In this video essay, I take a look at the film "Portrait de la jeune fille en feu" (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019) by Céline Sciamma, starring Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant.
Specifically, rather than to examine the deconstruction of the gaze in art or the artist-muse relationship, I wanted to focus on an aspect I haven't seen as much talk about: the use of silence and diegetic music in the film. It connects to Céline Sciamma's feminist vision and her way of implementing it in a cinematic fashion.
Something that could be further explored, but which I didn't focus on, would be elements of social mobility, class distinctions, and so on; I'm personally not sure that the film wishes to comment on them in much detail, so I didn't make them part of my analysis.
SOURCES that I used to inform myself, apart from the film, were two interviews with Céline Sciamma: One in the IndieWire Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, 18 February 2020 (www.indiewire.com/2020/02/por...) and one in Film Comment, Nov-Dec 2019 (www.filmcomment.com/article/i....
The MUSIC in the first part of the video is from Christoph Willibald Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30, 1762; Act 2, "Melodie dell'Orfeo" (Arr. Sgambati), performed by Anthony Goldstone. (It's a bit of an easter egg, since the film is set around 1770 and they talk about Orpheus and Eurydice in it - I'm just that kind of a nerd!)
Of the two IMAGES that I use to illustrate the witches theme, the first is a copper engraving by W. Jury after Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1829) for Goethe's Faust I and the second I believe to be taken from the Swiss Wickiana collection from the 16th century, although I couldn't find a proper citation for it.