Passages, Interférences, Hybridations: Le Film de théâtre

Abstract

The cinema's developments in lighting, sound and image technology have helped the theatre, and have also allowed its aesthetics to become lighter (Strehler) as well as more complex (Langhoff). Films have originated in plays (not least Louis Malle's Vanya on 42^nd Street, which has been accused of wiping away all traces of the theatre, when, in fact, this eradication was part of the staged work itself); and films have passed into plays (for example, Miracle in Milan staged by Zadek in 1993 after De Sica's film). The distinction between text and image, which defined the theatre/cinema split, is far less useful than distinctions between different types of images. The flux of audiovisual, informational and advertising images today has put the relationship between image and truth, as conceived by Bazin in the 1950s, into deep crisis. The theatre film transfers the dialogue between the stage and the audience into a dialogue between theatre and cinema, and is a meeting, rather than a fusion, between these two arts.