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A Modest Proposal for Rethinking Cinematic

Excess

Angelos Koutsourakis

To cite this article: Angelos Koutsourakis (2020): A Modest Proposal for Rethinking Cinematic
Excess, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2020.1790281

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2020.1790281

Published online: 31 Dec 2020.

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QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO
https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2020.1790281

A Modest Proposal for Rethinking Cinematic Excess

Angelos Koutsourakis

Introduction
In an essay written in 2000, Adrian Martin provocatively expresses his dis-
comfort with theories of cinematic excess. For Martin, the problem with
Kristin Thompson’s (to whom I will return below) argument that cinematic
excess refers to all those aspects of a film that have no narrative function is
that it presupposes that the functional and narrative aspects of a film must
be mundane and tedious, whereas only a few transgressive moments can
produce affect. As he says, “theories of cinematic excess are underwritten
by routine and sometimes facile assumptions about that phantom beast
known as “classical Hollywood realist narrative”—conjured as fundamen-
tally a straitjacketed, rule-bound, mechanical, inert form, bent on function-
ally delivering stories on a conveyor belt, and little more (2018, 213).” He
then poses the legitimate question whether classical films conform to these
taken-for-granted rules. Are classical Hollywood’s’ “functional”, story-telling
moments simply boring waiting to be salvaged by these transgressive
sequences that do not fit in? Martin’s question provides a point of entry
into thinking about excess as something that is not necessarily antithetical
to the classical Hollywood style; he also rightly alerts us that filmic
moments serving narrative ends are not necessarily mundane and esthetic-
ally indifferent; they make use of expressive properties that do not simply
advance the plot. Yet, unlike Martin, I do see a merit in Thompson’s
understanding of excess as something that creates a conflict between the
expressive and functional aspects of representation. Of intrinsic importance
to my argument is, however, the idea that excess can also be identified in
filmic sequences that serve diegetic ends, but whose style contains a surplus
that cannot be completely integrated within the narrative.
In what follows, I want to revisit the concept of cinematic excess with
reference to Thompson and Barthes. In particular, I re-read Barthes’ “The
Third Meaning” together with his seminal essay “The Reality Effect”, where
he notes how detailed descriptions in realist literature can simultaneously

Angelos Koutsourakis is a University Academic Fellow in World Cinema at the Centre for World Cinemas and
Digital Cultures, University of Leeds. He is the author of Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema (2019),
Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (2013) and the co-editor of The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015) and
Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe (2020).
ß 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

serve narrative ends but also produce a “narrative luxury” that goes beyond
the imparting of diegetic information (2006, 230). I then proceed to discuss
moments of excess in three classical Hollywood films: The Outlaw (Howard
Hughes: 1941), the first film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass
Menagerie (Irving Rapper: 1950), and Jean Negulesco’s Humoresque (1946).
Thus, this essay concerns itself with rethinking the concept of cinematic
excess as something that is equally applicable to classical Hollywood cin-
ema. In doing so, the essay corresponds to an ongoing interest in cinematic
excess and to a revived scholarly attention to Barthes’ relationship to cin-
ema (see Ffrench 2019; Watts 2016; Stafford 2013; Fuery 2000).
A few words about the choice of the case studies. I have avoided films by
renowned auteurs such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Max Oph€ uls, the
Hollywood period of Fritz Lang, John Ford, Douglas Sirk and Elia Kazan;
moments of cinematic excess permeate their works but a skeptic could easily
retort that these directors were “mavericks”, who always managed to go
beyond the restraints of the classical Hollywood style. It is easy for instance to
rationalize the excess that permeates many films by Hitchcock on the basis of
 zek’s famous and influential read-
his latent post-structuralism as per Slavoj Zi
 zek 1992). Furthermore, one could interject that many of the afore-
ing (see Zi
mentioned key Hollywood auteurs had an enduring interest in modernism
and this is the reason why they ended up making films whose cinematic
excess could at times disrupt the formal unity and esthetic coherence of the
classical system from within (see Elsaesser 2012, 188).
This is also why I have intentionally avoided certain genres, e.g. neo-
noirs, family melodramas with rich mise-en-scenes and horror films. One
can, for instance, follow Linda Williams’ example and suggest that excess is
part and parcel of “body genre” films (1991: 4). Here, I would like to
emphasise that Williams’ understanding of excess is not rooted in the
Barthian third meaning as is Thompson’s. For Williams, instead, excess
refers to all these spectacular moments of corporeal display in pornog-
raphy, horror films and melodramas that produce sensational/affective
responses to the viewers; then again, these spectacular displays, are for the
most part very much contained within the narratives and stories of these
films, and do not produce this non-integrated surplus, discussed in
Thompson’s essay.
The reason for having chosen these three films has to do with the fact
that excess is not as obvious as in the works of the abovementioned auteur
Hollywood filmmakers, who were explicitly in dialogue with modernism, or
in films focusing on spectacle at the expense of narrative. In other words,
excess is produced in sequences that appear diegetically motivated, but
whose formal and stylistic treatment of the material exceeds their narrative
objectives. Moreover, the choice of the case studies aims to capture the
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 3

variety of classical Hollywood films using as examples a theatrical adapta-

tion, a melodrama, and a Western and indeed I focus on these three films
in a bid to show how a close analysis of these objects can yield new ways
of thinking about excess in other (not overtly spectacular) classical
Hollywood narrative films too. I follow David Bordwell’s definition of clas-
sical Hollywood as a type of cinema that deploys standard practices in
order to produce story coherence, narrative causality and unity (see
Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1985, 12). The films I discuss were shot
in black and white and this is a deliberate choice, because I want to avoid
knee-jerk associations of excess with films in lush color. Two out of the
three films I am analyzing, are rooted in the American theater tradition
and follow the canonical structure of the well-made play that has been his-
torically influential on classical Hollywood cinema: The Glass Menagerie is
an adaptation of the homonymous play by Tennessee Williams and
Humoresque–cowritten by the renowned dramatist Clifford Odets–follows
in the footsteps of the 1930s American drama.1 Rapper’s adaptation of
Williams’ famous play has some melodramatic elements as per his experi-
ence in the woman’s films genre, but its avoidance of standard melodra-
matic tropes, such as the overuse of extra-diegetic music, and its reliance
on a source-text concerned with social issues, places it more in the social
drama category. Humoresque is a mixture of a social drama, concerned
with the desire of a working-class man to achieve recognition as a musi-
cian, and melodrama, since it simultaneously focuses on his relationship
with an older, rich and emotionally vulnerable woman. Finally, The Outlaw
is a Western characterized by esthetic and narrative coherence and despite
some revisionist Western elements, such as the emphasis on anti-heroes, it
does not deviate from the canonical three-act structure of the classical
Hollywood style. Thus, my approach measured against previous debates on
cinematic excess provides a new and fresh perspective on the topic because
it acknowledges that the concept of cinematic excess is not exclusive of
films that follow the causal narrative logic of classical Hollywood.
Before, moving to the main corpus of the essay, a few words are in order
about the scholarly reception of the concept of cinematic excess, which is
still an important touchstone in current debates in film studies. A conten-
tious and at times ill-defined term, it is normally dropped by scholars into
an argument as if it is self-explanatory. For instance, Anna Everett uses
theories of cinematic excess to explore how black audiences read films with
problematic racial representations against the grain. In a way, her approach
is more in line with an Althusserian tradition of symptomatic reading,
which focuses on the inherent and/or suppressed contradictions within a
film’s narrative rather than one concerned with the excess produced by the
expressive qualities of representation. Similarly, Leo Charney’s reading of
4 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1990) deploys a methodology rooted in a

