Staging and Performance in Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21833470 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gary Bettinson (0000-0002-7645-9075, Lancaster University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 30-55 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Projections (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1934-9688 • E-ISSN: 1934-9696 |
| Publisher | Berghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3167/proj.2021.150202 |
| OpenAlex | W3182886951 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
This article provides a stylistic examination of Sidney Lumet’s thriller Deathtrap (1982), analyzing how its strategies of staging and performance generate narrational effects of suspense and surprise. It argues that Lumet anchors these performative strategies to a broad authorial program grounded in expressive subtlety; as such, Lumet’s film reminds us of a waning tradition of US filmmaking in which stylistic ingenuity resides at the denotative and expressive (rather than the decorative or parametric) levels of stylistic discourse. The article treats Lumet’s stylistic choices as creative solutions to a distinctive set of aesthetic problems. It canvasses—and identifies the functions of—the motivic staging schemas patterned throughout Deathtrap ; and it illuminates how these schemas, actuated by star players, shape the viewer’s cognitive uptake in substantive ways
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ingenuity · Performative utterance · Sociology · Surprise · Visual arts · Communication · Computer Science · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|