S3E02 - Narrative Verite with Whit Stillman

We're doing two episodes on truth in cinema, starting with one on standards of reality in narrative films. Whit Stillman (The Last Days of Disco, Love & Friendship) joined us, largely to register his animosity towards the idea of making stylistic decisions based on realism, and shared his thoughts on aesthetic decline, pretension, and the meowling cat sound in Damsels in Distress.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The cruelty of a camera lens trained on unadorned subjects.

• The rise of “visual storytelling” in the post-silent era.

• Did a dreamy reality compromise the reception of Damels in Distress?

• Why the music in The Last Days of Disco doesn’t sound like an American disco.

• The balance between believable-enough and expressive-enough.

• “Cheating”.

• More audio restoration!

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Additional Resources:

Works discussed during this episode:

Metropolitan (1990)

Barcelona (1994)

The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Russian Ark (2002)

Damsels in Distress (2011)

Love & Friendship (2016)

Media:

Blown-out lighting in Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman is the writer and director of the films Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress, and Love & Friendship, and has written novelizations for many of them.