Bogart Double of Bogart. Clues of the screen persona of Humphrey Bogart, 1941-1946

• Grant number: 14/50772-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: March 01, 2015
• End date: February 29, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Heloísa André Pontes
• Grantee: Heloísa André Pontes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This essay describes the sedimentation of the screen persona of Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) in the first half of the 1940. Its analytical focus is twofold: on the one hand, it pays attention to the gender relations inscribed in his performances; on the other, seeks to relate his social trajectory and Hollywood's industrial structure of production. In classical cinema, the artistic performance was submitted to the camera, that executed the mediation of the entire process; to the technical apparatus corresponded the screen persona, that did not resume itself to the interpreter nor has/her characters: at the same time that united these, outlining a model of gender, it also supplied to the former the social setting in the structure of production. The Bogart case offers a circumscribed picture because his persona emerged in a linear form in half a decade, when Hollywood organized itself through a mode of production where each studio developed its own style and controlled the entire industrial production of a film, from screenplay to exhibition, and therefore the relative autonomy of the artist was very narrow. Through a series of clues collected from various sources, this essay argues that social experience and visual culture are inseparable, defends that Bogart's persona, a canonical symbol of masculinity, was nourished by the dramatic tension between the apparent indifference and the sudden vulnerability, and finally demonstrates that the relation between Bogart and his persona was characterized by otherness. (AU)