SCREEN-L Archives

January 1994

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show HTML Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Eric Rabkin <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 17 Jan 1994 11:01:40 EST
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (29 lines)
This wealth of "tunnel" movies is impressive, but it occurs to me
that they beg to be rationalized somehow.  Thinking of works like
Gaston Bachelard's _The Poetics of Space_, it seems that some of
the "tunnels" we've mentioned are truly underground means of
getting from here to there (e.g., in _The Navigator_) while others
are only fortuitously so used (e.g., in _THX1138_) and while
still others are really caves which can in turn be natural or
artificial, useful as prisons or refuges or wombs, and so on.
I hope that when the original poser of the question reposts a
list of "tunnel" films, we'll be able to get some sense of
what the tunnels mean.  Kurasawa's erotic tunnels match
Hitchcock's in a way, but the tunnel used for escape in
_The Guns of Navaronne_, despite the phallic cannon imagery,
seems more like rebirth.  Should this all be connected with
katabasis, e.g., Orpheus, Odysses visiting the shades, etc?
Or with the cave of Daphnis and Chloe?  Like others who opt
for replies to the list as a whole, I want to report that had
those replies not come to the list, I never would have stopped
to think about the above in any detail.  So I too vote for
clutter.
 
Eric
 
Eric Rabkin                [log in to unmask]
Department of English      [log in to unmask]
University of Michigan     office    : 313-764-2553
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045    dept      : 313-764-6330
                           voice msgs: 313-763-3130

ATOM RSS1 RSS2