I had one of those curious experiences this morning that has sent me off in a completely unexpected direction. I do a weekly, on-line, Italian conversation class. The instructor is very good and puts in a lot of effort to ensure that the topics of conversation will engage me. Recently we have spent three of our sessions discussing the work of the Italian modern painter Renato Guttuso. Today she introduced a new line of discussion, namely, the 16th. century type of painting that has come to be called “mannerist”. In doing so she managed to put her finger on one of those areas of art history where I am least well-informed.*
The illustration she chose was the altarpiece by the Italian painter Rosso Fiorentine, entitled La Deposizione (the Deposition: 1521), which is a somewhat histrionic study of the deposition of Christ from the cross. To my surprise she then moved on to the fact that this particular image had featured in an important way in Passolini’s film Ricotta, to which she gave an internet link. After the class I decided to look more carefully at this film, with rather surprising results. The first surprise (to my consternation) was the fact that I could follow the story better using the French sub-titles than I could attempting to listen to the Italian dialogue. (Ah, well! Some distance to go yet with my Italian!) The second surprise, which has really set me thinking this afternoon, is my realisation that I simply do not understand how to “read” cinema.
I have never been a great follower of film, as a medium, and admit readily that I go to the cinema rarely. It came as a surprise, however, to realise that in order to follow film it is necessary to approach it in a particular mental frame. Putting it simply, I had not really grasped hitherto that in order to understand a film it is not enough to operate with the simple concept of “narrative” …. a story. I am beginning to get the idea that it is a complex business of linking visual images which carry associations, and that there are rules and conventions governing the ways in which these are selected, suggested and linked together.
Even having grasped that general idea, I still have little idea what is going on in Passolini’s film. Why are these people dancing the Twist, and what has the little dog got to do with anything, other than the fact that there is something going on here about food?
When I reflect on, for example, the subtle ways in which I might approach as an artist the “decoding” of a portrait, I begin to get some idea of the distance I have to travel in order to read cinema.
*Several years ago a friend of mine, looking at one of my pictures, suggested that it was “mannerist”. I should have asked him what he meant, but didn’t. So only now am I filling in this particular gap in my knowledge of art history.