Intermezzo: Show Me Again

Abstract

An Intermezzo opens exploration of the “multiplied narrative,” a form traceable back at least to William Hogarth, in which depictions or accounts are matched with one or more successive others in a work, the narrative position changing and our view of the diegetic events shifting in accompaniment. The discussion here ranges from Marriage a la Mode to Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) to Dutch flower painting to Joseph L Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa (1954), a pair of sequences from which are analysed in great detail. This chapter explores the pleasure of narrative accumulation, a process of layering in which delight derives from witnessing as, in some deeply rooted and poetic sense, many stories become one.