Abstract
Rhetorical strategies, amplification of meaning The scope of this paper is to show how allegory and symbol, in the framework of the baroque and modern cinema, are not ornamental mechanisms, but a form of semantic invention capable of questioning the grammaticalization of the cinematographic language. We don’t intend to make a historiographic analysis of a certain period of the cinema, but to show how these figures are capable of producing meaning, without denying their functional role, thanks to their poetic use. Through a qualitative case study (derived from a research on film rhetoric) we present an exegesis of their dynamics in four emblematic films: Citizen Kane Singing in the Rain, Wish on a Summer Morning and Pierrot the Madman (the first two, baroque; the second two: modern).
Keywords
film language; rhetorical discourse; baroque cinema; modern cinema; symbol; allegory