
Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia
UP, 1986) 130.
18. J. Dudley Andrew, "Andre Bazin," The Major Film Theories: An Introduction,
(London: Oxford UP, 1976) 149.
19. Egil T6mqvist, Transposing Drama: Studies in Representation (Houndmills, .
Hampshire and London: MacMillan, 1991) 19. The Bazin quote is from
Andre Bazin, What is Cinema Vol If ed and trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley,
U of California P, 1967) 102.
20. Kenneth MacKinnon, Greek Tragedy Into Film (London: Croom Helm,
1986) 6, from Erwin Panofsky, "Style and medium in the motion
pictures" (revised), Critique 1.3 Gan/Feb 1947).
21. MacKinnon 8, from Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: the Redemption of
Physical Reality (Oxford: Oxford UP, 19(0).
22. Martin Esslin, The Fie/dofDrama: How the Signs ofDrama Create Meaning
on Stage and Screen (London: Methuen, 1987) 96.
23. Roger Manvell. Theater and Film (London: Associated UP, 1979) 27.
24. Neil Sinyard, Filming Literature: the Art of Screen Adaptation (London:
Croom Helm, 1986) 15'7.
25. Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota P, 1993)
43,44.
26. Bazin, 105-107.
27. Shaviro, 46.
28. Shaviro, 57.
29. Shaviro, 65.
30. Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de !'horreur: Essai sur I'abjection (Paris: Editions du
seuil, 1980) 9.
31. Or to put it in the concise formulation of William Rothman, "Film is
evil." See Rothman, The -]" ofthe Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History,
and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) 78.
32. Kristeva, 11-12. "The cadaver-seen without god and outside
science-is the epitome of abjection. It is death encroaching on life.
Abject"
34
And r e L 0 i s:e 11 e
Querying or
~Queering' the
Nation:
The Lesbian Postmodern and
Canadian Women's Cinema
Andre Loiselle teaches Canadian cinema and film theory at the
University ofRegina. He is the co-edito~, with Brian McIlroy,
of Auteur /Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand
(1995), and has published articles on Canadian and Quebecois
film and drama.
Jean Bruce
IrnSUME
LA NOTION FUGITIVE DE L'IDENTlTE ET SON «INSCRIPTION)~ DANS
L'IMAGINAIRE Dll PAYSAGE CULTUREL CANADIEN FORME LA TRAME DE
NOMBREUX
FILMS
CANADIENS.
AFIN
D'EXPLORER
CETTE
NOIJON
EPHEMERE. A TRAVERS LA SEXUALITE LESBIENNE ET AUSSI AFIN DE
PRESENTER UN FOND HISTORIQUE AU PROJET, CE TEXTE TRAITE DE
LA
1972), AND FORBIDDEN LOVE (AERLYN
WEISSMAN AND LYNNE FERNIE, 1992). L'UTILISATION DU TERME «LE
VIE REVEE (MIREILLE DANSEREAU,
POSTMODERNE LESBIEN>l PERMER DE SCRUTER CES FILMS EN TANT QUE
, DOCUMENTS CULTURELS AYANT UNE DIMENSION POLITIQUE ET EST'HETIQUE. LE TEXTB EXPLORE LES RAPPORTS ENTRE CERTAINS CONTEXTES
. «INDISCIPLINES» ET LBURS SPECTATRICES-EN D'AUTRES MOTS, QUESTIONNB L'ABERRATION PQTENTIELLE DES FILMS BT LBURS CONTEXTES
SPECTATORIELS.
Introduction
I believe that feminine artistic production takes place by means ofa complicated
process involving conquering and reclaiming, appropriating and formulating,
as well as forgetting and subverting. In the works ofthose female artists who
are concerned with the women's movement, one finds artistic tradition as well
as the break with H.
Silvia Bovenschen'
You can only read against the grain ifmisfits in the. text signal the way.
Gayatri Spivak2
CalUldian Journal of Film Studus/Revue cllPUIdunne d'etudes cinematographiques Vol S N° 2