Abstract
Two Men and a Wardrobe: Photographic Motifs and Metaphors in Roman Polanski’s Short Films This paper attempts to explore the photographic metaphors (Bernd Stiegler’s categories) and motifs drawing on photographic techniques and practices in three short films directed by Roman Polanski while still a student (Two Men and a Wardrobe, Teeth Smile, Murder). Metaphors and motifs originating in the technical, practical, mythopoetic, and anthropologic aspect of photography—e.g. mirror, doubling, doppelgänger, shade, voyeurism, murder, mortification/vivification—used in Polanski’s early film narratives refer to copying vs. creating, reproducing a fragment of the world vs. developing it anew, exploring “reality” vs. illusion, “truth” vs. imagination, optics vs. metaphysics, and produce an autonomous space of meanings and possible interpretations. The theoretical framework of the analysis is provided by selected threads in the theory and philosophy of photography drawn from the works of Bernd Stiegler, Roland Barthes, Edgar Morin, Susan Sontag, John Szarkowski, and Edouard Pontremoli.
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