Hitchcock, whose Vertigo plays a part in the essay’s introduction and whose Strangers on a Train and Rear Window are featured in the second 'chapter', was an art lover and collector, yet art and artists are often sources of humor in his work, as I and others have discussed vis Suspicion (Felleman 2006, 6-17), as well as The Trouble with Harry (Felleman 2014, 89-105). They also reflect a range (albeit not global) of historical and cultural origins, from the postwar American thriller to the European art film and the American indie of the 1980s and 1990s. There are vicissitudes of ambivalence here, as the films featured reflect a range of attitudes, from the self-seriousness of the two French biopics in the first 'chapter' to outright parody in the two black comedies in the last. The editing often emphasizes reaction shots, usually of men to women artists and their art. Humor allows Hannah Shikle, my collaborator, and I to express our affection for and pleasure in these films, even as we critique their underlying sexism and stereotyping.

Critical insights, irony, and ambivalence can be engaged by structure and commentary.Ĭomedy, it is said, is all (or mostly) in the timing and, although humor is only one facet of this critique, it’s an important one, and timing was a major focus of the rather minimal but salient text-based elements of the essay. Patterns and tropes typical of representations of art and artists on screen can be highlighted and deconstructed. I like the way evidence can be deployed directly in the video essay form. 'Four Ways to Be a Woman Artist… According to the Movies', my first video essay, emerges from longstanding research and teaching preoccupations, as reflected especially in my book, Art in the Cinematic Imagination (2006), and in Modern Artists as Cinema Subjects, a course I co-teach with Peter Chametzky.

Female narrators in movies