symptomatic reading that intends to reveal the subtexts behind the film’s
storyline. Although he skilfully theorises cinematic excess, his application
of the concept to the film is chiefly concerned with questions of content.
For Charney, the excessive aspects of the film allow us to read it as an alle-
gory against the McCarthyist postwar witch-hunts and the ensued gender
conflicts following the end of WWII.2
The most commonsensical approach is to link excess to the unique style
of an auteur. This is certainly the case in the work of Jose Alaniz, who
argues that cinematic excess permeates the work of the Russian filmmaker
Alexander Sokurov. For Alaniz, the excess in Sokurov’s work is to be
attributed to the intentional mistakes and tricks that seem to subvert “the
film’s surface meaning” (2008, 184).3 Similarly, Lydia Tuan’s discussion of
excess in the films of Paolo Sorrentino seeks to depart from questions of
content and suggests that “excess can be stylistic of a film or even its
director” (2019, 429). Commenting on La grande bellezza (The Great
Beauty, 2013) she reads certain visuals, such as an out-of-place ship, as alle-
gories “of decay and disaster” (2019, 439) in contemporary Italian politics.
According to her reading, therefore, the moments of excess have a symbolic
effect that sits at the antipodes of the Barthian third meaning, to which I
will return in the following section.4 Finally, Michael Josiah Mosely offers a
different reading of Thompson’s essay in his Heideggerian discussion of
Antonioni’s L’eclisse (2018). For Mosely, the excess is this film is the prod-
uct of Antonioni’s preference for capturing mundane aspects of reality that
serve no clear narrative objectives. I have a central hesitation regarding
Mosely’s approach because it simply magnifies a canonical modernist
emphasis on mundaneness—“modernism’s commitment to the ordinary” as
per David Trotter (2010, 109) and “modernist dailiness” as aptly described
by Laura Marcus (2010, 30)—and reads it as an instance of excess.5

Revisiting Thompson and Barthes

As the above-mentioned section demonstrates, part of the problem in
understanding cinematic excess is that scholars’ reference points intended
to elucidate the concept, manage to obscure it, chiefly because the term is
taken as self-explanatory or is undertheorized. In this section, I revisit
Thompson’s influential article and Barthes’ work to which the former is
indebted to, so as to clarify some key points that can enable us to see how
cinematic excess refers to those moments in a film that are not anti-
narrative or cannot be simply reduced to a symbolic function; they work
instead in a manner that produces an audio-visual surplus that exceeds
esthetic functionalism. This provides a way of understanding that excess in
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 5

Thompson’s and Barthes’ terms can function mainly in narrative—this

includes both art cinema and Hollywood—films; one cannot only talk
about excess in an avant-garde/anti-narrative film in which the audio-visual
materials assume an independent function and frustrate storytelling expect-
ations. Put simply, a filmic sequence cannot exceed its narrative function
within the film without a narrative in the first place. Obviously, avant-
garde films are excessive in the sense that they negate conventional narra-
tive structures, but this is different from Thompson’s conceptualization of
the term.
Thompson’s theorization of cinematic excess is the product of her
engagement with Barthes’ “The Third Meaning” and Stephen Heath’s
important 1975 essay “Film and System: Terms of Analysis Part I.”
Ironically, Heath’s article discusses a Hollywood film, Orson Welles’ Touch
of Evil (1958), although Thompson understands excess as something more
relevant in films outside the Hollywood cinematic tradition. In this essay,
Heath cogently argues that although Hollywood narrative strives for
“homogeneity”, there are moments in a film that clash with this desire and
the means by which narrative uniformity is achieved, such as continuity/
invisible editing and linear progression; In a heavily quoted passage, Heath
asserts that “narrative can never contain the whole film which permanently
exceeds its fictions” (1975, 10). Heath’s comment that there are moments
in a film that cannot be fully contained within its narrative logic is
endorsed by Thompson, who openly accepts the use of his term “excess.”
Thompson, however, is quick to part ways with Heath’s suggestion that
excess is noticeable in classical Hollywood. As she says,
Heath is talking about the classical Hollywood film, which typically strives to
minimize excess by a thorough-going motivation. Other films outside this tradition
do not always try to provide an apparent motivation for everything in the film, and
thus they leave their potentially excessive elements more noticeable (1977, 54–55).

The core of her argument is that a study of excess requires that we

remain more sensitive to stylistic choices and particularly to those ones not
necessarily in service of narrative ends. As she cogently suggests, stylistic
devices can simultaneously promote the plot and divert our attention
from it.
Thompson identifies four ways in which excess transcends a film’s narra-
tive imperatives. The first one is when a stylistic treatment of the material
is motivated by the narrative but what remains unmotivated is the specific
ways that the material is framed. She sets as an example the depiction of
the lead character in Eisenstein’s Bday UhjÅyß½ (Ivan the Terrible, 1944).
The film’s narrative requires him to look impressive, but Eisenstein’s
choices appear eccentric: “a pointed head, a musical theme, close-ups with
a crowd in deep focus, and so on” (1977, 58). The second method of
6 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

producing excess relates to the ways the expressive materials of representa-

tion are used to serve a narrative function, but significant screen time is
spent on highlighting them to such an extent that the audience is urged to
scrutinize them as independent materials outside their role in the story.
Examples include extra-diegetic or diegetic music and the decor of the
mise-en-scene. Thompson brings no example from Ivan to justify this, but
argues that: “Repeated viewings of a film are likely to increase the excessive
potentials of a scene’s components; as we become familiar with the narra-
tive (or other principle of progression), the innate interest of the compos-
ition, the visual aspects of the decor, or the structure of the musical
accompaniment, may begin to come forward and capture more of our
attention” (Ibid, 58).
The third way of producing excess refers to the way a “single bit of nar-
rative motivation” (Ibid, 58) affects almost every formal device in the film.
As she explains, in Eisenstein’s film it is Ivan’s portrayal as the historical
figure that can unify Russia that provides this motivation. The film must
use multiple stylistic and formal devices to repeatedly emphasize Ivan’s
capacity to respond to the challenge. However, the repetition of certain
devices ends up diminishing their narrative objectives and invites us to
draw attention to them as independent representational elements. “After a
point, the repeated use of multiple devices to serve similar functions tends
to minimize the importance of their narrative implications; instead, they
become foregrounded primarily through their own innate interest” (Ibid).
The fourth way of producing excess is through the repetition of a specific
device initially used to serve a diegetic function. Through this repetition,
the device goes beyond its diegetic and compositional role and imparts an
element of eccentricity to the film. Thompson sets as an example “the bird
motif” in Ivan the Terrible. In the coronation scene for instance, the
detailed registering of bird figures in certain objects aims at offering a sense
of historical authenticity, since these insignia were common in similar cere-
monies in sixteenth century Russia. Yet, in other passages in the film, the
camera persistently captures more bird figures, which have marginal narra-
tive implications. For instance, Thompson describes the scene where Ivan
argues with Philip; here the presence of the birds on the wall serves no nar-
rative function.
I find Thompson’s comments illuminating precisely because they clarify
how excess is the product of the complex dialectic between narrative motiv-
ation and esthetic self-consciousness. There is, however, an element of
contradiction in her argument. Whereas in her discussion of the four ways
that films can produce excess, she clearly demonstrates how the expressive
means of representation can outweigh their initial narrative significance, it
is important to emphasize that in the examples she mentions the formal
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 7

devices that produce excess do not act fully against diegetic motivation.
Diegetic motivation is rather their starting point, which is eventually sur-
passed by the audio-visual surplus they produce. This runs counter to her
previous comments stating: “at that point where motivation fails, excess
begins” (Ibid, 58) and “excess is not only counternarrative; it is also coun-
ter-unity” (Ibid, 57). Such an approach conceives excess as antithetical to
the Hollywood tradition as evidenced in the following comments:
The Hollywood norm has accustomed us to clear, seamless space; now we are
confronted with frequent, pointless shifts and gaps. Ivan’s device of cubistic editing
constitutes a perceptual game. If the spectator consciously notices the cubistic cuts,
he/she may indeed be drawn aside from the smoother structures to notice more and
more subtle instances of this spatial instability. Indeed, any stylistic disjunction may
lead the spectator into an awareness of excess—unless he/she strives too hard to
recuperate them (Ibid., 60).

