Bela Balazs, Jean Epstein, and Sigmund Freud: The Close Up, Part 2

The second installment of video lectures about film theorists Bela Balazs and Jean Epstein and their writings on the close-up, paired with an analysis of the film The Master (Anderson, 2012).

Specifically, we'll look at the ways that the Balazs's and Epstein's respective theories of the close-up differ in terms of how well they map onto a Freudian understanding of the body's revelation of the unconscious. This idea is thematized in The Master, a film largely about the questions surrounding the mysterious inner world of its main character and a cult that believes that the unconscious mind harbors forgotten memories of past lives.