Allegory and symbol in the baroque and modern cinema

Abstract

The main idea of this article is to show how allegory and symbol, in the framework of the baroque and modern cinema, are not ornamental mechanisms, but a form of semantic invention capable of questioning the grammaticalization of the cinematographic language. It is not about to make a historiographic analysis of a certain period of the cinema, but to show how these figures are capable of producing meaning, without denying their functional role, thanks to their poetic use. Through a case study, qualitative type (derived from a research on film Rhetoric), presents a conceptual characterization of both figures and an exegesis of their dynamics in four emblematic films: Citizen Kane, Singing in the Rain, Wish on a Summer Morning and Pierrot the Madman (the first two: Baroque, the second two: modern).