Evidently, Thompson seems unable to break with the conventional

assumption that every formal device in narrative cinema has a story-telling
function and Hollywood cinema has very little esthetic self-consciousness.
But is that the case? Do we only remember the stories and the narrative
conflicts of the Hollywood classics? Is then classical Hollywood nothing but
“photographed theater,” to recall Robert Bresson’s famous aphorism (1977,
3)? Are not there moments of esthetic self-consciousness that exceed narra-
tive motivation in the use of close-ups, flashbacks, extra-diegetic music and
the visual staging of the mise-en-scene?
Despite the contradictions in Thompson’s essay, the merit of her articula-
tion of the four ways in which films create cinematic excess is that she invites
us to consider how certain stylistic details can animate the fetishist desires of
the audience and can underplay their narrative curiosity. This is intimately
tied to the work of Roland Barthes, which has been extremely influential on
her essay. In his discussion of Ivan the Terrible, Barthes singles out a scene
from the film, in which gold is poured on Ivan by his courtiers, and distin-
guishes three different levels of meaning. The first one, “the informational
level”, serves a communicative function and intends to impart narrative
information through the settings, the characters, and all the mise-en-scene
details (1977, 52). It is concerned with the actions of the courtiers and the
reasons why they perform the ritual of baptism by gold. The second one, “the
symbolic level”, serves a narrative symbolism that invites the audience to be
attentive to questions of power. The symbolic level is geared to the produc-
tion of meaning: “Taken in its entirety, this second level is that of signi-
fication” (Ibid., 52). In the second level of representation, meaning is very
much associated with authorial intent. In this specific sequence, the imperial
ritual of baptism by gold extends beyond the actions on screen and symbol-
izes the power of imperial Russia. As Watts rightly observes, this historical
8 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

reference “is by extension, about the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union,
and the film industry that was in place when Eisenstein made his film” (2016,
51). In effect, the second meaning extends beyond the information communi-
cated within the diegesis.
Far more complicated is his discussion of the “third meaning,” whose
implications exceed authorial intentionality. The third meaning or “the
obtuse” one, as he also calls it, refers to those moments in the scene that
go beyond a referential function and invite a more inquisitive reading prac-
tice focused on the surface of the sequence rather than its dramatic import-
ance. A close engagement with these surfaces that do not necessarily fit in
the wider representational whole can instigate an interest in the meta-level
rather than the diegetic and referential level of representation. For Barthes,
it is not Ivan’s baptism by gold that stands out in Ivan, namely not the nar-
rative action on screen, but the visible antitheses in the makeup of Ivan’s
courtiers, the untidy hairstyle of one of them, and the excessively pale skin
of the other one. These are minor surface details that inspire a fetishist/
erotic reading disinterested in putting the representational pieces together
to reach to a narrative synthesis. Fetishist attention to surface details con-
tradicts the spectatorial curiosity for narrative details and as Barthes idio-
syncratically suggests, the third meaning “outplays meaning–subverts not
the content but the whole practice of meaning” (1977, 62).
The gaze of the fetishist allows the seductive aspects of representation to
come to the fore and resist their subordination to a predetermined whole.
In Eisenstein, as Barthes says, the Russian revolution offers the dominant
interpretative framework of his oeuvre; however, in these passages from
Ivan there is an esthetic resistance to narrative integration that can counter
the seeming synthesis put forward by the narrative and Eisenstein’s meth-
odology embedded in binary dialectics. Emphasis on visual surfaces and
details offers an opportunity to shift attention away from the obviousness
of the film’s story and alert the audience to those esthetically ambivalent
moments in which the dialectic becomes proliferative, nonintegrated and
points indirectly to all those questions suppressed by the narrative and the
apparatuses of control in the USSR that dictated what a director was
allowed to do. The surfaces that fascinate Barthes evoke a grotesque atmos-
phere that might invite us to read questions of power against the film’s
story both on a narrative and an extra-diegetic level; after all, Ivan was
commissioned by Joseph Stalin who narcissistically identified with the six-
teenth-century Tsar. But they also point to a queer sensibility, captivated
by these moments of audio-visual surplus.6 Overall, these details refute dia-
lectical synthesis and add another esthetic dimension to the film that can-
not be explained by resorting to questions of authorial intent. As
Barthes says,
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 9

All these traits (the funny headdress, the old woman, the squinting eyelids, the fish)
have as their vague reference a somewhat low language, the language of a rather
pitiful disguise. In connection with the noble grief of the obvious meaning, they
form a dialogism so tenuous that there is no guarantee of its intentionality. The
characteristic of this third meaning is indeed ̶ at least in SME–to blur the limit
separating expression from disguise, but also to allow that oscillation succinct
demonstration–an elliptic emphasis, if one can put it like that, a complex and
extremely artful disposition (for it involves a temporality of signification), perfectly
described by Eisenstein himself when he jubilantly quotes the golden rule of the old
K. S. Gillette: ‘just short of the cutting edge’. The obtuse meaning, then, has
something to do with disguise (Ibid, 57–58).

The analogy between the third meaning and disguise is conceptually

sound, because disguise simultaneously refers to the artifice of representa-
tion, but also to the capacity of this artificial dimension, not to reveal nar-
rative information but to complicate representation. There is an element of
esthetic resistance in these visual details that appeal to us on the basis of
their sensual implications. They have an affective impact that cannot be
communicated or sufficiently described in writing. This is the reason why
Barthes suggests that the fragmented quality, the discontinuity, and narra-
tive indifference of the third meaning challenges the very act of criticism,
the “metalanguage” (Ibid, 61). Later on, he describes the third meaning as
“a luxury, an expenditure with no exchange” (Ibid, 62) and ends up con-
necting this quality with questions of cinematic specificity. As he explains,
“the filmic”, the medium specific elements, are those moments, which are
irreducible to linguistic description. One can summarize the story of Ivan
in the same manner one can synopsize the narrative of a novel or a play,
but there are these eccentric segments that resist description. The filmic,
therefore, refers to those extracts from the film that cannot be illustrated
through language. As Barthes affirms, “the third meaning—theoretically
locatable but not describable—can now be seen as the passage from lan-
guage to signifiance and the founding act of the filmic itself” (Ibid, 65,
italics in the original).
The idea that cinema is the art form that incorporates unpredictable
moments, or materials not predetermined by the filmmaker was fundamen-
tal to film theorists addressing the question of realism and medium specifi-
city. Andre Bazin famously suggested that cinema’s reliance on apparatuses
of reproduction makes it an art form that cannot be fully controlled by the
filmmaker (see Bazin 1967, 13). In realist cinema, for Bazin, there is always
a non-containable surplus, since the empirical reality filmed by the director
left some “unadorned traces on the celluloid” (Andrew 1976, 145).
Commenting on Italian Neorealism Bazin argued:
“the Italian films have an exceptionally documentary quality that could
not be removed from the script without thereby eliminating the whole
10 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

social setting into which its roots are so deeply sunk” (1971, 20). Similarly,
Siegfried Kracauer suggested that the camera’s interaction with a material
environment can lead to the inclusion of unstaged, non-predetermined
materials that do not necessarily produce dramaturgical unity. For
Kracauer then the cinema builds on its medium specific roots in photog-
raphy. As he says,
In strict analogy to the term “photographic approach” the filmmaker’s approach is
called cinematic if it acknowledges the basic aesthetic principle [the photographic
one]. It is evident that the cinematic approach materializes in all films which follow
the realist tendency (1997, 38).

