Movie Poetry: Philip Garrell's Work

Philippe Garrel,the French film director,was referred to as “le Rimbaud du cinema(the Rimbaud of the cinema)”.From wide view of Garrel's filmography,we could find a great similarity of destiny between him and the French poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud.However,are there any more important or deeper connections between Rimbaud,a poet in literature field,and the screen author Garrel? It is this doubt that stimulated me to explore the poetics of films,especially poetics in Garrel's films.In face of so many confusing Chinese words like poetic film,film's poetics,poetics,etc.,this article explores the origins of film poetics on the stand of world film history.Garrel's films are clearly distinguished by generations,which represent totally different styles in two stages.Therefore,poetics of the films should be different in the two stages.Consequently,such kind of exploration enables us to get closer to the essence of film poetics.The introduction part demonstrates some background knowledge that is essential to further understand Garrel's films from four parts: family,era,religion and life experience.Next,the main body of this thesis would demonstrate poetics in Garrel's films in three aspects.The second chapter tries to generally grasp the meaning of film poetics,because poetic films are rarely and scatteredly mentioned in world film history,which makes it necessary to excavate the origins of poetic films.The third chapter places importance on Garrel's experimental films,whose characteristic of style and the reasons behind are analyzed here.The fourth chapter further explores the poetics of Garrel's narrative films from three aspects: way of presenting dreams,photogenie and narrative style after analyze their characteristics.Such an exploration is based on the difference between these two stages,together with the peculiarity of Garrel's films,as a result of which making the research solid and original.The last chapter explore further on film poetics after analyzed Garrel's most recent two films.