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

Poulton describes sixteen categories for the intersection of painting and
film, which, however, are rather broad and general so that their applicability to
ekphrasis is limited. Her first category, “films that directly quote paintings” (10-
17), that is, either the work itself or in form of a tableau, has the most ekphrastic
potential of all her categories, yet this definition does not differentiate between
different forms of quotation. Likewise, her categories three and five,
“biographical films of real artists” (19) and “films about fictional artists” (21) do
not take into account that films in these categories may take a vastly different
approaches on how an artist’s work, be it real or fictional, is represented. For
example, James Ivory’s Surviving Picasso (1996) though a biographical film of a
real artist, is very poor in actual paintings by Picasso and has no ekphrastic scene,
while Vincente Minelli’s Lust for Life (1956) quotes many Van Gogh paintings in
a variety of ways, several of which could be seen as ekphrastic.
Similarly, while some of the works to which Poulton’s sixth category,
“films that use paintings as prop or narrative device” (22), applies could represent
instances of filmic ekphrasis, others might not. This category includes paintings
that hang on a wall to denote a style or a personal trait, or paintings that may be
part of the narrative. Examples are films such as Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, in which a Franz Hals painting decorates the
dining room, or the repeated motif of the portrait of Laura in Otto Preminger’s
film Laura (1944). As Poulton emphasizes, in films such as these, the pictures
hanging on the wall are not just accidental, but support the narrative with their
signification (25). Nevertheless, these scenes may not always be ekphrastic. This
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