It is implicit in this conception of medium specificity that a film cannot

be reduced to its storyline, but what makes the medium specific is precisely
its capacity to incorporate materials that exceed an instrumental, narrative
function. Both Bazin and Kracauer captured the complex dialectic of realist
cinema (not a dramatic realist cinema, but one that persistently engages
with the empirical world) that imparts the diegetic universe with extra-die-
getic images that do not fully serve a narrative function.
These theories of the medium’s specificity can enable a better under-
standing of Barthes’ idea that the “filmic” describes all these details
that cannot be done justice with words. What distinguishes Barthes’
approach from these important realist theorists is that his take on the non-
containable aspects of representation is not founded on the premise of
film’s indexical quality, which allows it to register the real in all its contra-
diction; instead, Barthes draws attention to questions of theatricality. In a
famous passage Barthes says that theatricality
is theater-minus-text, it is a density of signs and sensations built up on stage starting
from the written argument; it is that ecumenical perception of sensuous artifice-
gesture, tone, distance, substance, lightwhich submerges the text beneath the
profusion of its external language (Barthes 1972, 26).

For Barthes, theatricality refers to all these surface details that cannot be
completely integrated fully into the narrative world. What renders the
filmic difficult to describe is that narrative cinema operates on a complex
dialectic: it intends to absorb the audience into the storyline, and it simul-
taneously produces via its expressive materials a dynamic connection
between the represented material and the audience. This is precisely
Barthes’ experience while watching Ivan, since he vacillates between follow-
ing the story and being absorbed by the eccentric minutiae in the film.
This is the reason why the third meaning has the potential to subvert
meaning, because it does not facilitate our narrative absorption, but
diverts—albeit temporarily—our attention from the story. Commenting on
the concept of the third meaning, Philip Watts persuasively suggests that,
“this is the writing of a fetishist, for whom the starting point of a
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 11

commentary on cinema is always the trivial detail, the mundane feature

which carries ‘a de-naturing or at least a distancing effect’” (2016, 52).
Watts’ core point is that Barthes’ fetishist gaze has affinities with his
Brechtian critique of visual culture in his Mythologies. Evidently, in
Mythologies the emphasis was more on how visual surfaces obfuscate ideol-
ogy by naturalizing it. Then again, underpinning the fetishist spectatorship
is the view that closer attention to what we take to be minor in a sequence
does not solely generate pleasure; it also enables us to attend to the esthetic
quirkiness produced and can simultaneously facilitate readings that contest
the obviousness of a film’s narrative. This chimes neatly with Barthes’ dis-
cussion of the “general pleasure” of reading, which refers to the excessive
qualities of the text that go beyond any “social” and “structural function”
(1975, 19).
It is useful, however, to consider that Barthes’ analysis points to the
fact that the third meaning coexists with the first and the second one.
Barthes might affirm that “the obtuse meaning is the epitome of a coun-
ter-narrative” (1977, 63), but the prefix “counter” is not synonymous with
“anti”. Indeed, the third meaning requires the preexistence of an obvious and
a symbolic one; if some form of narrative information and obviousness is not
communicated, how can then the narrative be subverted? It is, thus, import-
ant to consider how this cinematic excess can also emerge in films by less
experimental directors than Eisenstein. But before proceeding to do so, it is
productive to consider another eminent essay by Barthes, “The Reality Effect”
that can allow us to comprehend how moments of excess and representa-
tional “luxury” are equally identifiable in narrative-oriented films from the
Hollywood tradition. Barthes’ reality essay addresses the complex dialectic
between compositional realism and realistic description in literature. Despite
its focus on literature rather than cinema, it has intriguing parallels with his
above-mentioned reflections on Eisenstein’s Ivan.
Barthes begins the essay by asking us to consider some detailed descrip-
tions of Mme Aubain’s room in Gustave Flaubert’s short story “A Simple
Heart.” He then moves to a passage from Jean Michelet’s The History of
the French Revolution, where the French historian narrates the death of
Charlotte Corday and mentions an insignificant detail regarding an artist
who had painted her portrait and visited her in jail. Barthes concludes that
similar minor realistic details permeate the work of many realist authors.
What renders these details unique is that they do not serve narrative ends,
and this is the reason why structural analysis either ignores them or assigns
them “an indirect functional value” (2006, 230). Against the critical ten-
dency that everything in a narrative has a significance, Barthes attempts to
understand the importance of these insignificant descriptions. As he says,
12 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

It would seem, however, that if analysis seeks to be exhaustive (and what would any
method be worth which did not account for the totality of its object, i.e., in this case,
of the entire surface of the narrative fabric?), if it seeks to encompass the absolute
detail, the indivisible unit, the fugitive transition, in order to assign them a place in
the structure, it inevitably encounters notations which no function (not even the
most indirect) can justify: such notations are scandalous (from the point of view of
structure), or, what is even more disturbing, they seem to correspond to a kind of
narrative luxury, lavish to the point of offering many ‘‘futile’’ details and thereby
increasing the cost of narrative information (Ibid, 230).

This concept of “narrative luxury” invites us to re-consider the realist

implications of realist literature. For Barthes, these uncontainable details
act as a resistance to meaning/signification. They do not signify narrative
events, but the real itself in a manner that challenges compositional coher-
ence. The fact that these “concrete details” serve no definite narrative
objectives is precisely the marker of their realism, because they register a
reality which appears autonomous and does not conform to structures of
compositional unity. Conversely, they produce a different type of verisimili-
tude concerned with making “notation the pure encounter of an object and
its expression” (Ibid, 234). Realism is, therefore, not a matter of content,
but something related to the inclusion of these superfluous details that
resist integration.
Gilberto Perez has aptly made the connection between realism and excess
in Barthes’ essay. As he says, “Roland Barthes sees realism as a mode of
excess too. In its description of things, realism characteristically goes
beyond the requirements of the story; it gives us an excess of detail” (2019,
238). Cannot then this excess of detail in realist literature be associated
with the stylistic excess that Barthes identifies in Eisenstein’s Ivan? Are we
not prompted to conjecture that in the same manner that realist literature
concurrently tells a clear story and offers details that destabilize the narra-
tive something analogous happens in many classical Hollywood films?
Obviously, the surplus in classical Hollywood is not the surplus of realism
that registers superfluous details, but one which is the product of esthetic
self-consciousness that can at times assume a self-sufficient role without
being completely subordinated to narrative logic.7 A skeptic–and the late
Perez would join this group since he differentiates between realism and
classicism–could interject that the classical Hollywood is part of a classicist
conception of art, which includes materials exclusively decisive for the nar-
rative economy. In Perez’s words, “Classicism is art that exhibits just what
is necessary, the right measure of information and emotion, the perfect fit
of form and meaning” (Ibid., 203). Suppose, then, that we ignore recent
critiques of the conventional periodization of modernism, which argue that
even classical Hollywood was part of the modernist innovations and trans-
formation of experience in modernity (see Hansen 1999; Donald 2010) and
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 13

accept the premise that Hollywood cinema is part of a classicist tradition.

This begs the question: does classicism display such restrained/measured
approach to representation valorizing solely what is functional and narra-
tive-oriented? If, for example, we accept that the Greek tragedy as described
by Aristotle in the Poetics is the quintessential form of classicist art–also
extremely influential on classical Hollywood cinema–, then we can see how
certain tropes, e.g., the choral odes, or long monologues can simultaneously
combine narrative information with material that exceeds the narrative.
Something similar holds for dramatists who were part of Weimar classi-
cism. For instance, it would be at least inaccurate to claim that Goethe in
Faust offers solely the appropriate amount of information needed to follow
the story, since aside from its length, the play exhibits a high degree of
esthetic self-consciousness, including verses that cannot be fully integrated
into the narrative. The same applies to films from the classical Hollywood
tradition that can include details, expressive materials and at times even
sequences that can go beyond the esthetic functionalism that tends to char-
acterize Hollywood.

