Performing Spectatorship
Friday, April 24, 2020 at 5:37PM 
As people who love cinema, I think we can all understand the power art can yield over those who experience it. Whether finding refuge in an escapist dream or seeing an ugly truth reflected at us, the act of being an audience has the potential to startle and surprise, to devastate and entertain. I can often recall those moments when a film overwhelmed me in such ways that I ended up making a spectacle of myself. There were my sobbed laughs at a Whitney Houston karaoke in Toni Erdmann, the breathless shock at Hereditary's peanut panic, the miraculous tears when faced with Parasite's perfect montage and so much more. Those memories are like precious jewels, bright reminders of why I love cinema.
Because of this, I have a special fondness for films that try to capture that inchoate ecstasy that happens when an audience is similarly enraptured…
Filmmakers seem to be particularly enamored with the idea of Opera as a catalyst for emotional devastation. Nicole Kidman was never better than when reacting to the glorious sound of Wagner's Die Walküre in Birth. That oft-misunderstood masterpiece by Jonathan Glazer deals with complicated psyches and psychosexual conundrums, but, for a moment, we see clearly through its hazy mysteries. We see our gaze mirrored and we understand Nicole's troubled widow better than ever. In the noisy silence of her reaction, it can be difficult to articulate the specificities of thought, but we feel the searing reality of her epiphany, it reverberates through the screen.
At the end of Margaret, Anna Paquin gets to play another of these opera-fueled revelations though her approach is much less poised than Kidman's. The Oscar-winning actress from The Piano breaks apart before our eyes, the magnitude of the world crashing down on her teenaged shoulders with the robust power of The Tales of Hoffmann's melodies. These scenes don't always need to be conduits for galvanized pain, we must point out. Often, there's romantic enlightenment to be found in the seats of an opera house. Julia Roberts did it to beautiful perfection in Pretty Woman, and Cher won an Oscar when she reacted to Puccini's La Bohème in Moonstruck.
It's not only opera, however. Sometimes, filmmakers go more meta and turn their cameras to movie audiences instead. When thinking of this type of performance, Mia Farrow is the face that always pops up, her open expression the perfect conduit for The Purple Rose of Cairo's thesis on escapism and The Great Depression's moviegoing habits. Seeing her smile through tears as her woes are awakened and spelled away by the magic of the silver screen is to see catharsis manifested in flesh. Similarly, Cinema Paradiso's ending is a devastating cocktail of joy and sorrow, the big screen as a window into one's soul. In it, an aged filmmaker delights in the painful nostalgia that comes with a collage of censored kisses.
More recently, Tarantino made the reality of Old Hollywood meet his revisionist fantasies, as his dream of Sharon Tate watched the cinematic ghost of the real woman. While the audience of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood may feel melancholy watching the scene, what the director and Margot Robbie show us is cinema as pure joy. It can't always be tears. Similarly, back in 1941, Preston Sturges made a whole movie about the power of art as entertainment. In the ravishing Sullivan's Travels, he dramatized how a movie can make even the most miserable wrecks find a bit of respite. Laughter can be as important as a good crying session.
To finish the reflection on this topic, let's remember another example from last year. If you don't want spoilers for Portrait of a Lady on Fire, stop reading now.
Céline Sciamma's latest is a perfect film, with its ending being of particular wonderment. After all these examples of tearful reactions to classical music, the Vivaldi scored scene that ends Portrait of a Lady on Fire may come off as a cliché, but in no way does that take any power away from it. As she listens to a piece of music forever linked to her former lover and portraitist, Adèle Haenel's Héloise relives the warmth of her passion and the pain of loss. As with Birth, the camera isn't interested in what's happening onstage, focusing instead on the most expressive object ever captured by a camera – the human face. It slowly pushes in on Haenel's visage, inviting us to let the same melodies infiltrate our thoughts, unearthing the memory of lost love as we too must do like the actress onscreen and be overwhelmed by the cathartic power of art.
If you wish to delight in the marvels of that unimpeachable ending, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is available to stream on Hulu.
Reader Comments (26)
I loved that you included Julia Roberts to the Owareto 'Oscar-Winning Actress Reacting Emotionally to Opera' conversation! It doesn't register with as much impact as Cher, Paquin, Kidman, or Haenel's, but still worthy of the conversation!!! :)
Are there any others that we can think of in recent memory that we can add to these or the additional selections from Buchanan's article in the Times? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/movies/actresses-opera-scenes.html
Beau -- I found that piece when I was looking for pictures of Paquin's scene. I'm a bit disappointed that another piece so similar had been written already, but it's a great one and this seems to be a favorite mechanism for many a filmmaker. Though, again, I don't think it applies only to opera.
