Film, vidéo, high definition: Beckett re-visioned through Rogosin, Lipman, Douglas and Friedkin

Journal article

This article starts out by exploring Beckett's debt to cinematic history, reinterpreting Film in light of Lionel Rogosin's documentary film On the Bowery (1956). Both set in New York and sharing a realistic backstory for their protagonists – Ray and O – this potential interrelation challenges the abstract result desired by Beckett. This abstraction is further complicated by Ross Lipman's high-definition restoration of the picture quality as part of his Notfilm (2015) project, as well as the found footage of the opening street scene and production photographs by Steve Schapiro included on the DVD and Blu-Ray versions. The article then investigates the legacy of Film in Stan Douglas's Vidéo (2007) and how this invests Beckett's work with new political-historical meaning in the twenty-first century. By assessing Vidéo as a creative response to Film, as well as William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and its sequel, the article traces how Douglas's work approaches the notion of (self-)perception differently, cognisant of its own aesthetic form and related technologies while assimilating Hollywood cinema and jazz music.

Authors: Verhulst, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Journal: Journal of Beckett Studies
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 65-82
• Place of publication: Edinburgh
• Publication date: 2025-04-30
• Acceptance date: 2025-04-30
• DOI: 10.3366/jobs.2025.0442
• EISSN: 1759-7811
• ISSN: 0309-5207
• Language: English
• Keywords: cinema; installation; adaptation; docufilm; jazz