Abstract

Both artists and critics refer more and more to a diverse range of contemporary films as lyric or poetic essays. Lyricism is indeed acquiring increasing relevance as one of the key modes adopted by an artistic practice that is spreading fast throughout the globe. Yet, the lyric essay is still substantially undertheorized. This chapter aims to refine the theoretical and analytical tools that are at our disposal to think about the lyric essay film, and to expand our understanding of how lyricism is used by film-makers to create audiovisual spaces for thought. In doing so, it draws on a specific case study, the cinema of contemporary Italian film-maker Pietro Marcello, whose experimental essayistic work is elegiac and political all at once.

Keywords: Lyric essay film, poetic essay film, elegy, Pietro Marcello, The Mouth of the Wolf, Lost and Beautiful

With a perplexing and enriching lack of formal rigor, essays and essay films do not usually offer the kinds of pleasure associated with traditional aesthetic forms like narrative or lyrical poetry; they instead lean toward intellectual reflections that often insist on more conceptual or pragmatic responses, well outside the borders of conventional pleasure principles.