Excess and Classical Hollywood

The first example comes from Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw, a film contro-
versial for its time, not because of its story or its themes but Hughes’ pro-
motional campaign that turned the then unknown Jane Russell into a sex
symbol. The hype surrounding the film created by Hughes himself, his
strained relationship with Howard Hawks, who was initially employed to
direct the film, and the exploitation of the young Russell to instigate publi-
city have been substantially covered by several scholars (see Pauly 1978,
354; Barlett & Steele 2004, npg; Thompson 2014, npg; Longworth 2018,
npg). The film follows the typical three-act structure that characterizes clas-
sical Hollywood. It is mostly a story of friendship, and betrayal coupled
with a secondary heterosexual romance. Sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas
Mitchell) falls out with his old friend Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), when
the latter befriends a young outlaw, Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel). Doc saves
the young outlaw from the sheriff and shelters him to the house of his girl-
friend Rio (Russell) and her Aunt Guadalupe (Mimi Aguglia), only to be
betrayed by Billy who starts a romance with his girlfriend.
Thomas H. Pauly describes the film as “ungainly, eccentric, and
intriguing” (1978, 362). At the same time, the film conforms to all the
dramaturgical Hollywood codes although a sense of a suppressed homo-
sexuality permeates its story specifically when it comes to the intense rela-
tionships between Pat, Doc and Billy to the extent that the fulfilled
heterosexual romance between Billy and Rio looks contrived and lacks any
14 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

shred of credibility. David Thompson has characteristically argued that

“The Outlaw, was the first American film to suggest that homosexuality
might be pleasant” (2014, npg). I have chosen two brief passages from the
film, which are typical of an esthetic of cinematic excess. The first one
takes place in Rio’s house while Billy is recovering from his wounds. Billy’s
condition seems to have worsened and Rio decides to take matters in her
hands and sleep next to him hoping that her presence might cure him. In
a shot-reverse shot sequence she tells Aunt Guadalupe (Mimi Aguglia) to
exit the room. When the camera frames Rio from the point of view of her
aunt, the former is registered in an extremely sexualized way, which is
heightened by the soundtrack; the musical accompaniment produces an
intensified sensation when Rio is center-framed. On a narrative level, Rio is
the object of vision of her aunt and this does not justify the excessive sen-
suality of her depiction. At this point, the film seems to place emphasis on
the act of vision openly acknowledging the gendered look of the camera
even though it is not narratively justified. Here, the framing of Rio as a
sexual object–to evoke Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay–exceeds the diegesis
because it does not fit in with the narrative requirements. Is it the character
or the actress who is spectacularised? In a way, this passage performs a
moment of self-celebration of Hollywood as a whole and its stereotypical
gendered visual strategies, because its desire to downplay diegetic consist-
ency in favor of spectacular vision aligns with a type of self-reflexivity asso-
ciated with Hollywood; it does not remind the spectator that s/he is
watching a film, but is more concerned with repeating certain motifs even
if they are narratively unjustified to produce recognition of Hollywood’s
own mode of address.
Then again, this moment in the film can be seen as a broader comment
on a suppressed sexuality both on a diegetic level, but also on an extra-die-
getic one that refers to the puritanical sexual mores of the time, as well as
the restrictions imposed on the film industry by the MPPDA. In hindsight
and knowing all the background information about Hughes’ aggressive
marketing strategy for the film that relied on heavily sexualized pictures of
Russell on billboards, this scene is readable as a self-referential gesture on
the part of the industry itself, but also as a nod to its own capacity to play-
fully subvert the very restrictions and regulations imposed by the MDPA.8
This kind of inquiry can therefore start to explain the film’s clumsy plot,
its heavy-handed characterization and the overstretched dramatic conflicts,
which can be further understood if we examine the sexual implications of
the story. Indeed, if anything, the film is about suppressed sexuality and
homosexuality that can only be suggested rather than depicted; this is also
reflected in its inelegant plot and staging of the conflicts between the char-
acters. But as the passage above seems to suggest, it is Rio who seems to
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 15

embody an unrestrained excessive sexual energy that is highlighted in some

sequences in the film that look dramatically gratuitous. Consider, for
example, one scene where Rio is framed from the point of view of the bed-
ridden Billy. The camera registers her looking at him hesitatingly and then
eventually moving to kiss him. As she slowly approaches him with her
mouth, she suddenly moves back interrupted by her aunt. The framing of
the scene creates the impression that the actress was ready to kiss the lens
and the extra-diegetic music in the background enhances the scene’s affect-
ive impact. As she approaches the lens, the music reaches a crescendo;
when she retreats after being interrupted by Aunt Guadalupe, the sound-
track acts like a musical decrescendo. This abrupt shift from a crescendo to
a decrescendo has a climactic effect, paralleling the act of sexual inter-
course, which, is, however, unfulfilled on screen. Commenting on this
sequence, Karina Longworth argues that it looks “startlingly unusual,
almost avant-garde” (2018, npg). Again, one senses a degree of dramatic
gratuitousness, since the camera adopts the point of view of Billy, who is
addressing her in a completely blase and indifferent way that does not jus-
tify this extravagant theatricality. His indifference persists after they are
interrupted by Rio’s aunt.
Consequently, the staging of the scene is effective on an extra-diegetic
level rather than a diegetic one, since it seems geared to satisfy the audien-
ce’s vision instead of Billy’s. Evidently, the emphasis here is on gendered
cinematic vision openly drawing attention to itself. But as mentioned
before, the subtext of homosexuality that pervades the film as shown in
Pat’s bitterness when Doc ignores him for Billy, as well as in the bizarre
relationship between Billy and Doc pushes the heterosexual romance into
the background. In acknowledging this, we can further understand how
these passages and others focusing on Rio seem narratively unjustified.
This chimes neatly with Thompson’s fourth tactic of producing excess, that
is, the repetition of a device that has initially diegetic purposes, but through
its repetition it exceeds them. In Ivan, it is the recurrence of the bird motif,
whereas in The Outlaw, it is through the fetishization of Rio even in pas-
sages, which have no significant narrative importance. Rio stands synecdo-
chally for sexuality that cannot be contained in the story. As Perez
explains, “synecdoche is the figure that moves from the particular to the
general” when a part is taken for the whole (2019, 60). In The Outlaw,
these gratuitous scenes registering Russell’s body exceed their narrative
function and produce a form of excess that connotes a suppressed sexual
energy, which has extra-diegetic implications. Of note here, is that Rio
stands for sexuality as a whole, including the covert homosexuality of the
key male characters in the film that because of its sensitive nature could
only be suggested.
16 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

The key dramatic conflict starts when Pat feels that he has lost Doc’s
affections after the latter meets Billy. Thus, it is a typical love triangle con-
flict that makes Pat seek revenge. Meanwhile, there are passages registering
Billy’s and Doc’s shaded relationship that connote homoeroticism. Robert
Lang comments on their first encounter, where Billy is framed from Doc’s
point of view in such a way that the latter’s enamourment with him
becomes obvious. Commenting on their relationship throughout the film
he says, “the passionate interest between the two men is amply and unam-
biguously conveyed, and whether we are witnessing the beginning of a
great friendship, or a grand romance, or both, is—happily—undecidable”
(2002, 93). Pauly has also explained how moments of male bonding in the
film have strong gay insinuations. For instance, there are many scenes
registering Doc and Billy as they reach into each other’s pockets to
exchange tobacco while their witty stichomythias have also sexual implica-
tions. “Billy’s proposal that Doc bunk with him, to which Doc replies ‘No
thanks I’ve got a girl’ playfully intrudes a suggestion of homosexuality
upon this stock display of cowboy camaraderie” (1978, 363). Yet these insi-
nuated queer implications are contained and moderated by the story, lead-
ing the filmmaker to oversexualise Rio so as to compensate for this
underdeveloped gay subtext. It as if the film reflexively admits its inability
to deal with the complex sexual issues it touches on by strongly fore-
grounding conventional gendered imagery that can appear out of place or
irrelevant to the logic of the story. This is the reason why Rio is oversex-
ualised even when framed from the point of view of her aunt. The key
contradiction is that despite her extreme sexualisation, she seems to pro-
duce little excitement to the characters involved with her, who are more
attracted to each other rather than to Rio. Consequently, she contains all
the overt sexual energy in the film as a means of moderating the gay sub-
text of the story. It is not accidental that audiences were infuriated not by
the conventional gender portrayal of the character, but by her negligible
role “even on a sexual level” (Lang 2002, 81).
The second film I discuss is Irving Rapper’s adaptation of Tennessee
Williams’ classic The Glass Menagerie. The source text was termed as a
“memory play” (Williams 1991, npg) by the author. It merges expressionist,
poetic and realist elements, which form at the same time a coherent narra-
tive about a family in a shabby St Louis apartment. Menagerie tells the
story of a family living in a small flat in St Louis. Tom (Arthur Kennedy),
who is also the narrator, works at a shoe warehouse and is dissatisfied with
his job and his role as the provider of the household. His mother’s
(Gertrude Lawrence) inability to discard her memories of “southern great-
ness” that she associates with her youth and her expectation that Tom
should help his withdrawn sister Laura (Jane Wyman) get settled in life
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 17

