'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère'/'Paris, Texas.'

'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère:' painting, 1882; Edouard Manet.

'Paris, Texas:' film, 1984; Wim Wenders (director), Robby Müller (cinematographer) and Nastassja Kinski (actress).

Illustration 1, 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère:' A barmaid stands before a mirror, which reveals the view that she sees (including a man at the counter).

Illustration 2 and 3, 'Paris, Texas:' A female figure is shown from behind, accompanied by a male at a bar. She glances over her shoulder at someone she thought had approached (her husband, who has been missing for four years), but recognizes no one.

A woman stares out at, but appears not to see, us. The bar, functioning as a barrier and a framing device, establishes a tension: between the actual space depicted, and an implied space outside of the picture-frame. The mirror becomes a further window, a 'world-within-a-world.' As observers, we move towards the woman, and, in 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,' are perhaps meant to be a customer. In the movie stills, this region acts as a threshold, which can be crossed only by the camera's 'eye' and not by an actual person:

Illustration 4: The region between observer and bar.

As it tracks forward, depth is replaced by pictorial compression, reflections and fragmentation:

Illustration 5: Reflections.

The mirror might stand as metaphor for an inaccessible, private space that the woman inhabits; or as a cold, objective reality towards which she is removed. From the rear, her outline is blurred; frontally, her reflection is in focus (but divided by a split-mirror). Then, as she turns, this effect is reversed:

Illustration 6: Turning.

Flatness and indistinctness give way to volume and clarity, emphasised by the foreshortened shoulder and bottle standing on the bar. In close-up, her stark and beguiling physical presence becomes apparent.

These subtle discrepancies, in the revealing of front and back, are amplified by the sequential nature of film. The woman ('Paris, Texas') appears to be engaged by a person at her side; the mirror suggests otherwise. This sense of disengagement is made more explicit as she turns around. In 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,' the mirror-image of two figures has been pushed to our right, as if tilted at an oblique angle. Is Manet suggesting a gap in time - past or future? Between an instant when the girl communicates with a customer, and her frozen, disconnected expression seen face-on:

Illustration 7:  Does the mirror-image suggest a gap in the representation of space and time?

The women are presented as desirable objects: like items at the bar, something to be purchased or obtained. In the milieu that Manet examines, barmaids often doubled as prostitutes (in 'Paris, Texas,' the character 'Jane' is a 'lost soul' working in a strip-club). Manet had been involved in a project, 'La Vie Moderne,' which chronicled different aspects of the feminine in France's Third Republic. Barmaids, as subject, could be fitted into a sociological category - 'from the working classes.' The artist, however, insisted upon the use of a real employee, who is presented not as a 'type' but as a person ('Suzon').

Illustration 8: Manet - a chronicler of the feminine in 19th c. France.

Throughout 'Paris, Texas,' 'Jane' is viewed indirectly: from an unclear glimpse into a car window, to an obscure image on a home-movie screen. The 'bar scene' is the first occasion that she is present as an individual in the film.

Both artworks present a strong argument for realism: that which is most concrete and palpable makes each woman enigmatic. The painting and film-sequence indicate a troubled awareness of women as objects of male observation. Interestingly, these proclivities are critiqued and questioned. The area between mirror, bar and picture-frame can be felt as a psychologically 'charged' space, in which the conventions of masculine desire and perception are interrupted. This disjuncture produces a momentary acknowledgement of the female viewpoint: as something autonomous and ungraspable.

Illustration 9: The female viewpoint.