Spatial aesthetics in the film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Comedie

This essay combines some fundamental elements of film theory and visual theory with close observation to construct a detailed analysis of the representation of space in Comédie (1966) — the film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's play of the same name — directed by Marin Karmitz in collaboration with Beckett. The analysis begins by contemplating the spatial qualities of the blank screen that opens the film, and proceeds to chart the way in which our comprehension of its spatial structure develops as the piece unfolds. It is posited that the film's space can only be understood relationally, as opposed to being based on objective coordinates, in that it is entirely constituted by the relations between the depiction of the film's figures and that which engenders and frames them. The paradoxical nature of the space — bounded and boundless — and of the figures depiction — grounded and groundless — is highlighted, along with the work's reflexive engagement with the inherent qualities of its own medium, specifically film's ability to create an illusion of depth, and its tendency to efface the discontinuity between that which engenders the image and the image itself. Ultimately, the essay proposes two opposing but equally tenable interpretations of the film's representation of space, which turn on the floating question of whether or not the camera and the frame are read as unified structural elements. It is suggested that this undecidability represents one of the film's key concerns, thwarting as it does a viewer's sense of mastery over filmic space

Adaptation (eye · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Psychology · Samuel Beckett and Modernism · Theatre and Performance Studies