Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Béla Tarr: A Nostalgia for Modernism

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Poetics of Slow Cinema

  • 1169 Accesses

Abstract

Çağlayan examines the work of Béla Tarr with a focus on the main aesthetic functions of the long take, dedramatization and framing. While the long take is traditionally associated with cinematic realism, Tarr’s combined choreography of dedramatization and claustrophobic framing strategies encourage sheer observation and contemplation in a way that transcends narrative motivation. Focusing on exemplary scenes from Sátántangó (1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), the chapter argues that Tarr’s unique mode of narration comprises references and allusions to modernist art cinema. Tarr’s baroque camera movements are conceptualized through the figure of the flâneur, which enables audiences to be immersed in the film, while retaining a self-reflexive detachment. The chapter concludes with a discussion of nostalgia as a mode through which slow cinema revitalizes critical debates on modernist aesthetics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Andrew, Dudley. 1984. Film in the Aura of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balsom, Erika. 2007. Saving the Image: Scale and Duration in Contemporary Art Cinema. Cineaction 72: 23–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barthes, Roland. 1977. The Third Meaning: Research Notes on Some Eisenstein Stills. In Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath, 52–68. London: Fontana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1981. Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudelaire, Charles. 2010. The Painter of Modern Life. In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bazin, André. 2005a. What Is Cinema? Volume 1, ed. and trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005b. What Is Cinema? Volume 2, ed. and trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: California University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belton, John. 1996. New Technologies. In Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 466–490. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Ardent, 211–245. London: Pimlico.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betz, Mark. 2009. Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bordwell, David. 2002. Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film. Film Quarterly 55 (3): 16–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2008. Narration in the Fiction Film. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 1976. Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu. Screen 17 (2): 41–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Film Art: An Introduction. 9th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruno, Giuliana. 1993. Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buck-Morss, Susan. 1986. The Flâneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering. New German Critique 39: 99–140.

    Google Scholar 

  • Çağlayan, Emre. 2018. Sounds of Slowness: Ambience and Absurd Humour in Slow Sound Design. The New Soundtrack 8 (1): 31–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatman, Seymour. 1985. Antonioni: Or, the Surface of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly, Fergus, and Maximilian Le Cain. 2001. Waiting for the Prince: An Interview with Béla Tarr. Senses of Cinema 12. http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/feature-articles/tarr-2/. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • de Luca, Tiago. 2012. Realism of the Senses: A Tendency in Contemporary World Cinema. In Theorizing World Cinema, ed. Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam, and Rajinder Dudrah, 183–205. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Athlone Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dika, Vera. 2003. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: The Uses of Nostalgia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan, Matthew. 2008. Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema. 16:9, 6 (29). http://www.16-9.dk/2008-11/side11_inenglish.htm. Accessed 25 May 2018.

  • ———. 2012. ‘Slow Cinema’: Temporality and Style in Contemporary Art and Experimental Film. PhD Dissertation, University of Exeter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Mattias. 2006. No(ir) Place to Go: Spatial Anxiety and Sartorial Intertextuality in Die Unberührbare. Cinema Journal 45 (4): 64–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friedberg, Anne. 1993. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: California University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallafent, Ed. 2005. The Dandy and the Magdalen: Interpreting the Long Take in Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949). In Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, ed. John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, 68–84. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grainge, Paul. 2002. Monochrome Memories. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hames, Peter. 2001. The Melancholy of Resistance: The Films of Béla Tarr. Kinoeye 1 (1). http://www.kinoeye.org/01/01/hames01.php. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • Henderson, Brian. 1976. The Long Take. In Movies and Methods: An Anthology, ed. Bill Nichols, 314–324. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1983. Tense, Mood and Voice in Film (Notes after Genette). Film Quarterly 36 (4): 4–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgkins, John. 2009. Not Fade Away: Adapting History and Trauma in László Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance and Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies. Adaptation 2 (1): 49–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutcheon, Linda. 2002. Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Iordanova, Dina. 2003. Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film. London: Wallflower Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, Fredric. 1992. Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keathley, Christian. 2006. Cinephilia and History, or the Wind in the Trees. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koch, Stephen. 2002. Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol. London: Marion Boyars.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kovács, András Bálint. 2008. The World According to Béla Tarr. KinoKultura 7. http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/7/kovacs.shtml. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • ———. 2013. The Cinema of Béla Tarr: The Circle Closes. London: Wallflower Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krasznahorkai, László. 1989. The Melancholy of Resistance, trans. George Szirtes. New York: New Directions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kulezic-Wilson, Danijela. 2008. Sound Design is the New Score. Music, Sound and the Moving Image 2 (2): 127–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Sueur, Marc. 1977. Theory Number Five: Anatomy of Nostalgia Films: Heritage and Methods. Journal of Popular Film and Television 6 (2): 187–197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Pamela. 2004. Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marchant, Steven. 2009. Nothing Counts: Shot and Event in Werckmeister Harmonies. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 7 (2): 137–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marguiles, Ivone. 1996. Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Narkunas, J. Paul. 2001. Streetwalking in the Cinema of the City: Capital Flows Through Saigon. In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, ed. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, 147–157. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Orr, John. 2001. Circling the Whale. Sight & Sound 11 (4): 22–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plantinga, Carl. 2009. Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, Jacques. 2013. Béla Tarr, The Time After, trans. Erik Beranek. Minneapolis: Univocal.

    Google Scholar 

  • Romney, Jonathan. 2001. End of the Road. Film Comment 37 (5): 55–56, 59, 61–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Outside the Whale. Sight & Sound 13 (4): 32–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, Philip. 2001. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 1995. A Bluffer’s Guide to Béla Tarr. In Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, 54–58. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996. A Place in the Pantheon. Chicago Reader, May 9. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/a-place-in-the-pantheon/Content?oid=890479. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • ———. 2011. Voluptuous Misery. Film Comment 47 (5): 48–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salt, Barry. 1992. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Starword.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1986. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schoonover, Karl. 2012. Wastrels of Time: Slow Cinema’s Laboring Body, the Political Spectator, and the Queer. Framework 53 (1): 65–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shaviro, Steven. 2010. Slow Cinema Vs Fast Films. The Pinocchio Theory, May 12. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=891. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • Shields, Rob. 1994. Fancy Footwork: Benjamin’s Notes on Flânerie. In The Flâneur, ed. Keith Tester, 61–80. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer, Ben. 1989. Jeanne Dielman: Cinematic Interrogation and ‘Amplification’. Millennium Film Journal 22: 56–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sitney, P. Adams. 1979. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–1978. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sprengler, Christine. 2009. Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tan, Ed. 2011. Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarkovsky, Andrei. 1986. Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Kristin. 1981. Eistenstein’s Ivan the Terrible: A Neoformalist Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1986. The Concept of Cinematic Excess. In Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen, 130–142. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1988. Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Totaro, Donato. 2001. Time and the Long Take in The Magnificent Ambersons, Ugetsu, and Stalker. PhD Dissertation, University of Warwick.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whittock, Trevor. 1990. Metaphor and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willemen, Paul. 1994. Through the Glass Darkly: Cinephilia Reconsidered. In Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies and Film Theory, 223–257. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Richard. 2003. Deep Waters. The Guardian, April 19. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/apr/19/artsfeatures. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

  • Zavattini, Cesare. 1978. A Thesis on Neo-Realism. In Springtime in Italy, ed. and trans. David Overbey, 67–78. London: Talisman Books.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Emre Çağlayan

Authors
  1. Emre Çağlayan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Çağlayan, E. (2018). Béla Tarr: A Nostalgia for Modernism. In: Poetics of Slow Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96872-8_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation