La citation filmique : quelques modalités et enjeux

• Main Author: Gilles Ménégaldo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Française des Enseignants et Chercheurs en Cinéma et Audiovisuel 2009-08-01
• Series: Mise au Point
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/map/1266

Cinematic quotations are a relatively common practice in classical cinema but they are even more widespread and diversified in modern contemporary films. Studying the methods and the implications of cinematic quotations which are an aspect of intertextuality allows us to tackle a certain number of questions. How the narrative functions in the film, the forms of interaction between the film that is quoted and the one which is quoting, relations which can be of a varying nature and which could be a tribute or a parody. The use of quotations also reveals the aesthetic and/or ideological choices of the director. There is, moreover, the question of how the quote is perceived. The audience becomes involved in a more or less playful recognition of the source of the quotation because it makes demands on his/her memory and his/her knowledge. This is even truer when the quotation is implicit and when part of the quoted film is not included in the narrative fabric. Thus, through the study of a examples from (Hawkes, Hitchcock, DePalma, Allen, Burton) we will examine the way in which quotations are used in order to determine the role of the quote in the film. We will also look at what it reveals concerning the position of the filmmaker in relation to film heritage and more extensively cultural heritage.