Text in English & German. Like literary texts, films often tell
stories on multiple levels. Ridley Scott made an ironic reference
to this when he called his legendary science-fiction film Blade
Runner a "700-layer cake". These buried structures are created in
two ways: by elements that resonate throughout the film itself and
by references to other films, texts, myths, paintings, historical
events etc. that are adapted in a specific way by the director, the
scriptwriter and the production team. The heroine in Hitchcock's
film The Birds, for instance, is a modern Aphrodite / Venus. Just
as Venus, born from the sea foam, was carried to land on a
seashell, Melanie is carried across Bodega Bay in a boat that is
not much bigger than Venus' vessel in Botticelli's painting.
Melanie's name is another reference to Aphrodite, who was also
known as Melaina, "the black one". In the fist scene of the film,
in which she enters the pet shop where she later gets to know Mitch
and buys the love birds, Melanie is also dressed in black. The
Venus-like Melanie is felt to be a threat by others within their
world, and especially by more conventional women. One of them
screams at her hysterically: "I think you're evil! Evil!". This
creates a particular connection between love and horror in the
film. The classical Aphrodite also had a dark side -- her union
with Ares produced not only Harmonia, but also Deimos and Phobos:
"dread" and "fear". Detecting hidden references is only the first
step in creating an analysis; the next step is to elucidate the
function of the reference within the film. For instance, what does
it mean that Hitchcock's heroine is attacked by birds, whereas
Venus was depicted accompanied by a dove? And why does Melanie, our
"Venus", wear furs? Kirsch's investigations of this and other
questions open up new perspectives on a number of films, with
extensive illustrations allowing the reader to follow these in
detail. The book invites us to take a second look at The Birds,
Blake Edwards' The Party, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Gladiator
and Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomy. Konrad Kirsch is a PhD in
literature and an enthusiastic viewer of films. He has published
texts on Georg Buchner, Elias Canetti, Robert Walser, Franz Kafka
and William Shakespeare. Most recently, his article on Heinrich von
Kleist was published in the Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie.
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