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

lue sections of Jacqueline aux fleurs, a color emphasized in all three shots. 82
Interestingly, blue is also the color in which Ferdinand paints his face before he
blows himself up at the end of the film, thus turning himself into a painted image
(cf. Dalle Vacche, “Jean-Luc” 52). Moreover, the use of two female portraits to
denote the torture (rather than a more violent image such as Picasso’s Guernica)
links the violence to the female protagonist Marianne who is in fact responsible
for Ferdinand’s appearance in the gangster’s apartment. Indeed, Marianne is
connected to female portraits at other times in the movie: As Dalle Vacche has
shown, “the second time we hear Marianne’s full name, the flash shot of Renoir’s
La Petite fille à la gerbe (1888) intervenes” and “as soon as Marianne becomes a
painting by Renoir, or an image with an erotic appeal, she leads Ferdinand to
death” (51). Picasso’s portraits are thus reinterpreted in the context of the film,
and used as visual commentary on and substitute of another visual-verbal scene.
An example of a drama which uses paintings as commentary on the scene
is Antonio Buero Vallejo’s El sueño de la razón (1960). 83 Throughout this play,
changing paintings from Goya’s Pinturas negras (Black paintings; 1820-23) in
the backdrop serve as commentary on the scene. As John Dowling has shown,
Buero connects the showing of the Pinturas negras in the backdrop with scenes
and dialogs in the drama, thereby producing an interchange between painting and
dialog or scene, which mutually illuminate and interpret each other. 84 Dowling
82 Jean-Louis Leutrat, “Godard’s Tricolor,” Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou, ed. David Wills
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) 68.
83 Antonio Buero Vallejo, El tragaluz, El sueño de la razón (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1970).
84 John Dowling, “Buero Vallejo’s interpretation of Goya’s ‘Black Paintings,’” Hispania 56.2
(1973): 450.
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