The theatrical dimension of Resnais’ work can be divided into four fields of expression:

• choice of collaborators with a theatrical background
• use of theatrical elements of mise en scène
• theatrical Mise en abyme, the play within the film
• screen adaptation of theatrical works

I will attempt to cover all four areas, either directly or indirectly. I will start with mise en abyme.

The principle of mise en abyme is that of a miniaturised form within the work, which reflects, either the work as a whole, or at least a major theme. The term was coined by Gide who borrowed it from the heraldic custom of crest design, whereby a crest would contain one or several miniature versions of itself within its borders (l’abyme, literally meaning abyss, refers to the interior space of the blason or crest). Mise en abyme might therefore be described as the Russian doll principle in art. Mise en abyme participates in artistic reflexivity in the sense that it draws attention to the constructedness of art, and also in the sense that the fragment en abyme acts as a kind of mirror image of the larger work or meta-film. A classic example of theatrical mise en abyme would be Hamlet, in which the play within the play mirrors the father’s murder. Gide’s work contains several literary examples, such as Les Faux Monnayeurs, which tells the story of a novelist writing the novel Les Faux Monnayeurs.. In modernist texts such as Gide’s, mise en abyme also constitutes a questioning of the concept of origin as it opens up the possiblility of infinite regress.

Mise en abyme in Resnais. A total of six out 15 features contain an example of a work within the work. Two contain a film or films within the film, one is about a writer writing a book within the film, three others contain a mise en abyme theatral : scenes form a play within the film : L’Année dernière à Marienbad, Stavisky, Mon oncle d’Amérique.

What particularly interests me is that the works en abyme in Resnais’ films, rather than being a simple reflection in miniature of the work as a whole, seem to me to be more what I will term a refraction. Or a mise en écart (to use a French expression coined by literary and film theorist Marie Claire Ropars). Mise en écart means a setting apart. I will argue that through the shift from mise en abyme to mise en écart, the reflexive process is shown to be other than a straightforward affair of the subject seeing itself in its representations. It is as if the subject that is seen, is different, différant to use Derrida’s term, from the subject seeing. There is a slight shift, un léger décalage, between the subject and its representation of itself which mirrors, if one may still use such a metaphor, which reveals the operation of alterity – the workings of différance - at the heart of subjectivity.

To take a filmic example, Resnais’ first feature, Hiroshima mon Amour contains a fragment of a peace film, in which the film’s heroine plays a lead role. But this fragment, far from being a miniaturised version of the film as a whole, is in fact, a miniaturised version of what the film, Hiroshima, is not. That is: the fragment is a conventional, well meaning and somewhat didactic documentary pamphlet against the bomb, which the film Hiroshima clearly isn’t. The fragment, en écart, represents the film Resnais was commissioned for but refused to make.

The prime literary example of mise en écart is Providence, in which an ageing writer pens fragments of a story using his family as characters. In the final act of the film we meet his real children and realise that they are nothing like the characters portrayed in the embedded novel. Instead of being a reflection of his offspring, the novel’s characters appear as refracted aspects of the writer himself – of his fears and guilt.

I will now take a more detailed look at theatrical mise en abyme in Resnais through a closer analysis of one film, to show that here again, mise en abyme becomes mise en écart.

Stavisky , 1974. (see handout)

Original screenplay by Jorge Semprun.

Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Annie Duperey, Charles Boyer, Michel Lonsdale, François Périer.

Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Annie Duperey, Charles Boyer, Michel Lonsdale, François Périer.

The eponymous main character is based on a historical figure of the 1930s. The son of a Russian Jewish émigré, Stavisky was a small-time conman and police informer turned high-flying financial wheeler-dealer with parliamentary connections. His demise provoked a major political scandal, led to violent riots and almost brought down the French government of the day. Resnais never accepted the title, Stavisky, (imposed for marketing reasons), and the character, played by French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo (star of Godard’s Breathless & Pierrot le Fou, and who also co-produced the film), is referred to in the film as either Sacha or Alexandre. The original title was L’Empire d’Alexandre, a play on words after the name of the theatre owned by the legendary Stavisky, aka, Serge Alexandre, aka Sacha (evoking the giant of French stage and screen, Sacha Guitry, also a Russian émigré).

