Performance in the Cinema of Hal Hartley By Steven Rawle

in a false image that they intend to project but are unable to master. In Simple Men, it is the failure to coherently project an “ideal” masculinity (if such a thing exists) that is the problem of the simple men of the title.

The second film I explore is Amateur, Hartley’s “thriller with a flat tyre”. Continuing from the discussion of Simple Men, this section further explores the liminal performances of the main characters and their attempts to portray themselves as other selves, performances that are ultimately doomed to failure, either from a lack of self-control or simple problems of fate where characters are unable to distance themselves from their previous selves (for reasons of amnesia or incompetence). Again, the focus is on Hartley’s manipulation of performance, on both the aesthetic level and in the commentary on social, religious, and political topics, where Amateur engages with problems of faith, gender, pornography, and maintenance of a performed self. Finally, I explore Hartley’s approach to generic violence, because both these films roughly fall into categories of the thriller. However, I argue that Hartley’s approach to violence is distinctive, offering a Brechtian commentary on the processes of performing and consuming scenes of violence.

In chapter 5, I consider three of Hartley’s most distinctive films: Flirt (1995), Henry Fool (1997), and No Such Thing (2001). Again considering the issue of performance, I look at the ways in which each film makes a distinctive, and shifting, contribution to Hartley’s oeuvre. Flirt is first considered as a comment upon social performances. Although this is a key obsession of Hartley’s, I consider the ways in which this is developed differently throughout Flirt, as a very self-conscious and self-reflexive statement on the processes of repetition, performing, and being watched in the social space. Next, I explore Henry Fool and the epic performances of the main characters. The film unfolds on a much greater canvas than previous Hartley works and is therefore considered as a grand statement on the systematic use of abstract performances in a largely realist film, both an extension of his previous works, considering social modes of performing and the ways in which bodily performance and mental states are intertwined, as well as a step away from earlier minimalisms to a larger, more epic form. In the final section of the