intensify the conflicts within the household. Eventually, Tom gets to invite
Jim (Kirk Douglas), a colleague from the warehouse, who ends up flirting
with Laura only to eventually admit that he is engaged to be married. After
an argument with his mother, Tom leaves the house for good.
The play is semi-autobiographical, since it has references to Williams’
own family experiences, and especially his own reclusive sister, who was
lobotomized. Although set in an apartment and focusing mainly on the
troubles of the family, Menagerie addresses complex social and political
issues, including patriarchy, labor alienation, and gender politics. Rapper’s
adaptation has somehow softened the play’s politics and altered the ending,
since in the end Laura has gained confidence in herself after her failed
romance with Jim and ends up getting together with a man named Richard
Henderson. Furthermore, the narrative is not solely set in the apartment as
in the play, but there are many scenes taking place outside the household,
what Hollywood calls “opening up” a stage play. Williams was particularly
disappointed with the film’s ending and many other choices on the part of
the director and the screenwriter, Peter Berneis. He stated that the film was
“the most awful travesty of the play I’ve ever seen” (qtd in Palmer and
Bray 2009, 42).
Despite the playwright’s reservations, the adaptation includes laudable
performances and is not as unworthy of the original play as Williams sug-
gests. Certainly, the expressionist and poetic elements have been down-
played making the film version more in line with the dramatic coherence
that characterizes the classical Hollywood narrative. The film starts with
Tom being on duty as a merchant mariner and reminiscing about the past.
Thus, like the play, the narrative is framed through Tom’s memory.
Although adapted following the Hollywood standards of diegetic motiv-
ation and clarity, such as psychological characterization, dramatic unity and
narrative causality, there are certain sequences in the film that exceed the
narrative requirements and even enable us to think beyond the obviousness
of the story and its concluding resolution.
A good case in point, is the culmination of a sequence focusing on Laura
failing a speed typing test at a local post business school. It starts with a
medium shot of Laura as she struggles to walk up the building’s stairs due
to her disability. As she enters the classroom, she is reprimanded by the
teacher for being late. The teacher gives a signal for the test to begin and
we see all the students, with the exception of Laura, typing fast and effi-
ciently. Laura is shown struggling with the test and she eventually leaves
the room. The noteworthy scene begins now that Laura is absent from the
diegetic space. The camera persists on capturing the other students as they
frantically type their texts on the typewriters’ keyboards. Initially, the lens
frames their faces only to recline and close-up on their fingers repetitively
18 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

typing on the keyboards. This moment in the film is remarkable because it

poses questions that go beyond the storyline. If we follow Barthes, on the
informational level this passage communicates Laura’s fragility and the
challenges she faces as she follows a course chosen by her mother. There is,
however, something else that requires attention. The scene is not framed
from Laura’s point of view, who has left the diegetic space. Thus, it cannot
be reduced to a reflection of her mental and psychological fatigue. Things
become more complicated if we consider that the dramatic events, includ-
ing this one, are framed through Tom’s memory.
Is then this emphasis on the machine-like training of the young typists a
diegetic comment by Tom, whose reflections on alienated labor act in
many scenes as pretexts for his arguments with his mother? Accepting this
answer would be far too simplistic, since Tom’s interventions in the story
are clearly foregrounded by the filmmaker to ensure consistency in narra-
tive agency and point of view. A useful framework for approaching this
passage would be to see it as an extra-diegetic commentary that points to
broader contradictions outside the private sphere of the Wingfield house-
hold. It acts as a counterpoint to the story’s emphasis on the tragedy of a
family alerting the viewer to social processes beyond the narrative. It is fair
to conjecture that the scene resists the obviousness of the informational
level, which would be Laura’s fragile mental state and her inability to fit in
the social reality due to her reclusiveness. Conversely, it invites us to con-
sider social issues of alienated, routinized and mechanized labor that can
facilitate a reading that allows us to connect the personal with the political.
While the starting point for this extra shot is Laura’s alienation and disabil-
ity, the camera’s prolonged emphasis on repetitive, tedious labor exceeds
narrative motivation since it shifts emphasis from the plight and agony of
the key character in the sequence to highlight broader questions of social
oppression. One of the questions prompted by the sequence is not why
Laura fails to take ownership of her life but whether anybody encountering
similar mindless working conditions can achieve individual independence
and dignity. In the same manner that Barthes sees Ivan’s beard and the
courtiers’ make up as a form of disturbance to the obviousness of the film’s
meaning, the camera’s lingering emphasis on the typists’ mundane and
repetitive labor resists an obvious, “tragic” interpretation, because it shifts
attention from the individual drama to processes of social oppression. The
scene can be seen with reference to Thompson’s first method of producing
excess: it is diegetically motivated, but the stylistic treatment of the material
exceeds the drama in the narrative universe.
Another notable example from the film, is the short scene at the end
registering Laura receiving a gentleman caller, whom she met after Tom’s
departure. As mentioned earlier, Williams reacted against this change in
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 19

the play’s finale and argued that this revision would produce an effect of
“bathos and sentimentality” (qtd in Palmer and Bray 2009, 50) that would
go against the spirit of the drama. He was ready to compromise as long as
the gentleman caller would appear “as insubstantial as an approaching
shadow in the alley which appears in conjunction with the narrative line
‘the long delayed but always expected something that we live for’” (Ibid.,
50). Rapper and Berneis ignored him and even gave the character a name
to add some credibility to the contrived happy ending.
Then again, a close observation of the sequence raises questions regard-
ing its narrative credibility. Immediately, after Tom’s departure from the
house, his voice-over intones the famous concluding lines of the play: “I
didn’t go to the moon, I went much further. … For nowadays the world is
lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura—and so goodbye.”
Meanwhile, the camera briefly returns to the frame story and registers Tom
while on duty as a merchant mariner. As his voice-over provides more
information about his travels after leaving St Louis, the camera visualizes
him sitting in an urban bar after abandoning his family. The camera
closes-up on his face, which starts to blur, and through a slow dissolve the
narrative shifts back to St Louis and Laura’s cheerful face appears on frame.
Her mother suddenly joins the diegetic space and asks her the name of her
date. Laura responds and then the camera cuts to Richard (Sean McClory)
as he approaches. It then cuts back to the two women and as the image
dissolves Tom’s face fades in, bringing us back to the frame story.
Looking at this scene, it is noteworthy how the shift from the main
to the frame story bridges different temporal periods, e.g., the present
time from which the narrative is told, Tom’s travels, and Laura’s new
date. The visual and aural cues offered by the narrative make it abun-
dantly clear that this is all shown from Tom’s point of view. But the
question persists: is Tom a reliable narrator? The unexpected dissolve
from Tom looking at his glass while drinking in an urban bar to the
flat in St Louis, where Laura and her mother receive Richard, unsettles
one’s confidence in him. This ambivalence takes on an added dimension
if we consider how Amanda appears completely measured and laidback
next to her daughter something that radically contradicts her previous
portrayal as an agitated and edgy character. Equally important is to
acknowledge the brief and fleeting quality of the scene that does not
accede to the causal narrative closure we associate with the classical
Hollywood narrative. Tom’s comment as we see Richard approaching
the two women sounds more ironic than convincing: “the long delayed
but always expected something that we live for.”
On an informational level, the audience gets to learn that the insecure
and reclusive Laura managed after all to gain confidence and find a
20 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

