INTRODUCTION
« In France I am regarded as an author, in Germany like
a director, England like a film realizer of horror, and in the United States
like lazy »
John Carpenter.
Difficult to encircle John Carpenter : scenario writer
with work rich (already seventeen full-length films) but
mésestimée, impassioned and enthralling, capitalist film
enthusiast convinced and critical sour of the American, exploring system of a
cinema of kind popular and symbol of the independent cinema, instinctive artist
and perfectionist glutton for work... As many facets of the character bound by
formal coherence and absolute set of themes of its work. I decided to approach
this work under the angle of the fear, or rather that of the threat, i.e. the
feeling, the index that something the annoying one will
arrive, feeling which crosses the catalog of films
carpentérienne. How begins there it to play with our
mechanisms of anticipation and to communicate this anguish of the moment to us
to come ? Especially that it of our true nature reveals us through this
feeling ?
Carpenter indeed builds his filmic work on a feeling of constant
tension ; very quickly posed (as of the starting situation in fact), this
tension does nothing but develop until the final climax (the confrontation)
which will come to close the account while leaving open a field of possible
that each one will be free to interpret. Because it is there one of the keys of
the power of the cinema carpentérien : if it uses all the resources
of which it lays out as a director to give birth to the fear, Carpenter does
not hesitate to leave the door of his filmic space between open for the
spectator. The out-field and the suggestion are obviously the first weapons of
a demanding scenario writer trained with the art subtle of the series B and
accustomed to the budgets inordinately lower than its ambitions : to work
under such conditions of production, it is to agree the permanent challenge to
aim, under cover of an apparent simplicity, an absolute effectiveness of the
narration. But at Carpenter, to purify the film (scenario which goes right to
essence, cutting without artifice : all must be effective !) it is
also all the more to leave place with the spectator to invest it his own
affects and of his own anguishes, in short is all the more to return its matter
frightening at the same time as universal... Universal bus through characters
confronted with crises, we will see that it is well whole Humanity, his place,
its nature, its values even as Carpenter intends to study. Moreover, it knows
better than whoever that the cinema of the fantastic, with its vampires, its
« things » and others croquemitaines, can appear the vector
(ideal ?) of a speech of daring and subversive author who speaks about
him, of you, of us, of America, of the Man and who does not hesitate to
question the statute even of the spectator.
To undertake this study I chose to use the whole of the
catalog of films of Carpenter with some exceptions : I drew aside from his
catalog of films the experiments (Dark Star, Jack Burton in the claws
of Madarin) and films of order (Starman, Christine,
Adventures of an Invisible Man,), preserving only the hard core his work,
namely, by chronological order of exit : Attack,
Halloween, Fog, New York 1997, The Thing, Prince of
darkness, Los-Angeles Invasion, the Village of
Damnés, the Cave of the Madness, Los-Angeles 2013,
Vampires and Ghosts off Mars.
We will undertake this study in three large parts :
· In the first, entitled cinematographic
space : a variation of door-closed, we will see how Carpenter
delimits his filmic space precisely (places, temporality...) in order to
tighten on its characters a revealing vice of their major nature.
· In the second, a progressive rise of the
tension, we will study the scenaristic mechanics of Carpenter who
manages to maintain the spectator very as much as the character in a situation
of permanent tension.
· In the third finally, a mythology of
threatened America, we will discover how the concept of threat,
which crosses and structure all work carpentérienne, can be made the at
the same time political vector of one speech and philosophical broader good.
PLAN
I- cinematographic space: a variation of
door-closed.
1 - a space/time by closed and hostile
definition.
1.1 - a real or metaphorical closed space.
1.2- a progressive hostility: put out of order space and
contaminated.
2- a space which obliges with confrontation with the
enemy.
2.1- a logic of confrontations and domination with
only one stake: survival.
2.2- indistinct mass counters agglomerate of
identities.
3- a space which obliges with confrontation with the other,
therefore with oneself.
3.1 - door-closed sartrien with the construction of
one unit in the difference.
3.2- to find its way and to choose human being.
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