La escena que aguarda

Zusammenfassung

In this paper we are going to tackle the singularity and the power of the great cinematographic close-up. We will argue its relationship with the primordial imago –and, hence, with the figure of the female face. Next, we will address the display of that presence –that of the primordial imago– in the fantasmatic scene that is found in many cinematographic stories. Lastly, we will analyse the act that this presence summons and the drive impulse that nests within it. This reflexion is projected historically through the concise analysis of the nuclear scenes of Broken Blossoms (1919, D.W. Griffith), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, (1963, Alfred Hitchcock), Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott) ), The Good Star (1997, Ricardo Franco), The Searchers (1956, John Ford) and Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz). It can be recognised how the opposite to the impulse to violence is conducted in the classical and postclassical cinema. Finally, and in the light of such analysis, we propose an explanation of the plethora of the meaning that characterises the hero’s act in the classical story: that is due to the hero's capacity to put a stop and therefore contain the scene that could have been unleashed in its absence –this is, the violent and disintegratory scene that, contrarily to the classical story, reigns in the postclassical spectacle.