partner. On an esthetic level, however, the scene appears stagy, due to the
oneiric quality of the frame story, which is enhanced by the low-key light-
ing, and the unexpected transformation of Laura’s character in the main
one. Consequently, the sequence appears extraneous to the film’s storyline
precisely because it is characterized by a high degree of self-consciousness
that intentionally counteracts the film’s tightly constructed narrative chain.
The fact that this scene is more strongly presented from Tom’s point of
view, as opposed to the rest of the story, calls into doubt its credibility and
appears as if it is Tom’s wish fulfillment for abandoning his family.
Proairetic articulation here comes undone by means of a theatricality that
intentionally deviates from the film’s stylistic consistency so far. I use the
term theatricality, here, in Josette Feral’s terms as an esthetic process that
outweighs story coherence and forcefully links an “onlooker with someone
or something that is looked at” (2002, 105). Such an emphasis on staging
in this scene, alerts the audience to the impossibility of the happy ending
despite the opposite narrative information; it simultaneously operates as an
ironic self-reflexive gesture on the part of the industry, as if acknowledging
its own cliched ways in resolving narrative conflict.9
The final film that I discuss is Jean Negulesco’s Humoresque (1946),
which is based on Fannie Hurst’s homonymous short story and was co-
written by the leftist playwright Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold. A com-
plex film featuring typical 1920s/30s narrative motifs capturing the pres-
sures faced by assimilated second-generation Jews combined with the
woman’s picture, it chronicles the life of the son of a blue-collar family,
Paul Boray (John Garfield), aspiring to become a violin soloist. The story
follows the rags to riches narrative pattern as it shows Paul, whose parents
own a grocery shop, becoming passionate about music at a young age. Paul
becomes successful thanks to the sponsorship of a wealthy, neurotic, mar-
ried socialite, Helen Wright (Joan Crawford), who falls for him. The film
follows both his success as a musician and his relationship with Helen,
which ends up waning due to his overconcentration on his career at the
cost of their romance, and his mother’s disproval of their bond. The narra-
tive combines typical themes that permeate Odets’ 1930s and 1940s dramas,
such as the anxieties of post-Depression blue-collar families and the aspir-
ation for social mobility, with canonical melodramatic motifs, such as the
dissatisfied, neurotic woman character and the conflict between career suc-
cess and romance.
Many of the standard instances of excess in the film that are symptom-
atic of its generic melodramatic devices have been discussed by scholars.
Peter Franklin has explained how the diegetic concert solo performances of
Paul as staged in the film connote the character’s disturbed psychological
state, the sexual tensions in his relationship with Helen, and the somehow
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 21

Oedipal relationship with his controlling mother (see Franklin 2009,

160–3). Eithne O’Neill has commented on the film’s musically saturated
ending that concludes with Helen’s suicide and describes it as “a variation
on the theme of self-immolation” (2004, 173). Barbara Creed has briefly
explained how in certain scenes focusing on Helen the film deploys canon-
ical cinematic techniques e.g., close-ups, soft-focus and low-key lighting to
intimate a sense of female orgasmic pleasure (2016, 145–6).
The above-mentioned scholars cogently identify moments of implied
excess in the film’s utilization of melodramatic devices, such as diegetic
and extra-diegetic music, and staging, but these excessive features are
mostly suggestive of themes entailed in the film’s plot. For instance,
Creed’s discussion of the cinematic techniques that connote orgasmic pleas-
ure are fully in service of the narrative themes ̶ Helen’s concurrent desire
for Paul and her sexual dissatisfaction. Yet there are two scenes on which I
want to focus that produce a sense of cinematic excess through their
emphasis on something trivial and narratively gratuitous. In the first scene,
the setting is a bar where Paul and Helen have their first intimate t^ete-
a-t^ete after meeting at a party in the former’s house. Helen asks questions
about Paul’s interests, passions and personal life. Through their dialogue,
the scene captures the class differences between the two characters but also
their attraction to each other. But what merits attention is the culminating
shot of this sequence. Helen asks Paul whether he has a manager and at
this point a waiter enters the frame. Helen is heard recommending one,
but the camera eventually focuses on the waiter collecting the glasses and
ignores the couple. The scene is temporarily focalized from the waiter’s
point of view and the diegetic music suppresses the dialogue between the
two characters. The camera follows him as he returns to the bar and ends
up registering a figurine of a woman carrying a fruit basket. The figurine is
initially shown from a distance as we follow the waiter and is eventually
isolated and enlarged by the camera through a close-up. This small passage
diverts attention from the dialogue to this object whose presence on screen
does not produce narrative information. Remarkably, this figurine appears
again in another sequence later in the film, in the same bar where Helen
and Paul are having an argument. At this point, the figurine introduces the
setting and is framed at the center of the screen; eventually, the camera
slowly moves back to register a woman singer before focusing on the two
main characters.
The attention placed on this statuette by the filmmaker is notable,
because this object does not have any obvious narrative or symbolic func-
tionality. It does not promote the plot, nor does it allow us to get a better
understanding of the emotional state of the characters, as many objects
laden with symbolism do. In other words, the prop lacks what T.S. Eliot
22 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

calls an “objective correlative”, a neologism he introduced to describe how

events, objects and settings in literature need to form a linking chain,
which is expressive of the key emotions permeating a literary work (2015,
92). In both scenes, however, it temporarily diverts our attention from the
dialogue between the characters and invites us to focus on this ostensibly
insignificant detail and the diegetic piano bar ballad performed by the pian-
ist, which is reinforced as the camera isolates the prop. The diegetic music
here is not unobtrusive and inconspicuous but is highlighted not in order
to complement the action, but to interrupt it in the same manner that the
statuette diverts our attention from the dialogue between the characters.
Thus, both the music and the prop do not illustrate the action on screen
but produce a sense of contrast. I see this fetishistic attention to such an
object and the foregrounding of non-illustrative music as part of a narrative
luxury as per Barthes’ commentary on realistic literature mentioned in the
previous section. After all, the object is part of the bar’s decoration and the
camera’s tenacious focus on it produces a descriptive surplus that does not
provide narrative information. The fact that this descriptive surplus occurs
twice complicates things even further. This persistent stress on a prop with-
out an overt narrative value aligns also with Barthes’ visual fetishism as evi-
denced in his discussion of the third/obtuse meaning. For Barthes, the
fetishization of the trivial and the minor detail valorizes the affective over
the narrative features of representation, what Watts aptly describes while
commenting on his famous essay as “sensation without meaning” (2016,
53). Watts expands on this arguing that “the detail escapes all obvious
meanings or concrete referents; it is isolated from the narrative, from com-
prehension, from assembly” (Ibid., 56). Something analogous occurs here,
where in the first example the attention to the figurine seems to imply that
the narrative information is not as important as the somehow thrilling
attraction between the two characters that cannot be justified by words. In
the second example, the effect is similar; the difference is that in this
instant, the figurine commences the sequence as if its presence cautions the
audience not to pay attention to the words that will follow, but to similarly
minor details, such as Helen’s trembling lips or Paul’s fragile masculinity
hidden behind his machismo.
The immediate temptation here would be to dismiss these two scenes as
minor ones without much bearing on the film as a whole. Yet, it would be
helpful to recall how Barthes’ comments on the narrative luxury of realist lit-
erature and the third meaning in Eisenstein’s Ivan are exactly predicated on
seemingly superfluous details whose presence in the narrative/film can over-
whelm the audience and distract them from the storyline. In realist literature
this happens through an excess of details the inclusion of which produces
more than what is necessary for the plot development. As far as cinema is
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 23

