'The Rodin Time Machine: Sculptural Moments in Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent'

Abstract

By analysing the way four Rodin sculptures are shot and woven into the film's narrative, this paper opens up questions about the way the film reflects on history, storytelling and the materiality of film. At the same time, the paper considers the label ‘epilogue’ and how this sequence compares with other cinematic epilogues. My exegesis of Truffaut’s use of a sculptural garden location is supported by secondary-source research on: Truffaut’s oeuvre; the history of epilogues in cinema; sculpture in film; the history of sculpture; and the history of the Rodin museum’s garden. While the film has been discussed by French and Anglophone Truffaut specialists in relation to his oeuvre, it has not been examined in relation to other contexts. My paper breaks new ground both in comparing the film to key 1960s cinema by other directors and in its emphasis on sculpture in cinema. There has been very little attention in film studies to the presence of sculpture in fictional films’ mise-en-scène.