Passion at the threshold: Doctor Glas the flaneur in the films of Rune Carlstén and Mai Zetterling

Abstract

This article explores tropes of modernity in film adaptations of the 1905 novel Doctor Glas written by the Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg. Drawing on Walter Benjamin and Miriam Hansen among others, the article attempts to show that certain expressive categories perceived as mutually exclusive by the contemporary audiences, in fact co-operate in order to constitute certain “points of impossibility” in the narrative and visual flow, where modern (gender) identities mutate and manifest themselves.

Keywords

• modernity
• body
• gender
• identity
• flaneur
• etui
• interor/exterior