From the unheimlich’s effect to remembrance: the narrative path of the character Marion Post in Another Woman (1988), by Woody Allen

Abstract

Our analysis intends to demonstrate how the character's narrative path develops – from the unheimlich effects felt by the protagonist Marion Post to the remembrance of her past – whose strength makes her leave her narcissistic confinement in the present time and, thus, provides her new possibilities for the future. In this sense, we take psychoanalysis as theoretical anchorage, with Freud (2019), and the concept of remembrance in the philosophy of history of Walter Benjamin, as explained by the philosopher Jeanne Marie Gagnebin (2014). In this text, by linking the thoughts of Benjamin and Freud, the author emphasizes the relationship between memory, narration and the “writing of history”, whether it is an autobiographical history or a collective history. The filmmaker uses the classic molds of Hollywood cinema, such as melodrama, and narrative strategies already well accepted by the mass culture, such as the fantastic and the metafiction. In this way, the director updates these resources critically and creatively, transforming them into products of contemporary culture with high aesthetic relevance, thus differing them from most commercial films in the Hollywood industry. Through filmic narrative, Allen elaborates new ways of narrating the conflicts and sufferings of the modern man.