Overview

Samuel Beckett’s short play Play / Comédie and his only film Film were written around the same time (1962-1963). They both have self-referential titles that invite meditation on the genres they represent. Although medium-specific opportunities and challenges underlie their very different geneses, they have influenced each other in terms of both form and content. In more ways than one, Film continues where Play left off. Whereas in Play the genesis shows a steady increase in speech tempo to the point of near unintelligibility, the silent Film radically eliminates speech from the outset. Conversely, the cinematic element is also clearly present in Play, notably in the crucial role assigned to the light beam as the mechanical, mindless inquisitor. Both works are grounded in technology and rely heavily on explanatory notes for the members of their production teams, thus exposing the inherently collaborative nature of such projects. The genetic critical analysis of the manuscripts of Play / Comédie and Film not only contributes to the interpretation of each work separately but also considers the two works together through the prism of Beckett’s multimedial authorship.

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9781472534965

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It is difficult to know what to praise more, the digital visualization of the on-line BDMP that offers scholars unprecedented access to primary documents or the meticulously edited book series ... What is irrefutable is that no contemporary scholar working on Samuel Beckett today can publish without thorough reference to The Making of Samuel Beckett's book series and to the BDMP, but the web site and its companion volumes are not the exclusive province of Beckett scholars. They appeal more broadly to serious theatre and film scholars, theorists and practitioners and to authorial philologists-readers interested in acts of creativity, textual genesis, and book history. * Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature *

Author Information

Olga Beloborodova is a Teaching Assistant and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Universiteit Antwepen, Belgium.

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