An Uncanny Cinema, a Cinema of the Uncanny. The Trope of the Doll in the Films of Manoel de Oliveira

Abstract

Abstract I argue that the trope of the doll, recurrent throughout the films of Manoel de Oliveira, is a visual figure that beyond narrative becomes a discourse on modernity and modernism, stillness and movement, life and death. Accordingly, I propose an overview of occurences of dolls and of “dollness” throughout the work of Oliveira – from Aniki Bobó (1942) to The Strange Case of Angelica (2010) – with the aim of tracking the line of transformations of an emblematic object into an aesthetic principle, a central figure involving psychoanalytical concepts such as the Freudian “uncanny,” the fetish or the transitional object.