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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Early film theorist Ricciotto Canudo equated cinema with music because of the Seventh Art’s
inherent plasticity; in the 21st century, plasticity extends to the soundtrack. In this article, I
explore the fusion of cinema with the musical genre of opera. By considering that film is a
performative medium, beyond the actors’ agency, I confirm music’s importance in it as part of
the structure and style of opera. Unlike Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Verdi’s opera Otello,
Orson Welles’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play conforms to Jacques Aumont’s concept
of “operatic film” in that it engenders a coexistence of the verbal and the non-verbal, balancing
drama and music with a performative intention. However, this film is so musicalized and
operatically rendered, especially through its soundtrack, that it exceeds Aumont’s intention and
becomes what I call a “cinematic opera”: a film that is operatic in its artificial and ritualistic
nature as well as in its well-woven soundtrack of music, sound effects and voice working together
in a common musicalized pattern.
Description
INTERFACES - Image, Text, Language | Number 48 | 2022, "Confluences between Film and other Media", sous la direction de Fátima Chinita.
Keywords
Cinema Opera Musicalization Soundtrack Othello Welles (Orson) Intermediality
Citation
Publisher
Université de Bourgogne, Université de Paris, College of the Holy Cross