Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

eal painting. Just like literary ekphrasis, cinematic ekphrasis depends on its effect
on and the participation of the audience who must reconstruct, compare, and
synthesize the images.
The paragone, then, intensifies in cinematic ekphrasis because film enacts
not only the competition between words and images, but also that between
pictorial and cinematic images, and, in the case of film adaptations, between
cinematic and literary transmedialization of art. For example, in Korda’s
Rembrandt, the interpretive ekphrases of Rembrandt’s self portraits are largely
visual ekphrases while Laughton’s simultaneous speeches or the dialogs in most
cases (except for the final scene) do not evoke an ekphrasis at all. Thus, the film
not only emphasizes the power of visual, filmic ekphrasis which does not need to
rely on words, but also the simultaneous competition between the filmic
recreations of Rembrandt’s self portraits and the artist’s real works.
Moreover, as the four ekphrastic categories become progressively self-
reflective and independent, the paragone also increases. In dramatic ekphrasis,
film can completely assimilate the original work of art and turn it into a cinematic
scene or even sequence, all but deleting the image’s original status and context.
Ekphrasis can thus function as a useful tool for analyzing many of the issues at
heart in the relationship between words and images, which are central to the
filmic discourse and the hybrid nature of the cinematic medium. By bringing into
interaction and competition the visual, verbal, and auditory elements of the filmic
discourse, cinematic ekphrasis highlights and enacts film’s struggle to be accepted
as art form among the other arts, such as literature, painting, and music.
234