On its release, the film was criticised for its failure to provide sustained historical and political analysis however such a criticism misses the fact that the authors’ interest lay elsewhere. An introductory title expressly warns that, though most of the events related are true, the intention was not to make an historical work. Resnais’ prime motivation in making the film is encapsulated in the statement that he wished to bring together on screen, the myth of Belmondo, legendary anti-hero of Godard’s first feature, with the myth of the infamous figure of the thirties, Stavisky.

Belmondo’s film début character in Breathless modelled himself on American movie hero, Humphrey Bogart. In a not dissimilar way, the character Serge Alexandre, or Stavisky, is the embodiment of life as performance. His every waking moment is a flamboyant mise en scène. Always elegantly dressed with a fresh carnation in his lapel, when Sacha offers flowers to a woman, it is not just a dozen roses, but a dozen gorgeous bouquets, which are spirited in, to the lady’s side, with great pomp and circumstance, by a small army of bustling servants. It is no coincidence that Sacha owns a theatre. To cite just one example, in one scene he rehearses an important board-meeting speech in front of an empty room. In keeping with the theatrical bent of its hero, the film naturally contains multiple references to theatre, both direct and indirect, both verbal and in the form of mise en abyme.

The film contains three play fragments en abyme :

Two of which are perhaps the exception which proves the rule in that they reflect fairly unproblematically, aspects of Sacha’s personality. We will look at the second.

Giraudoux : Intermezzo. During an audition, Sacha is called on by an aspiring actress to play the role of the spectre. She doesn’t know he owns the theatre and so the scene has a comic, dramatic irony in that she pushes him around the stage as if he were some lowly assistant. What is important here is that in this scene from Intermezzo, Ghosts are portrayed as mortal. Sacha, himself, is clearly like a phantom, though simultaneously larger than life, he is also a mortal spectre hovering between life and death.

Extr 3. from Giraudeaux’ Intermezzo 31min-33min.

Like Giraudoux’ spectre, Sacha is a phantom, hovering feverishly between life and death. Or perhaps it is more exact to say the spectre of death hovers over him. Simultaneously we can read the alter-ego of Stavisky, the small-time crook whose infamous name haunts the film (it is only ever pronounced once) as an unwelcome spectre that haunts the film’s doomed hero, Alexandre/Sacha.

This is suggested by the scene preceding the play fragment in which he refers to his former self in the third person, as character he has played, a bit-part he wishes to be rid of so that he can be free to play the more prestigious role of grand financier, Serge Alexandre.

"Don’t talk to me about that guy. He’s just a poor jerk out on bail, a small-time con-man! Get this character out of my life!"

The sequence also contains a neat comment on demiurgical manipulation of time in cinema and theatre:

The third ex of mise en abyme, which, I will argue, is more a mise en écart, a setting apart, occurs later in the film, just as Sacha learns that the scandal which will ultimately lead to his death, has been uncovered. The news comes while he is attending a Comédie Française performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

The play’s political relevance is also underlined in the preceding scene.

Extr 4. Coriolanus : 1h 32 – 1h34

What particularly interests me here is that Coriolanus’ empassioned speech against democracy reflects not the film as whole, which is centred around the personality of Sacha, but the contemporary French political scene, marked by extreme right wing fascist and royalist demonstrations and attempts to bring an end to republican government.

The inclusion of both Intermezzo and Coriolanus is in a sense, an element of historical realism as both plays were performed in Paris at this time. (Though this was undoubtedly not the motive for their inclusion). As the film shows, every performance of Coriolanus caused an uproar, more often than not turning into a demonstration as the Shakespearian hero’s cry of "Abolish the tribune of the people" was taken up by extreme right-wing fascist or royalist groups in the audience - until the play was eventually withdrawn.

To return to my argument, the Coriolanus piece is a miniature, not of the film Stavisky, but of the political climate of the time.

Though one could draw certain parallels between Shakespeare’s tragic hero and Resnais’ loveable rogue. Both reach positions of power only to be betrayed and abandoned by those who put them there, or who profited thereby. But whatever Sacha’s shady involvement in politics, (he has at least one MP in his pocket) he is no aspiring dictator. His political role is one of an interested observer –watching from the wings, much as he observes the theatrical performances of the film from a proscenium box - an observer therefore, certainly not a main player. Which is not to say there isn’t a connection. Otherwise the piece would be meaningless. My point is that the connection is an oblique one. Again, the relationship between the fragment en abyme and the film is one of refraction rather than simple reflection. Rather than a simple mise en abyme, the inset play represents a kind of mise en ecart.

