Date/Time
Date(s) - 16/05/2012
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Category(ies)
Felicity Chaplin
Roland Barthes defines myth as a signifier of the second order, a type of social usage added to pure matter and adapted to a certain type of consumption. In Louis Malle’s 1965 film Viva Maria!, two mythologies productively intersect: the mythology of la Parisienne and the mythology of striptease. The film stars Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau – the two grandes demoiselles of French cinema of the day – as Maria and Maria, who accidentally found the art of striptease.
The aura surrounding Bardot and Moreau, cultivated by their star personae, adds a further layer of significance and consecrates the mythological history of the origins of striptease. This paper will also consider Marc Allégret’s En Effeuillant la Marguerite (1956), Rouben Mamoulian’s Silk Stockings (1957) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Une Femme est une Femme (1961).
Felicity Chaplin is a PhD candidate at Monash University, across Film and Television Studies; and Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Her thesis is titled ‘La Parisienne in Cinema’.