I'd love to know what other similar instances of onscreen spectatorship the TFE readers can think of. I'm sure there are many more out there.
If the Margot Robbie nomination was inevitable -feels like it was years ago- I would have chosen the Tarantino role just for that particular scene in the movie theatre. She glows.
Amelie (in AMELIE) in a cinema noticing the little things in a movie that others miss, and taking delight in noticing them, is also certainly up there (different emotional response than the ones mentioned above, but an emotional audience response nonetheless).
Travis C -- Great one, I didn't even remember Amelie. Another ones I thought about including were Scorsese's men watching cinema, but there were so many examples of that I didn't know which one to chose. Also, A Clockwork Orange's hellish "therapy" sessions.
As much as I try to avoid thinking about anything Woody-Mia related, I will always make an exception for Purple Rose of Cairo. Just looking at the still of her gazing at the screen brings me to tears. God, I love that movie and her performance.
Well, there's Max Cady being an asshole in the movie theater in Cape Fear. I love how that scene was spoofed in The Simpsons with the lighter and all.
It also came to mind Kiarostami's Shirin, which consists of closeups of women watching a movie for all of its duration.
Gio -- I have to watch Shirin one of these days, both as a fan of actresses watching movies and of Kiarostami. Thanks for the recommendation.
It's pretty experimental - Kiarostami doesn't get enough credit for experimenting with the form, but he had this freedom from the beginning - when in Close-Up he hires the non-actors to play themselves in the movie of the event in their lives which the movie covers, for instance. I feel he had almost a psychological/sociological approach to all of his movies. He was investigating human behavior in all of his art.
Lovely post, thanks a lot Claudio!! This remind me of another Woody Allen film, Vicky, Christina Barcelona. On it we have Rebeca Hall’s character Vicky who can stop being mesmerized by the spanish guitar. Such a wonderful, believable and underrated performance.
I want to mention the theatre scene in Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her) with the always impecable Dario Grandinetti tearing up.
Tsai's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (2003).
Or REAR WINDOW, probably the ultimate film about spectatorship,
Just thought of two more:
That brilliant cinema scene in Apichatpong's CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR, with the spectators in a fugue state that transitions into/becomes analogous with the sleeping patients.
And PEEPING TOM. Which is basically a more perverse REAR WINDOW, anyway.
This is such a great topic. I'm not sure that i'd list this as Kidman's finest moment but only because she's had so many genius ones in multiple films. The competition is stiff!
My heart will always belong to Cecilia and The Purple Rose of Cairo. That movie means so much to me.
There's a scene in La Double Vie de Véronique where Irene Jacob's Véronique was watching a marionette performance, her eyes glued not only on the sad marionette tableau but to the puppeteer. She, like us, was transfixed how this prestigiditator weaves his magic that showed life and death in a few minutes. A wonderfully evocative scene especially in relation to what's to come after that.
Someone also mentioned Caetano Veloso's sublime performance of 'Cucurrucucú Paloma' in Hable Con Ella where Darío Grandinetti's face showed what many of us felt as well.
Probably not strictly on spectatorship but I remember Fernanda Montenegro's final scene in Central do Brasil where she was writing a letter to Josue. The camera focused on her expressive emotional outpouring as she writes her letter while the affecting score of Jacques Morelenbaum & Antonio Pinto captures the bittersweet of that very memorable scene.
Mia farrow is beyond oscar worthy in the purple rose of Cairo and the academy criminally ignored her!
I know 1985 was brutally competitive in Best Actress but Mia Farrow being left off that list is a crime.
I mean Anne Bancroft over Aleandro, Farrow, and Cher?!?
Anne Bancroft watching the performance of Giselle in The Turning Point--the role she once played and now she has been pushed to the margins. Her face says everything--and then some. Sigh.
Some of my favs...
Orson Welles' applause in Citizen Kane.
Cooper at the Roadhouse from the "Lonely Souls" episode of Twin Peaks.
And finally Nashville has so many great moments of characters watching performances - but most iconic is "I'm Easy" with four women watching Carradine, each perhaps thinking the song was written for them", and Lily Tomlin's gaze is just so powerful.