Compare this to classical mise en abyme for example Hamlet – the plays the thing – staging a poisoning, literally re-enacting, reflecting the murder of the hero’s father. Or, to take an example from classic French cinema, Les Enfants du Paradis : one of characters acts out his jealousy by playing Othello ; while another writes a murder play which he then proceedsto act out literally in the "real life" context of the diegetic world.

Almost all examples of mise en abyme in Resnais can be seen to follow this pattern of refraction. Now, what I want to argue here is that, underlying the subversion of mise en abyme in Resnais, is a sustained critique of the unified humanist subject.

There is, in particular, a parallel with Derrida’s rejection of the concepts of reflexion and reflexivity as both dependent on, and subversive of the concept of a unified subject and the metaphysics of presence. The process of mise en abyme implies a process of reflexion, with the inset work being a reflected miniature, of the larger work. Now, if we apply this process at work in artistic mise en abyme to the domain of subjectivity, it seems to me that there is a clear analogy with the concept of the subject seeing itself as reflected in consciousness. Deconstruction refutes this on several fronts. Firstly, for the subject to see itself reflected, for reflexivity to operate, as Derrida and others (Ricardou) point out, the subject must be divided. Secondly, between the subject seeing, and the mirror image of the subject seen, there is necessarily a spatial and temporal gap. The subject of reflexivity is thus always already, not only split, but also bent: refracted through the workings of différance, or radical alterity.

In the Grammatology, we can read :

In this view of reflexivity, the subject is shown to be split, fragmented, refracted, mis en écart. This is one line of enquiry which I am currently pursuing – any comments most welcome [d.walker@auckland.ac.nz].

Resnais is, at face value, an unlikely candidate for a discussion of theatrical adaptation since in a filmmaking career spanning over 50 years, only two screenplays from a total of 15 feature films are taken from theatre.

For many years Resnais was totally allergic to the idea of adapting existing dramatic works for screen. His reluctance can probably be attributed to his love of and great respect for theatre. For when he does try his hand at theatrical adaptation, he chooses works which, either are difficult to stage for the theatre, let alone cinema, (Smoking/No Smoking) or which have never been adapted successfully to screen (Mélo). In both cases, instead of downplaying or eliminating theatrical aspects, as is the case in 99.9% of screen adaptations, Resnais goes in the opposite direction, highlighting the theatrical qualities of the work, yet also making it uniquely cinematic. His two theatrical adaptations, more than simple generic products, are reflections on, or perhaps I should say "refractions of" theatre and cinema. This is theatre seen through the eye of cinema.

Also personal homage to playwrights whose work Resnais personally loves and admires.

In 1986, Resnais was persuaded by a group of actor friends to adapt Mélo – 1929 play by French Jewish writer Henri Bernstein.

Mélo , 1986

After Henri Bernstein’s Mélo (1929).

Starring Sabine Azéma (Romaine/Maniche), Pierre Arditi (Pierre) André Dussolier (Marcel), Fanny Ardant (Pierre’s cousin, Christiane).

Pierre and Marcel first met as young musicians, studying at the prestigious Conservatoire. Some years later, Marcel is now a world famous concert violinist. Pierre invites his old friend to dinner and introduces him to his charming young wife, also a keen musician. The dinner sets the stage for a romantic triangle that will end in the near death of Pierre and the tragic suicide of Romaine.

Extract. Opening sequence. 2 min.

Title credits are in the form of a theatre programme.

A false (painted) theatre curtain opens and closes the play and also reappears to signal divisions between acts.

The theatrical frame serves almost as a mise en abyme, in the sense of a representation of a representation, putting the entire play in a different temporality: cinematic past tense. This wouldn’t happen on stage, because of the presence of the actors, in both physical and temporal senses.

(Dussolier monologue) Next we will look at a pivotal scene in which Marcel Blanc, the bachelor friend, tells the painful story of a former mistress’ infidelity, during a recital. While he is playing the violin, on stage, he sees his beloved return the amorous glances of a stranger sitting a few rows away from her.