concerned, Barthes explains how this sort of fetishistic attachment to minor

details in Ivan can underplay and contradict the unity of the film’s structure
and its hermeneutic obviousness ̶ the historical continuity of “great” figures
from Ivan to Stalin. Excess therefore has a metafictional edge that operates as
an indirect/oblique commentary on representation. In the case of
Humoresque, these scenes with the figurine are invitations to read for form,
for details that surpass or even contradict the key storyline, that is, the rags to
riches narrative and the romance between members of different classes. They
valorize a form of theatrical display over narrative and something analogous
happens with many of the diegetic solo performances in the film. Initially,
these musical sequences are fully integrated into the narrative aiming to show
Paul’s artistic progress and development, or even the sexual and familial ten-
sions that follow his success. Their repetition, however, ends up accentuating
an exhibitionist esthetic more concerned with implicit emotional effects
rather than diegetic coherence. What is striking about these sequences and
the one with the statuesque is their fragmentary and unfinished character;
they are suggestive of general sense of melancholy, which is not, however, in
service of dramatic psychology. They serve an expressive rather a strictly nar-
rative function that corresponds with Barthes’ idea that the third meaning,
does not seek to offer dramatic clarity or thematic coherence but to under-
mine it.10 Again, this brings us back to Thompson’s fourth technique of pro-
ducing excess through the repetition of a device, which firstly serves a
narrative function, but its repetition leads to the production of effects that
exceed the story.

Conclusion
In this essay, I have been seeking to clarify the concept of cinematic excess
through a close engagement with Barthes’ concept of the third meaning
and Kristin Thompson’s seminal essay so as to illuminate a term that is fre-
quently taken to be as self-explanatory by film scholars. Furthermore, I
have emphasized the importance of rethinking cinematic excess as a con-
cept that is not necessarily irreconcilable with the classical Hollywood cine-
matic tradition. A close engagement with Barthes’ comments on the excess
produced by the inclusion of insignificant details in realist literature and
cinema demonstrates that the key precondition for the production of non-
containable representational moments is a coherent storyline. This
approach makes it possible to understand excess not as a symbolic device,
but as something that disturbs representational and hermeneutic coherence
and invites the audience to pay attention to stylistic and formal materials
that can counteract the story rather than complement it. In these terms,
form and style turn into sensuous expressions of a mood that urges
24 A. KOUTSOURAKIS

audiences to be skeptical of the obviousness of the classical narrative econ-

omy and the dramatic resolutions it provides. Certainly, cinematic excess
points at potential interpretative paths, but its status as audio-visual surplus
frustrates a unified/totalising interpretation of its function in the narrative.
The examples from the films discussed above testify to this point and are
consistent with Barthes’ argument that the third meaning can be associated
with all the medium specific elements whose uniqueness resists complete
linguistic description, on account of their capacity to exceed narra-
tive objectives.

Notes
1. Informative in this respect are David Bordwell’s comments on how this theatrical
tradition influenced classical Hollywood. As he says, “The tradition of the well-made
play, as reformulated at the end of the nineteenth century, survives in Hollywood
scenarists’ academic insistence upon formulas for Exposition, Conflict, Complication,
Crisis, and Denouement. The more pedantic rulebooks cite Ibsen, William Archer,
Brander Matthews, and Gustav Freytag. The more homely advice is to create
problems that the characters must solve, show them trying to solve them, and end
with a definite resolution” (Bordwell, Thompson, and Staiger 1985, 16).
2. The dominant tendencies in the study of cinematic excess have focused on world
cinema auteurs linking excess with a distinctive authorial style. When scholars use a
Hollywood film as a case study, they do their best to ensure the film’s exceptional
and unique status that differentiates it from the classical Hollywood narrative. Typical
in this respect is Frances Hubbard’s essay that discusses the cinematic excess in
Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010). Unlike Thompson’s idea of excess as
something that disturbs representational homogeneity, Hubbard understands as
excessive those moments in the film that immerse us into the main character’s state
of mind and the psychological, physical and emotional crises she experiences (see
2016, 70). In these terms, excess acts in service of rather than against the narrative. It
is surprising, however, that although her essay uses the term in the title, there is no
reference to any theory of cinematic excess listed in the article’s bibliography.
3. After the lessons of semiotic film theory, this understanding of excess is vulnerable to
criticism because it seems to accept the problematic idea that a film produces a
concrete meaning, which is simply contradicted by a few formalist trickeries.
4. This approach strikes me as unpersuasive given that when formal features are
deployed to “symbolise” something, they do not necessarily produce ruptures in the
unity of representation.
5. Certainly, there are many modernisms but modernism’s (literary and cinematic)
emphasis on mundaneness characterises modernist works that are in dialogue with
realism, but also others that resisted the esthetic tropes associated with realism. For
instance, Laura Marcus talks about “modernist dailiness” in the city-symphony films,
which are far from being realist. Apart from Marcus’ and Trotter’s works cited in the
body of the text see also Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism (2013) and
Ezra Pound’s discussion of James Joyce’s The Dubliners (2013).
6. Andre Aciman has brilliantly captured this erotic aspect of Barthes’ fascination with
surface details. As he says, Barthes’ “thinking proceeds toward an ever fugitive
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 25

meaning, and at the same time, proceeds beyond it, outruns it without ever catching
up with it. It is always thinking after meaning, one might say palintropically. And I
use the adverb ‘after’ both in the sense that Barthes’ thinking is after a quarry as well
as to signify that it arrives after meaning has occurred. It is an everlasting striptease:
every article of clothing which is taken off is surreptitiously put on again while
another is being removed” (1984, 110–11). Philip Watts has also written extensively
on Roland Barthes’ valorisation of a sensual spectatorship. Watts has aptly shown
how apart from the Brechtian Barthes, who was interested in revealing the political
mythologies behind audio-visual culture, there was also a sensualist Barthes fascinated
by external appearances. As he says, “His writings on cinema are almost always
grounded in a hermeneutics that takes a part (hairstyles, for instance, as we will see
in chapter 1) for the whole and that interprets the film based on that part. But this
metonymic process inevitably involves a sensual attention to detail; it is always
grounded in an awareness of beauty” (2016, 4).
7. The aesthetic self-consciousness that characterises Hollywood comes across in its
mode of address. As Thomas Elsaesser has aptly explained, there is an element of self-
reflexivity in Hollywood, because “the work ‘is’ what it ‘is about’” (2012, 331), and
this is communicated both in the films’ subject matter and their style.
8. Howard Hughes intentionally tried to provoke a public outcry to get the film banned
so as to benefit from the negative publicity. Upon its release, it was initially banned
for violating the code, but when it was re-released a few years later the hype about it
was still strong and made it a box-office hit. Richard Maltby has discussed how
Hollywood could playfully subvert the Hays code by putting forward a certain degree
of innocence while at the same time allowing the more perceptive spectators to read
certain passages against this enforced conservatism (Maltby 2003, 63).
9. Certainly, such a conclusion can be reached through a close and repeated viewing of
the film; obviously, as a perceptive reviewer of this essay points out, popular
audiences can be more prone to take the film’s narrative resolution at a face value.
10. As he says, “Finally, the obtuse meaning can be seen as an accent, the very form of
an emergence, of a fold (a crease even) marking the heavy layer of informations and
significations. If it could be described (a contradiction in terms), it would have exactly
the nature of the Japanese haiku—anaphoric gesture without significant content, a
sort of gash rased of meaning (of desire for meaning)” (1977, 62).

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