Ross, one of the first references to mise en abime I have found in
critical literature is Claude Ollier in 1965 on ... the original KING
KONG! (that's in the BFI CAHIERS 60s collection, where the term is
unhelpfully literally translated as 'putting into the abyss') - the
famous scene of Denham 'rehearsing' Ann Darrow's screams for the
camera, screams she will later produce 'for real'. (Godard re-uses this
scene in HISTOIRE(s).) That is what's fascinating about the mise en
abime technique: the way it drains the 'naturalness' out of a
narrative, the dynamic way it can 'put things between quotation marks'
as you are watching them unfold. Tellingly, this is a 'modernist; touch
that Peter Jackson's loving homage to KONG does NOT reproduce! No mise
en abime for him!!
Adrian
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