Four films: crossing the boundaries of modernism and postmodernism

This work is based on studying films from the perspective of modernism, late-modernism, postmodernism and film theory. The introduction on the major issues and debates on late-modernism and postmodernism will be followed by the textual analysis of four films: Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice, Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'avventure, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail and David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

I argue that Death in Venice is a wholly intended modernist film that inscribes itself into the tradition of modernism by rewriting other modernist texts, notably the literary work of Thomas Mann and the modernist theories of Theodor Adorno. In this respect, the film is a late-modern, as it embodies the discourses of modernism.

L'avventura both presents a modernist narration and departure from European cinematic tradition. Its shifting between post-neorealism, an ironic authorship and an organization of desire that propels the narrative suggest a postmodern departure from late-modern cinema.

Blackmail parodies modernism from within. By quoting the styles of modernist movements the film establishes an ironic distance from modernism itself; at the same time, it ironically assimilates an institutionalized narrative that suggests the impossibility of a fully modernist narration.

Finally, I argue that as a postmodern film Blue Velvet surrounds its story material with meta-textual references that subverts the unity between the story and its narration. However, the author's intention to 'master' his narrating by a network of extra-diegetic references inscribes a modernist strategy into a postmodern film.