FILM Flânerie [The observing city stroller]

Gustave Caillebotte – Paris street rainy day 1877

Watching Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty [2013] a few weeks ago – in a cinema, golly-gosh! – set me off on a little journey back into the world of the flâneur. Even someone familiar with flânerie, perhaps through reading of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, might find a reason to tarry here. This is the sub-species ‘flâneur in film’, so keep reading.

For the rest, start gently with a 2010 post in SeattleMet Fête du Flâneur: Be There. Dan Bertolet conveniently links to the wiki:flâneur to go a stage further. [Scroll down to the post…]

There are many interesting links on the flâneur in film. A selection later.

The most important to me so far is a paper by Jaimey Fisher originally published in The German Quarterly 78.4 (Fall 2005):

Wandering in/to the Rubble-Film: Filmic Flânerie and the Exploded Panorama after 1945

which introduces the Rubble-Film. Bear with it. 21pp. Not all rubble. You’re not a rubble-ist are you? A general enticement to rummage in rubble (films) might be mention of the connection between the 19c. flaneur and the modern detective. Lot of ideas to play with.

Overall it’s a historical overview arriving at the key area of the return of the flaneur in 20c. modernity.


As a supplement a review by Imke Meyer of:


The Art of Taking a Walk: Flanerie, Literature, and Film in Weimar Culture
by
Anke Gleber

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 283 pp. ISBN 069100238X.)


Roughly 3 x A4.


Later, more filmic flânerie. Now I’ve got some reading to do.


Other


a blind flaneur a blog by Mark Willis.