The sequence is told cinematically in a single shot-sequence monologue lasting over seven minutes. Resnais’ mise en scene thus retains the spatio-temporal continuity of theatre and this is partly what gives the scene its emotional intensity. Also the virtuosity of the character’s violin performance in the embedded story is matched in the film, by the brilliantly understated acting performance of André Dussolier. Resnais refuses the conventional cinematic reverse-shot sequence in which the speaker is alternated with reaction shots of the listeners. He refuses also to open the play onto the world using cinematic means eg. a visual representation of the story – the obvious solution. Cf. Most mainstream films whether play based or not – (ex modern TV documentary reconstitution). Even so, the scene does act as a visual flashback – in the mind’s eye of the spectator. Beginning with a theatrical full shot, the camera then moves in closer, effacing the physical signs of the present, the courtyard, the listeners, and takes us into a cinematic space-time of memory and the imaginary.

Show 7 min. Extr.

The most spectacular result of Resnais’ bold aesthetic choice (theatrical single shot sequence) is that the dramatic intensity of the sequence is enhanced. As spectators, we are in the position of the original theatre audience form the point of view of continuity of the story. Yet the cinematic framing (use of medium close-up) enables us to experience the scene with an intimacy that theatre must achieve by other means - the physical presence of the actors. We become spectators and listeners in the cinematic sense of the word. Though initially positioned as the ideal theatre spectator, Resnais camera gradually changes focus to put us in the position of Maniche - and we are seduced, hypnotised, in much the same way that Maniche clearly was. In this respect, the embedded story also functions as a kind of mise en abyme since the story of seduction is doubled in its telling (the story within the play within the film: the representation within the representation of a representation!).

Long shot sequences such as this, explain Resnais’ predilection for actors with a theatrical background. Only a seasoned stage actor could sustain a single shot of this duration, which may go some way towards explaining why sequences of this length are such a rarity in modern cinema. The scene would probably have been shot using no more probably not more than three or four takes (due to an extremely tight shooting schedule: 23 days). Resnais’ habit of rigorous rehearsal preparation is also clearly inherited from theatre.

The central question is that of fate. Does the hand of fate, "Providence", preside over our every gesture – or is life simply a matter of blind chance. From an original choice : the simple decision on the part of one of the characters of whether or not to smoke a cigarette at a given moment, all five main characters’ respective fates change. The process is repeated, at several other points along the narrative chain, in a sort of cinematic "butterfly effect", so that the story bifurcates into a series of twelve possible endings, six per film.

As in Mélo, Resnais’ mise en scène is self-reflexively and simultaneously theatrical and cinematic. He picks up the challenge laid down by Ayckbourn’s original direction that all the roles should be played by the same two actors. Having made this initial decision, Resnais decides to go the full monty, as it were, and shoot all the scenes – and they are all exteriors – in the studio (a similar decision had been made for Mélo, only one scene is shot in exteriors), thereby obtaining a certain uniformity of tone and atmosphere. Particularly, the claustrophobic element brought about by the use of studio sets emphasises the idea of inescapable fate, a huis clos of destiny which is one of the central questions raised by the film, and which would have been lost in a conventional naturalist adaptation. Finally, by the foregrounding of these thetrical aspects, the audience is made aware from the outset that the film is a play in both senses of the word – a theatrical game.

As in Mélo, the screenplay is a condensation of the original. Two plays were omitted as too specifically British – a medieval passion play and cricket match – for French audience. And the eight plays are telescoped into two, two-hour films which can be seen in any order. The setting is transported from Essex to Scarborough in homage to Ayckbourn, whose theatre appears in the background of one setting. Nevertheless, out of characteristic respect for author, very little of the original has been altered.

Many scene changes are made more rapidly than would have been the case for the stage play, in which quite lengthy monologues by one actor allow the other to change costume and makeup etc and reappear in another role.

Nonetheless, Resnais respects scrupulously the theatrical conceit by never showing two characters played by the same actor together in the same shot – which would of course, been easy to do. Easy and obvious and would have destroyed a lot of the fun of the game. Originally intended to show actors in wings doing makeup changes.

As in Mélo, most scenes are shot with a minimal amount of editing, so as not to detract from the flow and continuity of the actors’ performance. This may seem a somewhat banal point, but in relation to the highly edited discontinuity of Resnais’ early work constitutes a major stylistic turn-around. Secondly, almost all mainstream films (particularly TV) are much more heavily edited, with a preponderance of reverse-shot sequences for dialogue. Average shot-length for mainstream film is about eight to ten seconds.

Title cards introduce the setting and characters and serve as filmic punctuation marks, articulating the movement from one possible future to another. Cartoon-like drawings highlight the play with stereotypes and cliché which is a feature of both Resnais and Ayckbourn’s work. (In the first scene of Smoking, the two characters have a drawn out conversation on that most British of subjects, the weather. In another scene, from No Smoking, embarrassing truths and potential intimacy are avoided by a lengthy and minutely detailed description of the recipe for prawn cocktail).

Extr. 4-5 min. (See Appendix)

Resnais reinforces the play’s tongue-in-cheek rendition of stereotypical attitudes and social exchange by an equally tongue-in-cheek use of cinematic clichés : the zoom-in to close–up on the fateful packet of cigarettes at the beginning of both films, complete with music that mirrors the emotional register.

Circular high-angle shot at the end of No Smoking is a pastiche of the classic crane shot which ends many films (see also Resnais’ Providence).

Resnais also had a brilliant idea for setting up a situation of interactive viewing (usually only available to theatre) : the films would be shown simultaneously and spectators would choose at the last moment, which one they would see first. In other words the spectator would become a participant by going through the same process of choice as the character in the film - Smoking or No smoking. Unfortunately French regulations did not permit it. Nonetheless, every spectator is still confronted with this choice, and the decision will influence, in subtle ways, the subsequent viewing experience.

Adaptation = translation. As shown brilliantly by in an article entitled Intimate Exchanges . As Evans points out, translation always involves loss, but potentially there can be gains. Here the issue is compounded by the language/culture factor.

Loss : theatre to fim: physical presence of actors, renewed performance. English to French: Ayckbourn’s wonderful dialogues and lengthy monologues – which were cut quite mercilessly by Resnais’ screenwriters = loss of much verbal humour. The film is probably not as funny or at least not for the same reasons. (Celia’s dresses; French pronunciation; cinematic cliché; actors playing many roles; etc.)

Gain: looking at both Mélo and (No) Smoking, Resnais’ screen adaptations manage to capture the essence of Bernstein and Ayckbourn, whose work is made richer by a well-thought, astute combination of theatrical décor, lighting and acting style, flowing performance of theatre with the intimacy and immediacy of cinematic shot scale and montage. Resnais presents us with a mise en écart of the theatrical original. In the case of (No) Smoking, a series of plays by a brilliant English playwright, doubly refracted through translation into a different artistic medium, and into a different language and cultural setting, emerge as two equally though differently brilliant French films.

Cinema enrichment of theatre:

Resnais can be seen as both adaptor and critic (in the positive sense of the word). His work is a creative interpretation, a refraction of the original. The transmission to a different medium increases the creative challenge and as Ayckbourn points out, reduces the potential for the adaptor to be seen as a competitor or judgmental critic. His estimation of Resnais’ (and his screenwriters’ work) is a fitting homage

Evans also notes the chiasmic, reverse symmetry of the Resnais-Ayckbourn relationship since while Resnais can be seen as a theatrical filmmaker – and not just on the strength of his adaptations – Ayckbourn’s work, both as playwright and stage director, has become increasingly cinematic.

On viewing (No) Smoking, Ayckbourn made the following comment:

The innovative transfer of the conventions of one dramatic medium to another serves to foreground those conventions, constituting a reflexive tear in the transparency of the mimetic fabric, revealing the work as constructed representation.

We aren’t talking filmed theatre but theatre as seen through the refracting lens of cinema or vice versa. This is, of course, and quite categorically not to argue that Resnais’ style of adaptation or Ayckbourn’s theatre constitute prescriptive models. The lesson, if there is one, seems to me to be that there are no such prescriptive models. That conventions – theatrical, cinematic, and by extension, socio-cultural, should neither be blindly followed nor blindly discarded, but continually questioned, exploited knowingly, that is tested and improvised on, in a word, reinvented.

APPENDIX.

SMOKING/NO SMOKING.

Introductory sequence and beginning of first scene: 2min.