“I love cinema because its images are traces of something forgotten, a lost part of you. Suddenly, in a flash, you are reacquainted with your past…” This, from Pierre Clémenti in his A Few Personal Messages, a collection of essayistic journal entries written over the course of the 18 months he spent in a pair of Italian prisons, articulates the Bazinian party line in its sentimental dimension. We are moved by films because, briefly, deeply, they convince us that the past isn’t irretrievable, that life isn’t forever slipping away. But in his usual manner, Clémenti immediately complicates this, narrowing the perspective to an actor’s: “And at the very moment you’re playing the part, you become the person who will one day look back at yourself.” To be an actor, to…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023