Demons of Analogy — intersections between Bruges-la-Morte, Vertigo and La Jetée

April 28th, 2025

1.30 p.m.

room 308

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Abstract: Two particularities stand out from the novel Bruges-la-Morte (Georges Rodenbach, 1892): the pioneering use of the photographic image as an integral part of the narrative and the resonance of this novel with various cinematographic works. Thirty-one photographic images of Bruges accompany the story and go beyond a mere illustrative function. This intermediary relationship between image and word implies new meanings, with particular affinities with film editing. In addition to five ‘direct’ film adaptations, in 1954, Bruges-la-Morte was the primary source for the writing of D’entre les morts (Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac). This book gave rise to the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958). Based on the concepts of adaptation and remake, this session aims to explore the resonances between Bruges-la-Morte and Vertigo, particularly in terms of narrative, colour palette, urban drift, necrophilia and spectrality, exploring the possibility that Vertigo, in an indirect way, is also an adaptation of Bruges-la-Morte and from here on to the resonance of the book in other cinematographic works, in particular in La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), a cinema-roman that its director insinuated was a remake of Vertigo and which, also through the use of photographic imagery, finds echoes of Bruges-la-Morte.

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Eduardo Brito works in cinema, writing and photography. In cinema, he wrote and directed the feature film A Sibila (2023), based on the novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís. He has directed several short films, including Penúmbria, Declive and Úrsula. He regularly writes scripts for films by various directors, including Rodrigo Areias, Manuel Mozos, Paulo Abreu and Luís Costa. Between photography and the word, his work almost always explores the themes of truth-fiction-memory, as well as the text-image relationship: thus the books As Orcadianas, East Ending, Fala Comigo, Pedra and Histórias Sem Regresso. He is a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), with an FCT scholarship. He has a master’s degree in Artistic, Museological and Curatorial Studies from the FBAUP, with the dissertation Claro Obscuro – Around the Representations of the Museum in Cinema. He specialised in screenwriting at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in Cuba. He regularly teaches as a guest assistant at the FBAUP.