Please join us for our first research seminar of 2023. At 5pm on 25 January, David Sorfa (University of Edinburgh) will be joining us in room S-1.04 to present his paper.
Existentialism and Film Studies: Party Girl (1958) precedes Party Girl (1995)
Nicholas Ray directed Party Girl (1958), starring Cyd Charisse, in less than ideal circumstances, while Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Party Girl was released in 1995 and quickly faded into obscurity. There is, as far as I know, no substantive connection between the two films beyond the coincidence of their titles but I nevertheless present a comparison between these relatively unrecognised films in order to explore the extent to which Existentialism is an important influence on popular thought in general and cinema in particular. Party Girl (1995) features Parker Posey, an emblematic actor of 1990s American independent film, trying to find purpose in her life by working as a librarian during the day and a party organiser at night. Mayer’s Party Girl, set in the hedonistic club culture of underground New York, explicitly references Existentialist ideas in a comic fashion while Ray’s Party Girl touches on a number of themes that we might associate with Existentialism: alienation, the anxieties of youth, the legitimacy of the law, doomed anti-heroes and struggles for true expression. These are, of course, ideas that run through many of Nicholas Ray’s other more well-known films, They Live By Night (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), Rebel Without a Cause (1955)and more.Both Party Girl films feature young women trying to find meaning in life or, to use the Existentialist jargon, to live in good faith, and do so, in different ways, by taking part in parties. The contrast between the frivolous and the serious and how we might distinguish one from the other is a crucial question in each film. This talk is part of a broader project about the importance, on the one hand, of Existentialism to the development of Film Studies, film theory and film-philosophy as critical discourses, and, on the other, the extent to which Existentialist ideas permeate filmmaking throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
David Sorfa is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Film-Philosophy and has written on Michael Haneke, Czech film, surrealism, belief in cinema and the philosophical implications of point-of-view. He has particular interests in film-philosophy, Existentialism, phenomenology, the work of Jacques Derrida and the presentation of thought and thinking in cinema.