Hollywood and the modern theatrical dramaturgy: intermedial interchange and dissent in family melodrama of the 1950s

• Grant number: 19/06863-7
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): October 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal researcher: Cecilia Antakly de Mello
• Grantee: Fernanda Sales Rocha Santos
• Home Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/00288-3 - Hollywood and the Modern Theatrical Dramaturgy: Intermediality and Dissensus in the Family Melodrama of the 1950s, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This research aims to launch an innovative look for the relationship between the modern and realistic North American theater dramaturgy and some of its adaptations for Hollywood cinema, between 1940s and 1960s. This is the period marked by the crisis of the film production model of the current studio system in the United States. The intention will be to unravel how adaptations of theatrical texts by authors such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill, in this period of crisis, established tensions within the cinematic, domestic and family melodrama of the 1950s, promoting dissent (as Jacques Rancière proposes, 2010) aesthetic and political, both in content and film form, which supports the impure nature of cinema - in the Bazinian sense (2014). Our hypothesis is that the filmic adaptation of the theatrical dramaturgies of these authors deepens the reflexivity of the melodrama genre and adds elements of realism to the plots, initiating a transformation and modernization movement of North American cinema that culminates in New Hollywood. Through intermidiality as a historical method in the filmies studies - as it has been innovatively proposed by Lucia Nagib (2014) - The study will start from: Death of a Salesman (László Benedek, 1951), Baby Doll (Elia Kazan, 1956) and Long Day's Journey into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962), adaptations of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill, respectively. We advocate that the intense relationship between theater and cinema since the 1940s in the USA has promoted changes relevant in the history of classical narrative cinema. The research sees a interchange between cinema and theater, capable of promoting, at the same time, the modernization and formal-discursive dissension in both artistic forms, from their intermediary relations. (AU)