Performance in the Cinema of Hal Hartley By Steven Rawle

are constructed in “different economies of acting and the motivation we assign to them”,⁴⁰ that exceed narrative and diegetic space, where star performances are containable only as “the products of stars … by varying the ostensiveness of performance, as well as external reframing signifiers (such as publicity and reviews)”.⁴¹ Although Drake’s article concentrated mostly on the inter- and extratextual star texts that help to construct star performances, he also conceded that “not all screen performance is as committed to closing the gap between performer and character. Some forms of performance are designed to disturb or put aside questions of narrative coherence and motivation”.⁴² The exemplars here are those performances that exceed or complicate the ontology of performance, such as stunts, comedy, or song-and-dance routines, but the “broad spectrum” of performance, as Drake referred to it, encompasses performances, like those in Hartley’s films that disrupt or construct a different “economy” of performance, and the “cultural practices”⁴³ involved. He argued that “a performance is not simply a text; it is, after all, a socially embedded experience”.⁴⁴ This is an important contention for the films of Hartley, especially The Unbelievable Truth and Trust, and will be explored throughout subsequent chapters.

The intention of this book is to contribute to ongoing work in this problem area of scholarship in film performance and to address the shortfall in academic enquiry into the films of Hal Hartley. Despite Jonathan Romney’s claim that “these days, people write PhD theses about Hartley”,⁴⁵ academic inquiry into his work has been extremely limited. As I write, only a handful of sources exist, including just one PhD thesis.⁴⁶ In addition, the only book on Hartley remains Jason Wood’s short Pocket Essentials monograph,⁴⁷ released in 2003. However, with the exception of Sophie Wise’s “What I Like About Hal Hartley, or Rather, What Hal Hartley Likes About Me: The Performance of the Spect(actor)” in Stern and Kouvaros’s anthology, Hartley’s approach to performance is seldom discussed as a central aesthetic or thematic feature of his work.

Therefore, this book will explore the key aesthetic and thematic aspects of performance that run throughout his films. Performance is fundamental to the understanding of Hartley’s work. The 2004 short