Woody en ses écrans : miroirs, mirages et autofiction

Abstract

The dialectic relationship between the author and their person has often been questioned, in the cinematic creation even more than in literature. Dissociating the two in the works of a director such as Woody Allen proves a difficult endeavour, due in part to his specific status, at once actorial and authorial, since he takes on the role of a script writer as well as of a director. He is inscribed in his movies through autofiction, drawing on the ambiguity of a genre that resorts to the enunciative artefacts of autobiography. Narrator, author and character are intertwined within a new unit which implies a particular reception process, since the author lives both inside and outside his fiction. Drawing on a narratological approach to his films and on the hermeneutics of reception applied to cinema, this article studies how Allen has built his 50-year filmography on this autofictional process and considers the ways in which he has played on the potential levels of interpretation and on the responses expected from his faithful audiences to foster his creation.

Keywords

• cinema
• reception hermeneutics
• narratology
• Woody Allen
• biography
• autofiction