Gio -- Close-up is one of my all-time favorite films as is Through the Olive Trees. I tend to like Kiarostami at his most experimental, even when it's something so minimal as 24 Frames or Take Me Home.
Jonathan -- Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a masterpiece, though I don't usually think of acting when I think of it. It's always felt like most and foremost a formal exercise by the great Tsai Ming-Liang. Still, I need to rewatch it, and, when I do I might regret it's absence from this piece. After all, I have loved his actor's work in other of his films. Also, that moment you refer to in Cemetery of Splendor is wonderful. Though, again, I think of it more in terms of perfect cinematography and editing rather than a showcase of acting.
NATHANIEL R -- The competition is stiff indeed, but that's my favorite Kidman performance with Rabbit Hole and Moulin Rouge! battling it out for the runner-up position.
Owl -- I should have included the Véronique moment in this piece, but I forgot about it. Regarding Talk to Her, I really must rewatch it since I haven't done so in years and can't remember that scene in much detail.
Michael R -- Honestly, the only person in the Oscar line-up who can compete with Mia Farrow's devastating work is Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple. Cher belonged in that Best Actress race too. Then, again, my 1985 acting nominations would be radically different from the Academy's in all categories.
brookesboy -- Great suggestion. Personally, Bancroft's delicate performance is the best part of that picture. The contrast between her and some of the other actors involved is monumental, to say the least.
Ben -- Lily Tomlin's silent reaction to I'm So Easy is one of the greats, that's for sure. Thanks for mentioning it.
Anna Karina‘s tears as she absorbs ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ in ‘Vivre Sa Vie’ is an iconic moment of spectatorship in cinema. Her pure connection with a piece of cinema is the most authentic thing she experiences in the shifting meta-narrative which obscures and reveals her.
Also, ‘Celine & Julie Go Boating’ is also a brilliant example of spectatorship as a co-authored creative act. Actor and audience are blurred in a playful dance, as Celine and Julie perform stories for one other, ultimately entering into a narrative they don’t have ownership of and resolving it together, both inside and outside of the fiction. Genius.
Marion Cotillard near the end of Nine
@ Claudio
Through the Olive Trees is also one of my favorite movies ever. It's about "words" until the end, a visually heartbreaking moment.
Having just completed the 4 episodes of Unorthodox, I gotta say that several scenes that show Shira Haas' Esty emotionally watching/experiencing classical performances show an amazing range of colors. She watches/listens with tears brimming. I can totally believe that such a girl who has not experienced the outside world before could feel that way. I know that Unorthodox is not a film but....
There was also this very moving scene of her singing that reminded me of two* performances that bring happy cathartic tears to the spectators. Outstanding performance from Haas.
*The other two are: Glenn Close's singing Elisabeth's aria from "Tannhäuser" in Meeting Venus and Daniela Vega singing Handel's "Ombra mai fú" in Una Mujer Fantástica. Close's singing was dubbed by Kiri Te Kanawa, while Vega used her own voice.
Great idea for an article, as always a very good text, many thanks Cláudio! Besides, I am a big fan of opera, and I can recall other scenes with the actors reacting to a performance, for example Gounod's "Faust" in "The age of innocence", or Matt Damon's sadness in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" when he goes to the performance of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" in Venice (specifically the scene where the two friends are having a duel, and one of them is finally killed, so it's very well suited to the real situation that Tom Ripley is living in that moment).
And if we are talking about the wonderful scenes of Farrow in "The Purple Rose of Cairo", I remember when Sam Waterston invites the girls to the opera in another Woody Allen's film, "Hannah and her sisters". Of course, the amazing scene with Kidman in "Birth" is a real masterpiece of tension and inner feelings, but I think that in that moment Kidman is not really reacting at the first chords of "Die Walkure", she is not even listening to the music, she is only thinking in the strange meeting she had before. So, in that moment, I think the most incredible is how Glazer decided to use the great Wagner's music as a reflection of her inner feelings, a remarkable complement to Kidman's nervous and tense gaze.
But as you said that the idea of this article was talking not only of reactions to the opera, but how some filmmmakers tried to capture what happens when an audience is enraptured, maybe a very different example can be the famous scene of Edward G. Robinson in "Soylent Green" listening to Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony while he is watching images of the nature? (a very moving idea, specially thinking in the strange times we are living now, if You ask Me...)