Falling star narratives in Hollywood and British film industries, 1950-2019-By Flavia Soubiran

Key in the history of cinema, the ageing star is a figure of media obsolescence that carries the memory of a bygone era of filmmaking, awakening in the viewer nostalgia and anxiety, which the film industry continues to capitalize on. Building on her doctoral findings, Flavia’s research aims to analyze the strategies specific to the media of film in cultivating, subverting or reinscribing traditional tropes associated with contemporary ageing female stardom. This lecture will address the performativity of ageing in Hollywood and British film productions, raising issues about gendered socio-cultural constructions (Morganroth Gullette, 2004, 2011) and the masquerade of ageing (Woodward, 2006) in contemporary western society. All through classical Hollywood to the end of the Golden Age, movie stars (Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Rosalind Russell) displayed old age as an artistic act, an award-winning performance and a grandiose masquerade. The star’s ageing process is insistently narrated and staged as a grotesque, spectacular show. This characteristic treatment is questioned in a classical Hollywood reflexive sub-genre: the melodrama of the falling star. American and European directors are now reviving the falling star melodramatic themes in a contemporary context. To illustrate this rising melodramatic trend, this lecture will focus on the following performances by American and British ageing stars: Robin Wright in The Congress (2013), Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars (2014), Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), Annette Bening in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017), Kate Winslet in Wonder Wheel (2017) and Renée Zellweger in Judy (2019).

You are invited next Wednesday at 2 pm for a 30 min talk and short screening. There will be a period for discussion over tea and cookies !