NOTHING HAPPENS © 1996 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Typeset in Melior by Keystone Typesetting. Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page oftbis book. Frontispiece: Eating and writing. Chantal Akerman in Je tu il elle (1974). Frame enlargement. print courtesy of World Artists Release. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Chantal Akerman's Films: The Politics ofthe Singular 1 1 NOTHING HAPPENS Time for the Everyday in Postwar Realist Cinema 21 Charting the Everyday in Postwar Europe 24 A Realism of Surfaces: Bazin and Neorealist Film 27 From Surface to Structure: Barthes, Godard, and the Textualization of Reality 33 Beyond Cinematic Positivism: The Antirescue Cinema of Andy Warhol 36 2 TOWARD A CORPOREAL CINEMA Theatricality in the '70s 42 The United States in Real Time: Minimal, Hyperreal, and Structural 48 Quotation Reconsidered: European "Theatrical" Cinema 54 3 THE EQUIVALENCE OF EVENTS Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 65 Excess Description: Robbe-Grillet and Cinematic Hyperrealism 69 Bracketing Drama: The Other Scene 73 vi Contents The Murder, and, and, and ... : An Aesthetics of Homogeneity 80 The Automaton: Agency and Causality in Jeanne Die/man 88 4 EXPANDING THE "I" Character in Experimental Feminist Narrative 100 The Lure of Center in Rainer's Work: A Cautionary Tale 104 The Eroded Index: Liminality in Je tu il elle 109 An Alogical, Fitful, Evidence 112 "Here Is": Redundant Description 118 A Mock Centrality: An A-individual Singularity 121 5 "HER" AND JEANNE DIELMAN Type as Commerce 128 For Example, "Her": Godard and the "Natural" Sign 131 Jeanne Die/man: An Exceptional Typicality 140 6 FORMS OF ADDRESS Epistolary Performance, Monologue, and Bla BlaBla 149 Epistolary Performance: News from Home 150 Talk-Blocks: Meetings with Anna 154 Postscript: The Man with the Suitcase and A Filmmaker's Letter 161 What is Wrong with Signing? A Filmmaker's Letter 166 7 THE RHYTHM OF CLICHE Akerman into the '90s 171 Eight Times "Oui": Singularity in Toute une nuit 173 Night and Day and Night: The Cycle Revisited 182 So Let's Sing: The Eighties and Window Shopping 185 Echoes from the East: Histoires D'Amerique and D'Est 192 To Conclude: It Is Time 204 Filmography 213 Notes 215 Bibliography 247 Index 263 Para meus pais. Samuel Margulies e Sonia Dain Margulies. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project began when I first saw Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxeJles and was mesmerized by the hyper reality of everyday gestures. My interest in minimalism and in the notion of nothing happening in modern realist cinema was sharpened during Bill Simon's dissertation seminar and later in a talk with Ismail Xavier (Uni versity of Sao Paulo) who suggested I restrict my inquiry to this seminal filmmaker ofthe early seventies. In writing this book I again confirmed my closest friends' generosity. I would like to thank Catherine Russell for reading this work in its many shapes and for her perceptive and generous criticism. From Mark Cohen, one of the world's greatest readers, I profit everyday. His demand that I do my best always slightly surpassed in pressure his loving sympathy for my desire to finish, and him I thank for the final form this book takes. Several people deserve thanks for the roles they played in this book's early stage as a Ph.D. dissertation in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. They are Stephen Donadio from Middlebury College and Annette Michelson who facilitated my contact with Akerman and her work by providing the opportunity for a first viewing of several of her films in a seminar on Akerman in Middlebury in the Spring of 1987; my thesis advisor, Bill Simon, for furthering my interest in cinema studies; Robert Starn for his inspired and knowledgeable allusions, editorial com ment, and continuing friendship during all my New York years; Peggy